NCJ Number
247252
Date Published
September 2014
Length
123 pages
Annotation
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a nationally representative household survey sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and is one of the nation's primary sources of information on criminal victimization, both reported and not reported to police.
Abstract
These briefing materials on the redesigned National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) summarize the changes to the questionnaire and procedures, as well as their impact. The NCVS is a self-report survey in which interviewed persons age 12 or older are asked about the number and characteristics of victimizations experienced during the previous 6 months. Households are interviewed every 6 months for a total of seven interviews over 3 years. The survey uses a two-stage approach to identify and enumerate victimizations. In the first stage, respondents are asked a series of screen questions to identify experiences with crime during the 6-month reference period. In the second stage, each victimization identified during the screening process is followed up with a detailed crime incident report that collects information about the date and characteristics of the event. The U.S. Census Bureau serves as the primary data collection organization for the NCVS by conducting interviews and processing sample data on a monthly basis.