Determination of consensus among professionals for community safety terms through a Delphi study

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Crime Prevention and Community Safety. The definitive publisher-authenticated version 2013, 15(4), pp. 258-277 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2013.9This article reports the findings from a study of Community Safety professionals (Academics, Policymakers and Practitioners), using the Delphi method to determine common definitions, if any, for Community Safety terms in current usage. The study investigated the differences in the way that the terms were used and understood by the members of the three groups. The study was predicated on the view that the groups of Community Safety professionals probably use the language of Community Safety in different ways. It is suggested that work in the field would benefit from a shared terminology, where the same term has the same meaning for different professional groups