Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey 2025-2026
South Africa, 2025 - 2026
Get MicrodataIdentification
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| South Africa | zaf |
| Type | Identifier |
|---|---|
| doi | https://doi.org/10.25828/4J43-5V34 |
The GPSJS is a countrywide, household-based survey that aims to bridge statistical information gaps in governance statistics by interviewing households and individuals and collecting the data needed for planning and monitoring. The GPSJS was first conducted in South Africa in 2018/19 as an updated version of the long-running Victims of Crime Survey (VOCS), including themes on governance. The re-engineered GPSJS retained many items from the Victims of Crime Survey (VOCS), while adding new content. Therefore, the series breaks in crime estimates from VOCS to GPSJS. However, the series has no break for questions that remained the same, for example, questions on perceptions of crime. In particular, there is also no break to the five-year crime series arising from the question “In the past 5 years have you or any member of the household experienced any of the following crimes?” because no change was made to this question. Therefore, the five-year series can be used to determine whether crime increased or decreased between 2016/17 and 2020/21, while the twelve-month series will be used to determine whether crime increased or decreased between the 2020/21 and 2024/25 data collection periods. The GPSJS data can be used for research in the development of policies and strategies for governance, crime prevention, public safety and justice programmes, with the main objectives of the survey being to:
• Provide information about the dynamics of crime from the perspective of households and the victims of crime;
• Explore public perceptions of the activities of the police, prosecutors, courts and correctional services in the prevention of crime and victimisation;
• Provide complementary data on the level of crime within South Africa in addition to the statistics published annually by the South African Police Service; and
• . Explore public perception of government performance and effectiveness.
Version
This dataset was downloaded from the StatsSA website on 10th Nov 2026.
Scope
The GPSJS is a countrywide household-based survey, and the objectives of the survey are to provide information on:
Perceptions about citizen interaction/community cohesion
Trust in government/public institutions
Government's performance and effectiveness
Experience of corruption
Households and individuals' perceptions and experience of crime, including assault, hijacking, murder, and sexual offences.
| Topic |
|---|
| Crime |
| Governance |
Coverage
The survey has national coverage.
The lowest level of geographic aggregation covered by the data is province.
The target population of the survey consists of all private households in all nine provinces of South Africa and residents in workers’ hostels. The survey does not cover other collective living quarters such as students’ hostels, old-age homes, hospitals, prisons, and military barracks, and is therefore, the only representative of non-institutionalised and non-military persons or households in South Africa.
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Statistics South Africa | Government of South Africa |
Study authorization
| Agency name | Affiliation | Abbreviation |
|---|---|---|
| Statistics South Africa | Government of South Africa | StatsSA |
Data collection by organs of state in South Africa is authorised by the Statistics Act, 1999, and the Statistics Amendment Act, 2024
Sampling
The Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey (GPSJS) 2025/26 uses the master sample (MS) sampling frame, a general-purpose household survey frame used by other Stats SA household-based surveys with design requirements reasonably compatible with GPSJS. The GPSJS 2025/26 collection was drawn from the 2013 Master Sample. This master sample is based on information collected during Census 2011. In preparation for Census 2011, the country was divided into 103 576 enumeration areas (EAs). The Census EAs, together with the auxiliary information for the EAs, were used as the frame units or building blocks for the formation of primary sampling units (PSUs) for the master sample, since
they covered the entire country and had other information that is crucial for stratification and creation of PSUs. There are 3 324 primary sampling units (PSUs) in the master sample with an expected sample of approximately 33 000 dwelling units (DUs). The number of PSUs in the current master sample (3 324) reflects an 8,0% increase in the size of the master sample compared to the previous 2008 Master Sample (which had 3 080 PSUs). The larger master sample of PSUs was selected to improve the precision (smaller coefficients of variation, known as CVs) of the GPSJS estimates.
The dataset has three types of weights: person, household, and individual-level weights. Please refer to the "Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey 2025/26 Metadata" documents for more information on weights.
Survey instrument
The GPSJS questionnaire is based on international reporting standards of governance, public safety and justice defined by the SDGs.
Section 1 of the questionnaire relates to household crime experience. A proxy respondent (preferably head of the household or acting head of household) answered on behalf of the household. Section 2 to 7 of the questionnaire relate to crimes experienced by individuals and were asked of a household member who was selected using the birthday section method. This methodology selects an individual who is 16 years or older, whose birthday is soonest after the survey date.
Data collection
| Start | End | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2026 | Round 8 |
| Start date | End date | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2026 | 8 |
| Name | Affiliation | Abbreviation |
|---|---|---|
| Statistics South Africa | Government of South Africa | StatsSA |
The GPSJS 2025/26 data was collected through face-to-face interviews using Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI)
Data appraisal
Comparability to VCS series:
The re-engineered GPSJS retained many items from the Victims of Crime Survey (VOCS), while new content was added. There is, therefore, a break of series in the estimates of crime from VOCS to GPSJS. However, there is no break of series for questions that remained the same, for example, questions on perceptions of crime. In particular, there is also no break to the five-year crime series arising from the question “In the past 5 years have you or any member of the household experienced any of the following crimes?” because no change was made to this question. Therefore, it is possible to determine whether crime increased or decreased between 2016/17 and 2020/21 using the five-year series, while the twelve-month series will be used to determine whether crime increased or decreased between 2020/21 and 2025/26 data collection periods.
Depositor information
Distributor information
Access policy
Creative Commons Attribution only CC-BY license
Statistics South Africa. Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey 2025-2026 [dataset]. Version 1. Pretoria: StatsSA [producer], 2026. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor], 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/4J43-5V34
Users of the data must send DataFirst a copy of or link to any publication based on the data
Public access
Metadata production
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| DataFirst | University of Cape Town |
Metadata Producer |