"The National Crime Survey Redesign," Public Opinion Quarterly, 54 (Summer 1990),
256-272.
The National Crime Survey (NCS) provides estimates of the level of criminal victimization in the United States
and information on the detailed characteristics of crime incidents and victims. There are a number of
interesting methodological features of the NCS, many of which are examined in a recent report on the survey
from BJS. The NCS is a retrospective survey like studies of voting behavior, spells of unemployment, and
episodes of ill health, it poses a recall task and relies upon the accuracy with which respondents can
describe their past experiences. The survey opens with a checklist designed to elicit reports of recent
encounters with crime, and proceeds to a set of detailed questions for those who respond affirmatively. Most
of the 18,000 or so NCS respondents each month have little to report, for recent victimization is relatively
infrequent and geographically concentrated. Many of the methodological problems involved in fielding large
retrospective panel surveys are confounded with the topical content of the NCS, for the distribution of criminal
victimization turns out to be closely linked to many of the sources of sampling and non-sampling error which
affect such surveys.
Recognizing this, the launch of the NCS in 1972 was preceded by a series of six pilot studies that tested
alternative questionnaire strategies, responding selection procedures, and sampling designs for the survey.
This methodological scrutiny continues; almost immediately after the NCS went into the field it was reviewed
by a panel convened by the National Research Council, and BJS has made public-use data sets from the
survey widely available through the University of Michigan's criminal justice data archive. The report of the
National Research Council (1976), reactions to published NCS reports, and the experiences of the research
community led in turn to the formation of a research consortium to consider how the NCS could be
redesigned to deal with issues that became apparent once the survey was in the field. The redesign
consortium issues its final report in 1986, and since then the BJS and the Census Bureau have been
considering its operational implications and testing revisions in the NCS. Some changes have already been
made in the survey, and many more are in the offing.
256-272.
The National Crime Survey (NCS) provides estimates of the level of criminal victimization in the United States
and information on the detailed characteristics of crime incidents and victims. There are a number of
interesting methodological features of the NCS, many of which are examined in a recent report on the survey
from BJS. The NCS is a retrospective survey like studies of voting behavior, spells of unemployment, and
episodes of ill health, it poses a recall task and relies upon the accuracy with which respondents can
describe their past experiences. The survey opens with a checklist designed to elicit reports of recent
encounters with crime, and proceeds to a set of detailed questions for those who respond affirmatively. Most
of the 18,000 or so NCS respondents each month have little to report, for recent victimization is relatively
infrequent and geographically concentrated. Many of the methodological problems involved in fielding large
retrospective panel surveys are confounded with the topical content of the NCS, for the distribution of criminal
victimization turns out to be closely linked to many of the sources of sampling and non-sampling error which
affect such surveys.
Recognizing this, the launch of the NCS in 1972 was preceded by a series of six pilot studies that tested
alternative questionnaire strategies, responding selection procedures, and sampling designs for the survey.
This methodological scrutiny continues; almost immediately after the NCS went into the field it was reviewed
by a panel convened by the National Research Council, and BJS has made public-use data sets from the
survey widely available through the University of Michigan's criminal justice data archive. The report of the
National Research Council (1976), reactions to published NCS reports, and the experiences of the research
community led in turn to the formation of a research consortium to consider how the NCS could be
redesigned to deal with issues that became apparent once the survey was in the field. The redesign
consortium issues its final report in 1986, and since then the BJS and the Census Bureau have been
considering its operational implications and testing revisions in the NCS. Some changes have already been
made in the survey, and many more are in the offing.
Measurement Abstracts
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