This document provides the National Crime Victimization Survey, Subnational Estimates, with an overview of uses, limitations, and caveats; the authors lay out the evaluation criteria for state-level estimates, an interpretation of evaluation criteria and mitigation strategies, considerations for generating victimization estimates and standard errors, and significance testing with comparisons between subgroups, states, and over time.
The authors of this document describe the guidelines developed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) for producing state-level estimates with data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), as well as additional considerations and recommendations that researchers should keep in mind when conducting state-level analyses. The authors also provide strategies for avoiding potential pitfalls and ensuring the reliability of results and conclusions from subnational analyses. In order to illustrate methods for generating common estimates and comparisons with NCVS data, the authors provide example code in SAS programming language. This document also provides additional resources for analysts who are conducting state-level analyses with NCVS data: section one provides an overview of the appropriate use of the restricted-use data files; section two includes evaluation criteria that analysts should utilize to evaluate the reliability of their analyses; section three describes steps that researchers can take to remediate issues with state-level analyses; and sections four and five provide guidance and example code for producing victimization estimates and conducting statistical tests to detect significant differences.