Dr. Stephen Farrall of Sheffield University and Dr. Jonathan Jackson of the London School of Economics found that people did not neatly separate out the issue of crime from general anxiety toward social stability.

"The fear of crime is an important social indicator of any society's well-being," Farrall said in a statement.

But everyday concerns about crime in England and Wales are much less frequent than previously thought, the researchers said.

The study used data from the 2003 to 2004 British Crime Survey of England and Wales, which interviews about 40,000 people each year.

The fear of crime is more often a broader anxiety than a concrete worry about the threat of victimization -- but in any case, these emotions are all bound up in public concerns about social change, Jackson said.