PUBLICATION ADVISORY

BJS Releases Reports on the NCVS Instrument Redesign and More

      WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics today released Update on the NCVS Instrument Redesign.  This report provides an update on BJS’s multiyear effort to improve the efficiency, reliability and utility of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).  The effort had three main goals:  modernize the organization and content of the NCVS instrument, increase the quality of information collected and efficiency of the instrument flow and improve the measurement and classification of crime.  This summary describes progress to design a new NCVS instrument, including decisions made based on findings from a large-scale national field test and upcoming milestones for the implementation phase of this project.

      BJS also released 3 third-party reports.  National Crime Victimization Survey Redesign Field Test Topline Report:  Comparing Condition 1 and Condition 2 by Interleaving Treatment was produced by Westat for BJS to describe testing efforts to develop and assess a new NCVS instrument.  This testing was a part of the NCVS Instrument Redesign and Testing Project, a major multiyear effort to revamp the existing core survey instrument, which was last updated in 1992.  The goals of the instrument redesign were to (1) update the content of the survey, and (2) increase the efficiency of the data collection.  This report details the methodology and findings from a large-scale national field test conducted from October 2019 to March 2020 to compare two versions of the core NCVS instrument.  It compares performance and procedures of the current NCVS instrument to those from the new instrument.

      NCVS Juvenile Testing and Redesign Report was produced by RTI International for BJS to contribute knowledge and findings toward improving participation and the measurement of victimization among youth ages 12 to 17.  Interviewing youth about their crime and victimization experiences presents a number of challenges that could impact data completeness and quality.  To address these concerns, this report assesses a variety of estimates and indicators for juveniles in the NCVS, investigates youth understanding of the NCVS questions, explores strategies with parents and youth to maximize youth participation in the NCVS and estimates the effectiveness of parent proxy reporting.

      Victimization in Different Types of Areas in the United States:  Subnational Findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey, 2010–2015 was produced by the University of Missouri-St. Louis for BJS to contribute knowledge on the ability of the NCVS to provide information about the levels, nature and consequences of victimization across different types of places.  It describes methods used to create “generic area” typologies based on geographic, social, economic or demographic characteristics.  These generic areas can represent places that are similar to each other based on the characteristics of interest.  This report creates generic areas using three geographic indicators currently available in public-use NCVS data:  census region, metropolitan area status and population size for the central cities of metropolitan areas.

      TITLE:  Update on the NCVS Instrument Redesign (NCJ 304055) by BJS Statisticians
                    Jennifer L. Truman, Ph.D., and Heather Brotsos

                    National Crime Victimization Survey Redesign Field Test Topline Report:
                    Comparing Condition 1 and Condition 2 by Interleaving Treatment
                    (NCJ 303980) (third-party report) by David Cantor; W. Sherman Edwards;
                    Pamela Giambo; Darby Miller Steiger; Ting Yan; Wendy Hicks; Hanyu Sun;
                    and Jill DeMatteis, Westat

                    NCVS Juvenile Testing and Redesign Report;
                    (NCJ 304100) (third-party report) by Christine
                    Lindquist; Sarah Cook; Christopher Krebs; Stephanie
                    Zimmer; and Marcus Berzofsky, RTI International

                    Victimization in Different Types of Areas in the United States:
                    Subnational Findings from the National Crime Victimization
                    Survey, 2010–2015 (NCJ 252630) (third-party report) by
                    Janet L. Lauritsen, Ph.D., University of Missouri-St. Louis

      WHERE:  bjs.ojp.gov

      The Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice is the principal federal agency responsible for collecting, analyzing and disseminating reliable statistics on crime and criminal justice in the United States.  Doris J. James is the acting director.

      The Office of Justice Programs provides federal leadership, grants, training, technical assistance and other resources to improve the nation’s capacity to prevent and reduce crime, advance racial equity in the administration of justice, assist victims and enhance the rule of law.  More information about OJP and its components can be found at www.ojp.gov.

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OFFICE:  bjs.ojp.gov
CONTACT:  Tannyr Watkins at 202-532-3923 or [email protected]