issue Victimisation surveys are used to compare 15–24-year-olds with 25–64-year-olds in terms of proportion injured and fear of injury.

Methods National victimisation surveys are interview studies in which a systematic random sample of the Finnish population older than 15 years is interviewed about injuries, violence and crimes. The surveys have been conducted mainly by telephone in 1980, 1988, 1993, 1997, 2003, 2006 and 2009. Data from 2003 to 2006 were merged (n=13553) to obtain high precision to the estimates while still being fairly up-to-date. The proportions of people injured during past year in sports, traffic, home or leisure-time injuries or at least somewhat worried of being injured or violently victimised were estimated in both young (15–24-year-olds, n=2574) and the rest of the working age population (25–64-year-olds, n=10979). Logistic regression models were used to assess the significances of the differences.

Results Of 15–24-year-olds 13.5% (5.5% of 25–64-year-olds, OR 2.68, p<0.001) sustained at least one sports injury, 3.3% (1.2% of 25–64-year-olds, OR 2.89, p<0.001) sustained injury in traffic accident and 5.6% (5.2% of 25–64-year-olds, OR 1.08, p=0.45) sustained injury in home or leisure-time accident.

Of 15–24-year-olds 45% (59% of 25–64-year-olds, OR 0.56, p<0.001) were worried about getting into a traffic accident, 20% (27% of 25–64-year-olds, OR 0.64, p<0.001) were worried about sustaining home or leisure-time injury and 33% (35% of 25–64-year-olds, OR 0.92, p=0.08) were worried about becoming a victim of violence.

Conclusions Young people show much greater proneness to accidents but worry less about them. Further research should be targeted accordingly.