The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. 

Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: 

Document Title: Temporal Variation in the Likelihood of Police 

Notification by Victims of Rapes, 1973-2000 

Author(s): Eric P. Baumer 

Document No.: 207497 

Date Received: November 2004 

Award Number: 2002-WG-BX-0001 

This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federallyfunded grant final report available electronically in addition to 

traditional paper copies. 

Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect 

the official position or policies of the U.S. 

Department of Justice. 
Temporal Variation in the Likelihood of Police Notification by Victims of Rape, 1973-2000 

National Institute of Justice 

Data Resources Program Project #2002-WG-BX-0001 

ABSTRACT 

Submitted by: 

Eric P. Baumer 

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice 

University of Missouri-St. Louis 

April 12, 2004 

Word Count: 310 

The project explored three questions: 1) Whether the overall likelihood of police 

notification by rape victims has increased between 1973-2000?; 2) Whether any observed 

increase in the likelihood of police notification during this period has been more prominent 

among incidents involving non-strangers?; and 3) Whether differences in the likelihood of police 

notification between incidents involving strangers and non-strangers have diminished 

significantly over time? These questions were addressed with data on rapes reported by women 

in the National Crime Survey (1973-1991) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (1992-

2000). 

Police notification was operationalized both as a dichotomous outcome measure (i.e., 

whether or not the police were notified) and as a polytomous outcome measure that contrasted 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
victim reporting and third party reporting, respectively, with non-reporting. The analyses 

incorporated adjustments for the complex survey designs of the NCS and NCVS. 

Binary and multinomial logit models revealed that during the 1970s and 1980s there was 

a significant increase in police notification by third parties and by victims raped by nonstrangers. During the 1990s the increase in rates of police notification in rape incidents 

accelerated and broadened in scope. In addition, differences in police notification between 

stranger and non-stranger incidents diminished during the 1970s and 1980s and, by the early 

1990s there was no significant difference. In contrast to the results observed for rape, parallel 

analyses of non-sexual assaults revealed no significant increase in the likelihood of police 

notification between 1973 and 1991, and no distinctive increases in rates of police notification 

among women assaulted by acquaintances during this period. The results obtained for nonsexual assaults for the 1990s are more consistent with those observed in the analysis of rape 

incidents. By and large, the analysis of changes in the likelihood of police notification by rape 

victims between 1973-2000 are consistent with the intended objectives and expected outcomes of 

legal reforms and cultural changes about rape. 

2

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

Temporal Variation in the Likelihood of Police Notification by Victims of Rape, 1973-2000 

Submitted by: 

Eric P. Baumer 

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice 

University of Missouri-St. Louis 

April 12, 2004 

Word Count: 3,655 

National Institute of Justice 

Data Resources Program Project #2002-WG-BX-0001 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Research Questions and Hypotheses 2 

 Methods 3-4

 Conclusions 10-14 

References 15-17 

 Results 5-9

1 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES 

Data from the National Crime Survey (NCS) and the National Crime Victimization 

Survey (NCVS) were used to explore whether the likelihood of police notification for rape has 

increased since the early 1970s. Specifically, three questions were examined: 1) Whether the 

overall likelihood of reporting by rape victims has increased between 1973-2000?; 2) Whether 

any observed increase in the likelihood of police notification during this period has been more 

prominent among (or perhaps restricted to) incidents involving non-strangers?; and 3) Whether 

differences in the likelihood of police notification between incidents involving strangers and 

non-strangers have diminished significantly over time? Given that some of the institutional and 

cultural barriers that presumably served as disincentives to police notification by rape victims 

have been diminished or removed during the past three decades, it was hypothesized that the 

likelihood of police notification in rape cases should have increased since the early 1970s. It was 

also hypothesized that increases in the likelihood of police notification since the early 1970s 

should be most pronounced among women raped by acquaintances. Increases in police 

notification may be particularly large among women raped by well-known acquaintances or 

intimate partners given the focus of legal and social reforms on broadening the definition of rape 

and reducing barriers to prosecution in such cases. Finally, and relatedly, it was expected that 

there should be a decrease in the magnitude of the effect of victim-offender relationship on 

police notification by rape victims. In particular, the gap in the likelihood of police notification 

in stranger and non-stranger rapes should have diminished since the early 1970s. 

2 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
METHODS 

The research questions were addressed with data from two periods of data collection 

from the U.S. crime victimization survey: NCS data from 1973-1991 and NCVS data from 

1992-2000. To avoid the ambiguities that can arise in analyses across the two survey periods, 

the NCS (1973-1991) and NCVS data (1992-2000) were analyzed separately. Following past 

research, the main analysis was restricted to incidents that involved a female victim and one or 

more male offenders. The sample for 1973-1991 included 1,609 rapes; the corresponding 

sample for 1992-2000 contained 636 rapes. Supplementary analyses also were performed on 

non-sexual assaults experienced by women to provide a comparative context within which to 

assess the results obtained for rape. 

Police notification served as the dependent variable in the study and was measured in two 

ways. First, to account for the possibility that the legal and social reforms that have taken place 

since the early 1970s may have altered the likelihood that victims or third parties report rape 

victimizations to the police, the analysis includes a polytomous dependent variable that contrasts 

victim reported incidents and third-party reported (e.g., another member of the household, some 

non-law enforcement official, anybody else) incidents, respectively, with non-reported incidents. 

Second, to facilitate more direct comparisons with past research, a binary dependent variable, 

police notified, also is included; this variable is coded 1 if the victim or somebody else reported 

the incident to the police and 0 for incidents in which the police were not notified. 

The primary independent variables in the analysis are the year of occurrence of the 

incident reported by the victim and the relationship between the victim and offender. Past 

research on police notification by victims of rape has focused primarily on contrasting reporting 

rates between incidents involving strangers and non-strangers. Consistent with this past practice, 

3 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
analyses are presented in which victim-offender relationship is measured as a dichotomous 

variable that contrasts incidents in which the victim identified the offender as a non-stranger with 

those in which involved an offender who was a stranger. In addition, the effects of more detailed 

relationship variables also were considered in this study. Specifically, a series of dichotomous 

variables were constructed that distinguish incidents in which the offender was identified as 

somebody with whom the victim was acquainted by sight only, was a causal acquaintance, a 

well-known acquaintance, a spouse or ex-spouse, or other family member. 

The regression models estimated included several control variables, including measures 

of respondents’ socioeconomic status, as well as other victim, offender, and incident 

characteristics that may be related both to the nature of rape and to the likelihood that victims 

notify the police. The analysis also controls for changes in forms of interviewing used in the 

NCS and NCVS, contrasting personal interviews with computer assisted phone interviews and 

traditional phone interviews. 

Logistic regression was used to estimate effects on the dichotomous measure of police 

notification and multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate effects on the polytomous 

measure of police notification. The analyses incorporate the currently best available methods of 

accounting for design effects in the NCS and NCVS. For the 1992-2000 redesigned data, survey 

regression models were estimated that directly incorporate NCVS strata and PSU variables and 

adjust for design effects. For the 1973-1991 period, all standard errors obtained in regressions 

using a standard model-based approach were multiplied by the covariate-specific design effects 

observed in survey regression models based on 1987-1991 NCS data. 

4 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
RESULTS 

Slightly more than one-half of the rapes disclosed to NCS interviewers between 1973 and 

1991 were reported to the police. Of those, more than two-thirds were reported directly by 

victims. Approximately 51 percent of these rapes involved offenders who were known to the 

victim; one-quarter were either well-known acquaintances or family members. The descriptive 

results for the 1992-2000 NCVS sample show that rates of police notification are much lower in 

the redesigned NCVS. Less than one-third (29.6 percent) of the 636 rapes recorded in the NCVS 

during the period were reported to the police, with 19 percent of the recorded incidents reported 

to the police directly by victims. There also is a substantial difference between the two samples 

in terms of victim-offender relationship—more than 80 percent (84.3 percent) of the rapes 

reported during the 1990s were committed by somebody with whom the victim was acquainted, 

and slightly more than half were perpetrated by somebody well-known or related to the victim. 

It is clear from these results that the probing questions and other changes (e.g., greater use of 

CATI) in the redesigned survey produce a sample of incidents that are quite different from the 

NCS in terms of relationship (i.e., more acquaintance rapes), potential for injury and death (i.e., a 

lower prevalence of gun use, other injury, and force), and police notification, and that the two 

time periods should be analyzed separately. 

The regression results indicate that the overall likelihood of police notification increased 

significantly between 1973 and 1991, net of changes in the types of victims, offenders, and 

characteristics of these incidents. Multinomial logit results for this period indicate that this 

increase was primarily due to changes in the likelihood of police notification by third-parties; 

there was no comparable increase in reporting directly by victims during this period. The 

likelihood of police notification in rape incidents increased significantly during the 1990s. The 

5 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
magnitude of this increase is larger than observed for the earlier period, however, unlike the 

earlier period, the multinomial logit analysis reveals that in the 1990s the likelihood of police 

notification increased both among victims and third parties, though the increase observed for 

third parties was not quite statistically significant. 

With respect to whether there are significant effects of victim-offender relationship on 

police notification during the two periods examined in the study, the results indicate that during 

the 1970s and 1980s rapes by non-strangers were significantly less likely to be reported than 

those committed by strangers; the effect on third-party reporting is somewhat stronger than the 

effect on victim reporting. The more detailed analyses of relationship categories for the 1973-

1991 period reveals a general reluctance to notify the police when the victim and offender know 

each other; however, not all effects are statistically significant. In addition, the effects of at least 

two victim-offender relationships are much stronger for third party than victim reporting: third 

parties are particularly unlikely to report incidents involving intimates and sight-only 

acquaintances. The findings for the 1990s are consistent with conclusions from prior research, 

showing that victim-offender relationship does not affect the likelihood of police notification 

during this period, net of other factors. 

A more formal analysis of changes in police notification across relationship categories 

reveals that from 1973-1991 changes in victim reporting of rapes by non-strangers were greater 

than changes in victim reporting in rapes by strangers. Thus, although there is a significant 

difference overall in the likelihood of police notification in stranger and non-stranger rape cases 

during the 1970s and 1980s, this difference diminished significantly during the period. Increases 

in the likelihood of victim reporting for rapes committed by husbands and ex-husbands during 

this period were larger than those observed for other types of incidents, including stranger 

6 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
incidents, for which police notification did not increase significantly. The larger relative 

increase in reporting in spousal rape cases is partly responsible for the overall relative increase in 

reporting for non-stranger rapes during the 1970s and 1980s. For the 1990s, changes over time 

in the likelihood of police notification did not differ by victim-offender relationship and, 

consequently, differences in the likelihood of reporting between strangers and non-strangers did 

not change significantly during this period. 

In summary, the probability of police notification in non-stranger rapes increased at a 

greater pace than stranger rapes during the 1970s and 1980s and, consequently, the difference in 

the likelihood of reporting between stranger and non-stranger incidents by the early 1990s was 

quite small. Consistent with this pattern, the NCVS data from the 1990s reveal trends in police 

notification that are quite similar for stranger and non-stranger rapes; the likelihood of police 

notification among women raped by both strangers and non-strangers has increased considerably 

during the 1990s, and the gap in reporting between stranger and non-stranger incidents is 

relatively small throughout the period 

Although not listed as an objective in the original proposal, to better understand the 

context of the findings presented for rape, a supplementary analysis was conducted for other 

(non-sexual) assaults experienced by women and reported in the NCS and NCVS between 1973-

2000. Assessments about the forces that may have driven changes in police notification by rape 

victims may be confounded by other factors (e.g., declines in social capital, which could have 

stimulated broader increases in police notification) that may have influenced reporting during 

this period; comparing the results obtained for rape with other offenses may help to shed further 

light on the matter. 

The samples for the supplementary analyses included 14,724 non-sexual assaults reported 

7 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
by females in the NCS (1973-1991) and 6,519 non-sexual assaults reported by females in the 

NCVS (1992-2000). The measures and methods used for this analysis parallel exactly those 

described above for rape incidents. 

In contrast with the results observed for rape, the supplementary analysis of other assaults 

revealed that the likelihood of police notification (by victims, third parties, or overall) did not 

increase significantly between 1973 and 1991, net of changes in the types of victims, offenders, 

and characteristics of these incidents. The results for the 1990s were more consistent with those 

observed in the analysis of rape incidents. As shown in Model 3, between 1992 and 2000 the 

likelihood of police notification among female victims of non-sexual assault increased 

significantly (b=.061, p < .05). The magnitude of this increase was smaller than that observed 

for rape, however, like the pattern shown for rape, the magnitude of observed changes in the 

likelihood of police notification by female victims of other assaults was similar among both 

victims and third parties to these incidents. Also similar to the results presented for rape, 

changes over time in the likelihood of police notification for non-sexual assaults during the 

1990s did not differ by victim-offender relationship, nor did differences in the likelihood of 

reporting between strangers and non-strangers change significantly during this period. 

In summary, the temporal patterns in police notification by non-sexual assault victims 

during the 1970s and 1980s diverge from the patterns found for rape incidents. Whereas a 

significant increase in the likelihood of police notification overall was observed for rape 

incidents during this period, this was not the case for other assaults. Further, unlike the findings 

for rape, the likelihood of police notification by females assaulted by non-strangers did not 

increase significantly during the 1970s and 1980s. A different story emerges in the 1990s. The 

NCVS data reveal patterns of police notification that are more similar across crime types – the 

8 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
likelihood of police notification increased significantly during the 1990s both among female 

victims of rape and female victims of other types of assaults. 

9 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
CONCLUSIONS 

The findings are consistent with the univariate and bivariate analyses of studies based on 

aggregate data that show an upward trend from 1973 to the mid-1980s in police notification in 

non-stranger rapes (Orcutt and Faison, 1988; Jenson and Karpos, 1993). The present study 

shows that this trend continued through the early 1990s. However, contrary to some prior 

research (Jenson and Karpos, 1993), the present research also reveals a significant increase in the 

likelihood of police notification overall after controlling for other factors. The results also bear 

on a debate that emerged in the literature during the mid-1990s about whether victim-offender 

relationship remains an important predictor of the likelihood of police notification by rape 

victims (see Bachman, 1993, 1995; Pollard, 1995; Ruback, 1993). Consistent with Bachman’s 

(1993, 1998) research on rape cases and with recent research on non-sexual assaults (Felson et 

al., 1999), the study suggests that in the 199s women are just as likely to report to the police 

rapes by people they know as they are to report rapes by strangers. Comparisons of coefficients 

from the 1990s with the earlier period suggests that the divergence in findings regarding the 

effects of non-stranger relationship on police notification across the two periods might have 

arisen because women raped by acquaintances (i.e., those known well, casually, or by sight only) 

are no longer significantly less likely to notify the police than are women raped by strangers. 

One interpretation of the results presented for rape is that they reflect broader trends in 

police notification of violent crime between 1973-2000. For instance, levels of social capital 

have declined significantly during the past three decades in the U.S. (e.g., Putnam 2000), and it is 

plausible that, confronted with fewer informal mechanisms in the aftermath of a crime, crime 

victims overall became more likely to enlist the help of the police during this period. However, 

the supplementary analyses of non-sexual assaults suggest that the changes in police notification 

10 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
observed among rape victims were unique, at least during the 1970s and 1980s. The results for 

rape for this period are consistent with the intended objectives and expected outcomes of legal 

reforms and cultural changes about rape. Much of the early rape reform movement focused on 

broadening the legal definition and public perception of rape to include incidents committed by 

acquaintances, which are most likely to elicit controversy over definitions. Consistent with those 

efforts, the analysis showed a significantly larger increase in police notification for non-stranger 

rapes only during the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, police notification of rapes but not other 

types of assaults committed by spouses were particularly likely to increase during this period. 

This pattern may be due to publicity and changing attitudes toward marital rape and violence. 

The passage of laws in various states regarding spousal rape occurred in the 1980s (Allison and 

Wrighsman, 1993), and mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence were instituted in the 1980s 

and early 1990s (Bachman, 1995). 

Legal, social, and political efforts to alter the way Americans define and respond to rape 

intensified in the latter part of the 1980s and during the 1990s (Campbell, 1998; Campbell and 

Ahrens, 1998; Epstein and Langenbahn, 1994; Iovanni and Miller, 2001; Ledray, 2001; Little, 

2001; Valente et al., 2001). Consistent with this expanded scope, the analysis indicates that 

increases in police notification have broadened over time. During the 1970s and 1980s the 

increases were primarily due to changes in reporting by third parties and in victim reporting of 

rapes committed by non-strangers, but during the 1990s increases occurred both among third 

parties and victims and in rapes by non-strangers and strangers. Although the increases among 

third parties were not statistically significant, they were relatively large and comparable to the 

significant increases observed among victims. This pattern is consistent with the increase in the 

scope of the rape reform movement and other social changes that have occurred during the past 

11 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
30 years. Moreover, the expansion of legal reforms in the 1990s that have focused more 

generally on violence against women may help to explain why similar temporal patterns were 

observed for rapes and non-sexual assaults during this period. 

Finally, in the 1990s the findings for rape and non-sexual assaults reveal little consistent 

evidence that the police are less likely to be notified by rape victims when the offender is known 

to the victim. This pattern seems surprising given discussions of privacy, fear of reprisal, and 

other factors that scholars have suggested inhibit reporting when the offender is a family member 

or friend. However, recent research suggests that researchers have ignored the possibility that 

there are also greater incentives for reporting assaults when victims know the offender (Felson et 

al., 1999; Felson et al., 2002). For example, victims often call the police in order to gain 

protection from future attack, and this incentive is much greater when they know the offender; 

strangers are unlikely to be seen again. These factors apparently counteract the inhibitory 

factors, producing no victim-offender effect on reporting. 

In sum, with respect to the key issues addressed in the project, the results indicate a 

significant increase during the 1970s and 1980s in the likelihood of police notification by female 

rape victims; the increase was greater among third-party reporting, and among women raped by 

non-strangers, which resulted in a declining significance of differences in reporting between 

strangers and non-strangers over time. These changes coincided with the large-scale media and 

social campaigns that occurred during this period and that focused the public’s attention stigma 

on the issue of these “hidden” rapes. During the 1990s, the scope and momentum of these 

campaigns appear to have accelerated, translating into increases in police notification among 

both victims and third parties, and in both stranger and non-stranger rapes. 

Although the project did not formally evaluate criminal justice operations or policies, the 

12 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
results provide the first definitive evidence on temporal patterns in the likelihood of police 

notification among rape victims, and this evidence can be used to indirectly assess the efficacy of 

practices designed to affect women’s reporting behaviors and to highlight potentially fruitful 

avenues of future research that could do so more directly. The temporal patterns of police 

notification presented for rape are suggestive that the substantial legal reforms and the growth in 

legal and non-legal services available to rape victims have been influential in elevating the 

likelihood that women notify the police when they are raped. The results also support the claim 

that the expansion of prevention and response efforts to encompass in a more coordinated 

fashion criminal justice, medical, and community resources during the past decade has been 

particularly influential, with the likelihood of police notification in rape incidents increasing 

nearly two-fold during this period. Thus, the results of this study point in favor of recent policy 

practices geared toward increasing police notification. Nonetheless, the most recent data 

presented above indicate that a majority of rape victims still do not report their attacks to the 

police, so the research also points to a need for further efforts aimed at encouraging and assisting 

rape victims in contacting the police to help initiate legal proceedings. 

Further research is needed to more precisely identify the types of practices that might best 

facilitate additional increases in police notification among rape victims. Although the present 

study was well-suited for identifying whether the likelihood of police notification has changed, 

the type of analyses presented herein are not capable of isolating which specific policies or 

practices affected the observed changes, nor does a set of policies that might help continue those 

changes emerge from the study. Future large-scale studies of police notification could provide 

more detailed information for policy by capturing jurisdictional differences in legal statutes and 

procedures, social norms, and victim perceptions. Such a multilevel, longitudinal analysis is 

13 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
feasible with the area-identified NCS and NCVS data, and if pursued should capitalize not only 

on the collection of policy relevant external data that can be merged to the NCVS, but also on the 

inherent panel structure of the NCVS. The present study relied on repeated cross-sectional data, 

an approach that does not allow for a direct examination of changes in police notification within 

persons over time or for an examination of the effects of changes in survey administration such 

as time in sample and the prevalence of unbounded interviews. Capitalizing on the panel 

structure of the NCVS in future investigations of police notification could provide valuable 

policy insights, especially if combined with data on temporal or jurisdictional difference in 

existing policy approaches and social conditions. Doing so, however, would be a substantial and 

expensive undertaking and would require support from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau 

of Justice Statistics in addition to one or more funding agencies. Retrospective ethnographic 

studies of rape victims from different jurisdictions also would provide beneficial data for 

criminal justice policymakers if the design could incorporate sufficient differences in the legal, 

social, service, and family environments to which rape victims are exposed. Finally, it would be 

useful to implement new policies aimed at increasing police notification among rape victims and 

field more concentrated victimization surveys in these (and matched, control) jurisdictions before 

and after implementation to determine whether police notification is greater or increasing at a 

faster pace in areas with particular types of programs and policies. These types of studies would 

help illuminate ways in which to increase police notification, which in turn may increase the 

likelihood of arrest and prosecution and, ultimately, the deterrent efficacy of the criminal justice 

system. 

14 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
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Allison, Julie A. and Lawrence S. Wrightsman 

1993 Rape: The Misunderstood Crime. Newbury Park: Sage. 

Bachman, Ronet 

1998 The factors related to rape reporting behavior and arrest: New evidence 

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Bachman, Ronet 

1993 Predicting the reporting of rape victimizations: Have reforms made a difference? 

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Campbell, Rebecca 

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Campbell, Rebecca and C. E. Ahrens 

1998 Innovative community services for rape victims: An application of multiple case 

15 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
study methodology. American Journal of Community Psychology 26:537-571. 

Espstein, Joel, and Stacia Langenbahn 

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Edleson, and Raquel Kennedy Bergen. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 

16 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Little, Kristin 

2001 Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Programs: Improving the Community 

Response to Sexual Assault Victims. Washington, D.C.:U.S. Department of 

Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office for Victims of Crime. 

Pollard, Paul 

1995 Rape reporting as a function of victim-offender relationship: A critique of the lack 

of effect reported by Bachman (1993). Criminal Justice and Behavior 22:74-80. 

Valente, Roberta L., Barbara J. Hart, Seema Zeya, and Mary Malefyt 

2001 The Violence Against Women Act of 1994: The federal commitment to ending 

 domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and gender-based crimes of violence. 

Pp. 279-302 in Sourcebook on Violence Against Women, edited by Claire M. 

Renzetti, Jeffrey L. Edleson, and Raquel Kennedy Bergen. Thousand Oaks, CA: 

Sage. 

17 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
TECHNICAL REPORT 

Temporal Variation in the Likelihood of Police Notification by Victims of Rape, 1973-2000 

Submitted by: 

Eric P. Baumer 

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice 

University of Missouri-St. Louis 

April 12, 2004 

Word Count: 17,091 

National Institute of Justice 

Data Resources Program Project #2002-WG-BX-0001 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES 2-8 

 LITERATURE REVIEW 9-13 

METHODOLOGY 14-25 

 RESULTS 26-36

 CONCLUSIONS 37-43 

 ENDNOTES 44-48

 REFERENCES 49-63 

1 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
I. PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES 

Introduction 

The main objective of this project was to examine whether female rape victims have 

become more likely to report their victimizations to the police during the past three decades. It is 

well-known that many victims do not report violent victimizations to the police (e.g., Hindelang, 

1976; Kilpatrick et al., 1992; Laub, 1997; Skogan, 1984). While these victims sometimes seek 

assistance from victim service organizations that are not affiliated with law enforcement (e.g., 

Campbell and Martin, 2001; Coulter et al., 1999; Jensen and Karpos, 1993; Sullivan and Gillum, 

2001), opting not to contact the police could limit the extent to which they have access to 

important ameliorative resources, especially victim support services that rely on police referrals 

for securing access to clients (Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 1988; Skogan, 1977). In addition, 

the decision not to notify the police effectively eliminates the possibility that the perpetrator can 

be arrested for the attack and may undermine the general deterrent function of the criminal 

justice system (Bachman, 1998; Skogan, 1984). It is therefore important to identify the factors 

and situations that inhibit or facilitate police notification. 

Concern about low rates of reporting violence to the police is perhaps most pervasive for 

sex offenses, which historically have been characterized by exceptionally low rates of police 

notification. These crimes, which often occur “behind closed doors,” are believed to be hidden 

from authorities for a variety of reasons. Those most often cited are ambiguity about what 

constitutes illicit sexual conduct (Burt and Estep, 1981; DeKeseredy and Schwartz, 2001; Gavey, 

1999; Russell, 1982; Wilson et al., 1983), the victim’s fear of reprisal from the offender (Amir, 

1971; MacDonald, 1971; Singer, 1988), the victim’s feelings of embarrassment and stigma 

(Bachman and Taylor, 1994), and perceptions by victims that they will not be believed or that the 

2 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
criminal justice system is largely ineffective at responding to or preventing such incidents 

(Feldman-Summers and Ashworth, 1981; LaFree, 1980). 

Theoretical discussions emphasize that most of these factors are especially likely to 

discourage crime reporting when the offender is somebody they know (e.g., Black, 1976; Dobash 

and Dobash, 1992; Hanmer et al., 1989; Horowitz, 1990; MacKinnon, 1983; Wiehe and 

Richards, 1995). As Williams (1984:460) notes, “the fact that a woman knows her rapist may 

encourage her to blame herself. She may feel that she ‘led him on’ and was not really raped, and 

that consequently there is no crime to report. Even when a woman identifies herself as a rape 

victim, she may fear that others will not believe she was raped if she knew the man” (see also 

Wiehe and Richards, 1995:30). Given these disincentives to reporting, it is perhaps not 

surprising that initial studies of police notification—conducted with data collected during the 

early 1970s—revealed that not only were rates of police notification by rape victims quite low 

compared to other crimes (e.g., Dukes and Mattley, 1977; Hawkins, 1973; Hindelang and Davis, 

1977; Hindelang and Gottfredson, 1976), but also that incidents involving acquaintances were 

especially unlikely to be reported (Hindelang and Gottfredson, 1976; Lizotte, 1985; Williams, 

1984). 

Much has changed since the early 1970s. As elaborated below, a variety of legal, 

political, and cultural reforms were initiated in the 1970s directed, in part, at reducing the 

barriers to police notification perceived by women who had been sexually assaulted (Berger et 

al., 1988; Epstein and Langenbahn, 1994; Rose, 1977; Spohn and Horney, 1992). There is some 

speculation in the literature that these reforms have increased the likelihood of police notification 

by victims sexual assault, especially among those attacked by somebody they know (e.g., 

Bachman, 1993; Orcutt and Faison, 1988), and that they have served to reduce disparities in 

3 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
reporting between stranger and non-stranger incidents (Bachman, 1993, 1998). However, 

although past research has extensively examined the influence of these reforms on changes in the 

criminal justice processing (e.g., Bachman and Smith, 1994; Berger et al., 1994; Bienen, 1980; 

Caringella-MacDonald, 1984; Galvin, 1985; Horney and Spohn, 1991; Largen, 1988; Loh, 1980; 

Marsh et al., 1982), there is not much research on whether the likelihood of police notification 

increased in a manner consistent with the goals of the rape reform movement. This is somewhat 

surprising given that much of the reform movement focused on encouraging victims of rape to 

initiate formal legal proceedings, and that police notification arguably is an important step in 

doing so. 

In this project, data from the National Crime Survey (NCS) and the National Crime 

Victimization Survey (NCVS) were used to explore whether the likelihood of police notification 

by rape victims has increased since the early 1970s. The study examined whether the overall 

probability of reporting by rape victims increased during this period, whether any observed 

increase in the likelihood of police notification has been more prominent among (or perhaps 

restricted to) incidents involving acquaintances, and whether differences in the likelihood of 

reporting between incidents involving strangers and acquaintances have diminished significantly 

over time. In addition, although not a part of the project originally, a parallel analysis was 

conducted on police notification among female victims of other types of assaults. The potential 

utility of this expanded scope for further illuminating the meaning of patterns of police 

notification observed for rape became evident as the project unfolded. 

In the pages that follow, the specific hypotheses examined with respect to changes in the 

likelihood of police notification by victims of rape during the past three decades are outlined and 

the existing literature on police notification trends is reviewed. I then discuss the data and 

4 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
methods used to address the study hypotheses, including modifications to the proposed plan of 

research, present the key project findings, and highlight the main conclusions of the study. 

Hypotheses 

There were a variety of disincentives to police notification by victims of rape during the 

early 1970s. The legal statutes in most states included a relatively narrow definition of rape, 

required that the incident be reported promptly and be corroborated by a third party, and required 

that the victim demonstrate that she physically resisted the attack (Bachman, 1998). Moreover, 

the rules of evidence in many jurisdictions permitted the introduction at trial of information 

about the victim’s character, reputation, and prior behavior, which often were used by defense 

attorneys in efforts to discredit the victim’s testimony (Berger et al., 1988; Estrich, 1987; 

Holmstrom and Burgess, 1983; Horney and Spohn, 1991). Challenges to the victim’s credibility 

and disputes over what behavior constitutes rape were particularly common for offenses 

involving people who knew each other (Bryden and Lengnick, 1997). Thus, the social and legal 

climate of the early 1970s, coupled with public perceptions of a low probability of arrest, 

prosecution, and conviction in rape cases, were believed to discourage police notification by 

victims, especially those raped by acquaintances or intimates (e.g., Bachar and Koss, 2001; Weis 

and Borges, 1973; Williams, 1984). 

Sparked by these concerns and the issue of civil rights more generally, an anti-rape 

reform movement emerged in the 1970s (Campbell and Martin, 2001). While the objectives of 

the groups involved in this movement were diverse (Spohn and Horney, 1992), two key aims 

were to increase social awareness of rape and other forms of sexual assault as serious social 

problems that often was perpetrated by acquaintances and intimates, and to lobby for reform of 

5 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
laws that were viewed as antiquated and unjust. Accomplishing these goals was believed to be 

critical for improving the treatment of victims in the criminal justice system, increasing victim 

confidence in the criminal justice processing of rape cases, and increasing rates of police 

notification (Berger et al., 1988). Many of the legal reforms were designed to improve the 

prosecution’s chances in acquaintance rape cases and to lessen the ordeal for the victim (Bryden 

and Lengnick, 1997). 

The rape reform movement was highly successful in motivating change in the legal 

system. As Horney and Spohn (1991) note, the efforts of numerous grassroots women’s groups 

have resulted in substantial reform in rape laws in all fifty U.S. states. The nature of the reforms 

implemented vary across jurisdictions, but they typically encompass a major expansion in the 

types of behaviors considered “rape,” which now include sexual acts other than intercourse and 

various types of sexual assault by spouses, the elimination of “proof of resistance” and 

“corroboration” requirements, restrictions on the admissibility of evidence pertaining to the 

victim’s past sexual history, and increases in the severity of punishment meted out to persons 

convicted of sex offenses (Bachman, 1998; Berger et al., 1988; Horney and Spohn, 1991; Spohn 

and Horney, 1992). 

The anti-rape movement also was instrumental in the substantial growth of community 

resources available to victims of rape (Campbell and Martin, 2001). The number of rape crisis 

centers in the U.S. increased from less than 100 during the early 1970s to more than 1,200 in the 

late 1990s (Campbell and Martin, 2001; Jensen and Karpos, 1993). These centers assist victims 

in coping both with the immediate distress and the aftermath of their victimization. An 

important function of these centers is making available legal advocates, who assist victims in 

reporting rapes to the police and in navigating through the remainder of the legal process. 

6 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Campbell and Martin (2001:231) suggest that rape crisis center legal advocates help to make the 

“long and complicated process of reporting and prosecuting a rape” more bearable. 

Many of these social and legal changes were initiated and implemented during the 1970s 

and 1980s; however, a variety of subsequent initiatives surfaced during the 1990s as well. These 

include additional legal reforms that have focused more generally on violence against women, 

public relations campaigns that have concentrated on the means by which to prevent and respond 

to rapes and sexual assaults by “dates” and other acquaintances, the development of sexual 

assault nurse examiner (SANE) programs, and the expansion of prevention and response efforts 

to encompass in a more coordinated fashion criminal justice, medical, and community resources 

(Campbell, 1998; Campbell and Ahrens, 1998; Epstein and Langenbahn, 1994; Iovanni and 

Miller, 2001; Ledray, 2001; Little, 2001; Renzetti et al., 2001; Valente et al., 2001; Wiehe and 

Richards, 1995). 

In short, some of the institutional and cultural barriers that presumably served as 

disincentives to police notification by rape victims have been diminished or removed during the 

past three decades. These changes have stimulated much speculation in the literature about 

temporal change in the likelihood of police notification among rape victims. Three hypotheses 

have emerged as particularly prominent (e.g., Bachman, 1993, 1998; Berger et al., 1988; Jensen 

and Karpos, 1993; Orcutt and Faison, 1988; Pollard, 1995; Ruback, 1993). First, the legal 

reforms and social change in attitudes described above should have increased the likelihood of 

police notification in rape cases since the early 1970s. Although not discussed explicitly in the 

literature, these increases may have occurred because victims, or third parties (e.g., friends or 

family, legal advocates), or both, are more likely to notify the police. Third parties may have 

become more willing to report rape victimizations they know about to the police or perhaps they 

7 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
have become more likely to learn about these incidents if victims confide in them more often 

(e.g., Campbell and Martin, 2001; Ruback et al., 1984; Ruback, 1994). Second, increases in the 

likelihood of police notification since the early 1970s should be most pronounced among women 

raped by acquaintances. Increases in police notification may be particularly large among women 

raped by well-known acquaintances or intimate partners given the focus of legal and social 

reforms on broadening the definition of rape and reducing barriers to prosecution in such cases. 

Third, and relatedly, there should be a decrease in the magnitude of the effect of victim-offender 

relationship on police notification by rape victims. In particular, the gap in the likelihood of 

police notification in stranger and non-stranger rapes should have diminished since the early 

1970s. Each of these hypotheses was examined in the present project. 

8 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW 

The hypotheses outlined above have not been addressed fully in prior research. With 

respect to whether the likelihood of police notification by rape victims has increased since the 

early 1970s, most prior research has consisted of univariate or bivariate analyses. An exception 

is Spohn and Horney (1992), who analyze changes in UCR rape rates from 1970-1984 across six 

cities that varied in terms of whether they had instituted relatively strong or weak legal reforms 

(see also Horney and Spohn, 1991). They find an increase in rape rates in only two of the cities, 

one that had introduced especially strong reforms and the other that had introduced much weaker 

reforms. The authors suggest that these increases in rape offense rates were probably due to 

increased publicity associated with the legal changes rather than their substantive content (see 

also Bryden and Lengnick, 1997; Marsh et al., 1982). However, it is not clear from their 

research whether observed changes in UCR rape rates were due to changes in the likelihood of 

police notification by victims, changes in police recording practices, changes in the actual 

incidence of rape, or some combination of these forces. 

Most research directed at temporal patterns in rates of police notification has relied on 

univariate or bivariate analyses of aggregate national-level time-series data from the NCS (e.g., 

Bachman, 1995; Jensen and Karpos, 1993; Orcutt and Faison, 1988; Ruback, 1993). Figure 1, 

which shows rates of police notification among rape victims from the NCS from 1973-1991, 

illustrates the type of data on which these studies are based.1

 As Bachman (1995) observes, 

visual inspection of these data suggests that rates of police notification among rape victims 

fluctuated during the 1970s and 1980s but generally increased, especially among women raped 

by non-strangers (see also Orcutt and Faison, 1988; Jensen and Karpos, 1993). 

Figure 1 about here 

9 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Orcutt and Faison (1988) and Jensen and Karpos (1993) apply more formal statistical 

tests to these aggregate time-series data. The conclusions drawn from these studies are 

somewhat dependent on the time period examined, but generally point to two conclusions: 1) 

rates of police notification in non-stranger rapes have increased significantly, albeit slightly, 

between the early 1970s and 1990; and 2) there has been no significant increase in rates of police 

notification overall, or among women raped by strangers. 

Although suggestive, the findings based on aggregate time-series data on police 

notification are open to alternative interpretations. Changes in aggregate rates of police 

notification may merely reflect differences in the types of rapes experienced by women in 

different years, rather than changes in the willingness of victims of similar incidents to report to 

the police. 

Figure 2 about here 

To illustrate this point further, Figure 2 presents data from the NCS on changes in two 

factors—completion and offender weapon use—that may complicate the interpretation of 

aggregate data on police notification. As the figure reveals, according to the NCS data the 

percentage of non-stranger rapes in the U.S. that are completed increased significantly during the 

1970s and 1980s (b=.650, t=9.34). Since completed rapes are more likely to be reported than 

attempted rapes (e.g., Bachman, 1993), the increase in police notification of non-stranger rapes 

reported for this period in studies of aggregate trends may simply reflect the increase in 

completion rates. Figure 2 also reveals that between 1973 and 1991 there was a significant 

decline in the prevalence of offender weapon use in rapes reported in the NCS (b=-1.01, t=-

5.02).2

 Offender weapon use is a strong predictor of police notification (Lizotte, 1985); 

therefore, failure to adjust for this factor could suppress an increase in the likelihood of police 

10 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
notification. This may be why the aggregate data indicate no significant increase in rates of 

police notification overall or for stranger-rapes during this period.3 

In short, analyses of trends in police notification that do not take into account changes in 

the characteristics of incidents and victims are ambiguous because changes in the willingness to 

notify the police may be confounded with changes in the nature of the crimes committed 

(Gartner and Macmillan, 1995). A comprehensive analysis of changes in police notification 

requires a multivariate research design in which “time” effects are modeled while simultaneously 

controlling for other factors (see also Pollard, 1995; Ruback, 1993). This is the strategy used in 

the present research. 

With respect to the question of whether the gap in the likelihood of police notification 

between stranger and non-stranger rapes has diminished, the existing empirical evidence also is 

ambiguous. There is some speculation that this gap has diminished over time. Cross-sectional 

research using data from the 1970s and early 1980s indicates that rapes committed by nonstrangers were significantly less likely than those committed by strangers to be reported to the 

police (Dukes and Mattley, 1977; Feldman-Summers and Ashworth, 1981; Greenberg and 

Ruback, 1992; Lizotte, 1985; Williams, 1984). In contrast, subsequent cross-sectional research 

by Bachman (1993) using data from the late 1980s and early 1990s finds no significant 

difference, a pattern consistent with the apparent convergence in rates of police notification in 

stranger and non-stranger rapes revealed in aggregate time-series data (Figure 1; see also 

Bachman, 1995). 

Bachman (1993:265-66) speculates that the divergence of her findings from past work 

may reflect an increasing willingness on the part of women raped by acquaintances to notify the 

police, which she attributes primarily to rape reform legislation and media attention that “helped 

11 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
sensitize the public to these issues and to educate society to the fact that rape is rape regardless of 

the victim/offender relationship.” While plausible, critics have raised questions about whether 

the sample upon which Bachman’s (1993) findings are based provides adequate statistical power 

to detect significant differences in police notification between strangers and non-strangers, and 

whether the adjustment she makes for NCVS design effects produces statistical tests that are too 

conservative (Pollard, 1995; Ruback, 1993). Perhaps more importantly, these critics point out 

that the cross-sectional analyses presented by Bachman (1993) are not directly relevant to the 

issue of whether the effect of victim-offender relationship on police notification has changed 

over time. 

Although not formally addressed in the literature, similar critiques could be leveled at 

Bachman’s more recent research on rape and sexual assault reporting. Using data from the 1992-

1994 redesigned NCVS, Bachman (1998) reports that women raped or sexually assaulted by 

acquaintances are just as likely to notify the police as women victimized by strangers. When 

compared to results from the mid-1970s and early 1980s, Bachman’s (1998) findings suggest 

that differences in reporting in stranger and non-stranger rapes and sexual assaults have 

decreased since the implementation of rape reforms. However, Bachman (1998) does not 

present a formal test of whether the effect of victim-offender relationship varies across time; 

thus, a definitive conclusion on the matter cannot be drawn from her study. 

The present research goes beyond prior studies in four ways. First, the study evaluates 

formally whether the likelihood of police notification among rape victims has increased over 

time, net of changes in other factors. In addition to reconsidering the conclusions drawn in prior 

studies of changes in reporting during the 1970s and 1980s, the analysis examines whether the 

likelihood of police notification by rape victims has changed during the 1990s. Second, the 

12 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
project examines whether any observed change in the likelihood of police notification in rape 

cases during the past three decades is due to changes in victims reporting directly to the police or 

reporting by third parties. Third, the research examines whether the effect of victim-offender 

relationship on the likelihood of police notification has changed over time. Bachman’s (1993, 

1998) research is suggestive of a “declining gap” in the likelihood of police notification in 

stranger and non-stranger rape cases, but past studies have not addressed this issue directly. 

Finally, the present study employs a much more detailed conceptualization of “non-stranger” 

rapes and sexual assaults than has been used in past research. The available research on whether 

victim-offender relationship affects reporting has focused on relatively crude comparisons 

between stranger and non-stranger victimizations. As elaborated below, the present research 

examines not only the degree to which the relative likelihood of reporting has changed over time 

in stranger and non-stranger incidents, but also whether the likelihood of police notification has 

changed among those sexually victimized by a spouse or ex-spouse, other family member, wellknown acquaintance, casual acquaintance, or somebody known only by sight. Although the rape 

reform movement was broad in scope, a particularly important emphasis has been placed on 

increasing awareness of sexual offenses committed by intimates and other close acquaintances. 

Thus, it may be that the legal and social changes outlined above have altered the likelihood of 

police notification more among women raped by intimate partners or well-known acquaintances 

than among those raped by other types of non-strangers. 

13 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
III. METHODOLOGY 

Data 

The empirical questions outlined above are addressed with repeated cross-sectional data 

from two periods of data collection from the U.S. crime victimization survey: NCS data from 

1973-1991 and NCVS data from 1992-2000. These surveys collect data on whether persons and 

households have experienced a criminal victimization during the previous six months. For each 

victimization reported, respondents are asked detailed questions about the crime, including 

whether the incident was reported to the police. 

There was a major revision to the national crime survey beginning in 1992 in the 

questions used to elicit reports about rapes and other sexual assault (Bachman and Taylor, 1994). 

As Bachman and Taylor (1994:506) explain, prior to the 1992 redesign, respondents were not 

specifically asked if they had experienced a rape. Instead, incidents of rape were recorded in the 

NCS only if a respondent answered positively to general questions regarding an attack, attempted 

attack, or threat of attack and subsequently self-reported the incident as a rape or attempted rape 

or, in situations where the victim was reluctant to describe the nature of her victimization, 

interviewers read responses that included “rape,” “tried to rape,” and “verbal threat of rape.” 

The measurement of rape in the NCVS after the redesign is much more direct. 

Specifically, in the redesigned survey the respondent is first told that “incidents involving forced 

or unwanted sexual acts are often difficult to talk about” and then asked whether she or he has 

“been forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity by (a) Someone you didn’t know 

before, (b) A casual acquaintance, or (c) Someone you know well?” If the respondent replies 

“yes” to any of these questions, the interviewer asks questions designed to clarify the nature of 

14 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
the unwanted sexual conduct, such as whether the activity involved sexual intercourse, and in 

situations where there is some confusion over the meaning of rape a formal definition is read to 

the respondent (Bachman and Taylor, 1994). Based on these questions, the incident is 

categorized into one of several detailed types of sexual victimization, ranging from a verbal 

threat of sexual assault to a completed rape. 

The redesign has led to a substantial increase in the number of sexual victimizations 

detected in the NCVS that apparently were not reported as crimes by persons interviewed in the 

earlier period (i.e., in the NCS), and there is some speculation that these incidents are less likely 

than others to be reported to the police (Bachman and Taylor, 1994). Thus, any change in the 

likelihood of police notification by victims of rape before and after the implementation of the 

redesigned survey may reflect change in the types of incidents covered by the survey. Although 

techniques have been proposed for adjusting NCS data to match NCVS design features and to 

facilitate long-term analysis of victimization trends, these procedures produce estimates of 

questionable validity and reliability for relatively rare forms of violence (at least in terms of NCS 

sample sizes) such as rape (see Rand et al., 1997:5). To avoid the ambiguities that can arise in 

analyses across the two survey periods, the NCS (1973-1991) and NCVS data (1992-2000) are 

analyzed separately.4

 Following past research, the main analysis is restricted to incidents that 

involved a female victim and one or more male offenders (see also Bachman, 1993). The sample 

for 1973-1991 includes 1,609 rapes; the corresponding sample for 1992-2000 contains 636 

5 rapes. As alluded to above, supplementary analyses also are performed on non-sexual assaults 

experienced by women to provide a comparative context; details of the samples and 

corresponding analyses used to generate these supplementary results are discussed in greater 

detail below. 

15 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Measures 

Dependent Variables 

Police notification is measured in two ways. First, as noted above, the legal and social 

reforms that have taken place since the early 1970s may have altered the likelihood that victims 

or third parties report rape victimizations to the police. Accordingly, the analysis includes a 

polytomous dependent variable that contrasts victim reported incidents and third party (e.g., 

another member of the household, some non-law enforcement official, anybody else) reported 

incidents, respectively, with non-reported incidents (labeled victim reported and third party 

reported, respectively in the text and tables). Second, to facilitate more direct comparisons with 

past research (e.g., Bachman, 1998), a binary dependent variable, police notified, also is 

included; this variable is coded 1 if the victim or somebody else reported the incident to the 

police and 0 for incidents in which the police were not notified. 

Independent Variables 

The primary independent variables in the analysis are the year of occurrence of the 

incident reported by the victim and the relationship between the victim and offender. Year of 

incident (year) is a continuous variable coded chronologically within the two periods (e.g., 1973-

1991, 1992-2000).6 

As noted above, past research on police notification by victims of rape has focused 

primarily on comparing incidents involving strangers and non-strangers. Consistent with this 

past practice, analyses are presented in which victim-offender relationship is measured as a 

dichotomous variable, coded 1 for incidents in which the victim identified the offender as a nonstranger (i.e., intimate partner, other family member, well-known acquaintance, casual 

16 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
acquaintance, sight only acquaintance) and 0 for incidents that involved an offender who was a 

stranger (non-strangers).7

 Importantly, the effects of more detailed relationship variables also 

were considered in this study. Specifically, a series of dichotomous variables were constructed 

that distinguish incidents in which the offender was identified as somebody with whom the 

victim was acquainted by sight only (sight only acquaintances), was a causal acquaintance 

(casual acquaintances), a well-known acquaintance (well-known acquaintances), a family 

member (other family members), or a spouse or ex-spouse (spouses). Appendix A presents 

definitions and metrics for each of the relationship variables as well as the other variables 

included in the analysis. 

These classifications are based on responses to three sequential questions. First, all 

victims are asked whether the offender was “someone you knew or a stranger you had never seen 

before?” Second, victims who indicated that the offender was somebody they knew or had seen 

before are asked: “how well did you know the offender—by sight only, casual acquaintance, or 

well known?” Responses to these two questions are used in the present research to initially 

classify the relationship between victims and offenders as “strangers,” “sight only 

acquaintances,” “casual acquaintances,” or “well-known acquaintances.” A third question 

inquires further about the precise nature of the relationship between the victim and offender, but 

there have been some important changes over time in who is asked this question and in the 

allowed responses. Prior to 1979, only victims who identified the offender as a well-known 

acquaintance were asked to report more specifically on the nature of the relationship, and the 

only options made available to respondents were intimate partner (spouse and ex-spouse), other 

family members (parent, brother, sister, own child, other relative), and non-relative. Between 

1979 and 1985 the responses available to victims who identified the offender as a well-known 

17 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
acquaintance were broadened to include current and former boyfriends and girlfriends. From 

1986 through the present all victims who identified the offender as a well-known or a casual 

acquaintance were asked to classify their relationship with the offender in more detail, and the 

range of options has been broadened to encompass different kinds of non-relatives (e.g., friend, 

co-worker, neighbor, roommate, etc.). In the present research, the more detailed relationship 

question is used only to classify offenders identified as well-known acquaintances into the more 

specific categories of “spouses” or “other family members.” Although more detailed 

classifications are available for the more recent period of data collection in the NCVS, only these 

response options have been used consistently over the full course of the survey. 

One noteworthy implication of this strategy is that the well-known acquaintance 

categorization is somewhat more heterogeneous than preferred, including persons who are 

involved in intimate relationships (i.e., boyfriends and girlfriends) and persons who are involved 

in other types of close relationships. Nonetheless, the analyses presented in this project provide 

a much more detailed assessment of the effects of victim-offender relationship than have prior 

studies. 

Control Variables 

The regression models presented below include several measures of respondents’ 

socioeconomic status, as well as other victim, offender, and incident characteristics that may be 

related both to the nature of rape and to the likelihood that victims notify the police (see 

Bachman, 1993; 1998; Lizotte, 1985; see Skogan, 1984 for a general overview of predictors of 

police notification). 

The socioeconomic status of the victim is tapped by three measures. Victim education 

18 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
refers to the number of completed years of schooling reported by the victim (education). A 

dichotomous variable measures whether the household in which the victim resides is owned 

(scored 1) or not (scored 0) (homeowner). Finally, household income is measured with a 

dichotomous variable scored 1 for victims whose household income falls below the federal 

poverty threshold in the year of the interview and scored 0 otherwise (household poverty). 

Victim age is a continuous variable that reflects the age of the victim at the time of the 

interview. The age of the offender is dummy coded as under age 18 and age 18 and older, with 

the latter group serving as the reference category. The race of the offender is measured by a 

series of dummy variables that distinguish offenders identified by victims as black, white, or of 

some other race, with white offenders serving as the reference group. The NCVS provides a 

more detailed breakdown of the race and ethnicity of victims, which enables a comparison 

between victims who identify themselves as Hispanic, non-Hispanic black, American Indian or 

Asian and non-Hispanic white, the group which serves as the reference category in the 

multivariate analyses. The marital status of the victim is measured with a dummy variable 

scored 1 for respondents who were married at the time of the survey and 0 otherwise (married). 

Several characteristics of the nature of sexual victimizations are also included as control 

variables. A dummy variable distinguishes between rapes that were completed (coded 1) and 

those that were attempted only (coded 0) (completed crime). The number of offenders involved 

in the incident is measured by a dummy variable coded 0 for incidents involving one offender 

and 1 for those involving multiple offenders (multiple offenders).8 Four binary variables are 

used to distinguish between incidents in which the victim reported that the offender had a gun 

(offender had gun), the offender had a knife, club, or other weapon (offender had other weapon), 

the victim was not certain about whether the offender was armed (weapon use unknown), and the 

19 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
offender was unarmed (offender had no weapon), which serves as the reference category in the 

multivariate regression models. The presence of a third party was measured by a dummy 

variable scored 1 if somebody besides the victim and offender was present and 0 otherwise (third 

party present). A dummy variable distinguishes between incidents in which the offender used 

physical force against the victim or, in other words, hit or shot the victim with a gun, stabbed or 

attacked the victim with a knife, hit the victim with another object, or slapped or knocked down 

the victim, and those in which no force was used (offender used physical force). The analysis 

also includes indicators of whether the victim incurred physical injuries in addition to those 

associated directly with the rape and whether or not the incident occurred in a private place. The 

injury variable is coded 1 for victims who indicated that they received gunshot or knife wounds, 

broken bones or teeth, internal injuries, or bruises, cuts, or scratches, and coded 0 otherwise 

(other physical injuries to the victim). A dichotomous variable distinguishes incidents that 

occurred in private places from all others (private location). 

Finally, the analysis also controls for changes over time in the method used to elicit 

information from crime victims. During the 1970s the modal method used to elicit responses in 

the NCVS was an in-person interview, but by 1980 more than one-half of the sample was 

interviewed by telephone. By 1986 telephone interviewing comprised 65% of all interviews 

conducted in the NCVS in some interview periods (in most cases, the first and fifth interviews 

are conducted in person, and the other interviews are conducted by phone). About 5 percent of 

NCS interviews during the late 1980s were conducted through computer assisted telephone 

interviewing (CATI) procedures, and this share has grown to about 30 percent in the NCVS 

during the 1990s. There is some evidence in the literature that women are more likely to report 

rapes in phone interviews than in person, and it may also be the case that the likelihood of police 

20 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
notification among victims who do report a serious crime vary by the method used to elicit this 

information. For instance, given that most NCVS interviewers are women, it may be that some 

women report that they notify the police when interviewed in person due to social pressure, when 

in fact they did not contact the police. Although the overall low rates of police notification 

would suggest that this occurs infrequently, its occurrence might be correlated with various 

features of victims or incidents (e.g., the relationship between victims and offenders). If so, 

failure to consider "method of administration" could bias regression coefficients. Accordingly, 

the analysis presented includes a series of dichotomous variables that distinguish victims 

interviewed by CATI, interviewed by phone (non-CATI), and interviewed in person. 

Analytical Strategy 

Logistic regression was used to estimate effects on the dichotomous measure of police 

notification and multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate effects on the polytomous 

measure of police notification (Hosmer and Lemeshow, 2000; Long, 1997). 

Estimates of standard errors and parameters based on the NCS and NCVS may be biased 

due to differential probabilities of selection and nonresponse, and incident weights have been 

developed to adjust for these factors (see Lohr and Liu, 1994). The regression analyses 

presented below are based on data to which incident-level weights have been applied. 

An equally important methodological issue when using the NCS and NCVS is whether 

and how to adjust for the complex sample design employed in the surveys. This issue is 

particularly important in the context of the present research since the strategies adopted in past 

studies may have affected the statistical significance of effects representing change over time in 

the influence of victim-offender relationship on police notification (see Ruback, 1995). The 

21 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
NCS and NCVS are based on a stratified, multi-stage cluster sample design, and observations 

within primary sampling units (PSUs) cannot be assumed to be independent (e.g., Alexander, 

1987; Bachman, 1993; U.S. Department of Justice, 2001). Standard regression approaches, 

which assume simple random sampling, do not take into account this type of non-independence 

and tend to produce standard errors that are biased when used to analyze complex survey data. 

Under some conditions, failure to account for survey design effects results in standard errors that 

are biased downward, which can increase (sometimes substantially) the likelihood of “Type I” 

errors (e.g., Armitage and Colton, 1998). Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the 

precise properties of design effects in the NCS and NCVS, especially for standard errors of 

covariates included in regression models. The vast majority of studies based on the NCS and 

NCVS have not incorporated adjustments for sample design effects, and some of the studies that 

have done so are ambiguous about the extent to which conclusions drawn from analyses of these 

data are sensitive to design effect adjustments. 

Two general approaches have been used to adjust for design effects in the NCS and 

NCVS. The first and most common strategy has been to multiply estimated standard errors for 

covariates included in regression models by some constant that reflects an overall design effect 

for the survey. Most studies based on NCS data have assumed a design effect of 1.92 (e.g., 

Bachman, 1993), while studies using the redesigned NCVS data have assumed a somewhat 

larger design effect—2.5 (e.g., Thompson et al., 1999). In practice, these design effects reflect 

the degree to which variances may be overestimated in the NCS and NCVS, and therefore the 

actual adjustments made to standard errors represent the square root of these values: the 

standard errors are multiplied by 1.39 if the design effect is assumed to be 1.92, and they are 

multiplied by 1.58 if it is assumed to be 2.5. These figures are derived from results of 

22 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
generalized variance function analyses of design effects for linear estimates (e.g., means, totals, 

proportions, and rates) in NCS person- and household-level data (see Alexander, 1987; 

Alexander and Hubble, 1990). 

This “generalized” approach is arguably better than simply ignoring the complex 

sampling design used in the NCS and NCVS. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the 

approach makes the questionable assumption that each variable in a specified regression model is 

characterized by the same design effect (Alexander, 1987). As Levy and Lemeshow (1999) 

point out, design effects can differ markedly within elements of a survey and, perhaps more 

importantly, across individual variables included in regression models based on survey data (see 

also, Skinner, Holt, and Smith, 1989). In fact, design effects for regression coefficients tend to 

be much smaller than those obtained for linear estimates, and in some cases are smaller than 1 

(i.e., in some cases ignoring design effects in regression models will produce inflated standard 

errors) (Hosmer and Lemeshow, 2000; Neuhaus and Segal, 1993). Therefore, although the use 

of a constant sample design adjustment may improve upon studies that do not attend to the 

complex sampling procedures used in the NCS and NCVS directly (and, hence, the tendency for 

standard errors to be underestimated), the actual design effect, or the degree to which standard 

errors are underestimated (or overestimated), can differ markedly across individual covariates. 

In the case of research on police notification, the design effect for a particular predictor may 

depart substantially from the standard adjustment that has been used in prior studies (e.g., 1.92 in 

the NCS) and, therefore, the conclusions drawn in past studies that have applied that adjustment 

(e.g., Bachman, 1993) may be as misleading as those that do not apply these adjustments (e.g., 

Lizotte, 1985). 

A second, and more precise, method of adjusting for design effects is to directly estimate 

23 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
survey regression models, which formally take into account non-independence amongst 

observations. This approach requires data on the strata and primary sampling units (PSUs) from 

which survey respondents were selected. Recent versions of public-use NCVS data (i.e., from 

1993 to the present) include variables that identify the strata and primary sampling units from 

which observations are drawn, which enable users to estimate survey regression models that 

adjust for the design features of the NCVS and produce standard errors that are approximately 

unbiased. Several recent studies have incorporated these techniques (e.g., Baumer, 2002; 

Lauritsen, 2001; Lauritsen and White, 2001). These person- and incident-level survey-based 

analyses reveal some relatively large design effects for linear estimates. But for regression 

coefficients the observed design effects in these studies are generally much smaller than those 

assumed in prior research, and the substantive conclusions drawn from the survey regression 

models are very similar to those obtained by “model-based” statistical analyses. 

Although it was not possible to estimate survey regression models fully for both the NCS 

and NCVS data incorporated in the present study, the currently best available methods of 

accounting for design effects in each period was used for the analyses reported below. For the 

1992-2000 redesigned data, survey regression models were estimated that directly incorporate 

NCVS strata and PSU variables and adjust for design effects.9 Consistent with prior research, 

the design-based standard errors presented are very similar to those obtained from analyses that 

assume a simple random sample (see also Baumer, 2002). The average design effect across all 

covariates included in the regression models was approximately 1.13 (the maximum observed 

design effect was 1.59), which is much lower than the design effect of 2.5 assumed in a recent 

study using the NCVS (Thompson et al., 1999). For the 1973-1991 period, all standard errors 

obtained in regressions using a standard model-based approach were multiplied by the covariate24 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
specific design effects observed in survey regression models based on 1987-1991 NCS data.10 

Again, the average design effect across all covariates included in the regression models (about 

1.11) was substantially smaller than the constant of 1.92 for a design effect assumed in past 

research using pre-redesign data (e.g., Bachman, 1993), and the maximum design effect for any 

of the covariates was 1.42.11 While the methods used to estimate design effects that are less 

precise than the procedure used for the most recent period, the overall approach still represents a 

significant improvement over past research. Perhaps most important to note is that the design 

effect adjustments made in each period have no bearing on the substantive conclusions drawn. 

25 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
IV. RESULTS 

Table 1 describes the two samples used in the analysis. The table reveals that slightly 

more than one-half of the rapes disclosed to NCS interviewers between 1973 and 1991 were 

reported to the police. Of those, more than two-thirds were reported directly by victims. 

Approximately 51 percent of these rapes involved offenders who were known to the victim; onequarter were either well-known acquaintances or family members. 

Table 1 about here 

The descriptive results for the 1992-2000 NCVS sample show that rates of police 

notification are much lower in the redesigned NCVS. Less than one-third (29.6 percent) of the 

636 rapes recorded in the NCVS during the period were reported to the police, with 19 percent of 

the recorded incidents reported to the police directly by victims. There also is a substantial 

difference between the two samples in terms of victim-offender relationship—more than 80 

percent (84.3 percent) of the rapes reported during the 1990s were committed by somebody with 

whom the victim was acquainted, and slightly more than half were perpetrated by somebody 

well-known or related to the victim. It is clear from these results that the probing questions and 

other changes (e.g., greater use of CATI) in the redesigned survey produce a sample of incidents 

that are quite different from the NCS in terms of relationship (i.e., more acquaintance rapes), 

potential for injury and death (i.e., a lower prevalence of gun use, other injury, and force), and 

police notification, and that the two time periods should be analyzed separately. 

Turning to the substantive questions addressed in the research, Table 2 presents 

regression models that evaluate whether the likelihood of police notification among rape victims 

has increased since the early 1970s and whether the likelihood of police notification differs 

significantly between victims assaulted by strangers and non-strangers during this period. 

26 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Results are shown separately for 1973-1991 (Models 1 and 2) and 1992-2000 (Models 3 and 4), 

and within each period results are presented from logistic regression models that contrast police 

notification with non-reporting, and from multinomial logit models that disaggregate police 

notification into victim reporting and third-party reporting (e.g., another member of the 

household, some non-law enforcement official, anybody else), respectively. Parameters are 

displayed for all variables considered in the analysis, but to maintain focus on the key research 

issues addressed in the project, attention here is restricted to the effects of year and victimoffender relationship. 

Table 2 about here 

In contrast with conclusions of past research (e.g., Jensen and Karpos, 1993), the results 

shown in Model 1 indicate that the overall likelihood of police notification increased 

significantly (b=.023, p < .05) between 1973 and 1991, net of changes in the types of victims, 

offenders, and characteristics of these incidents.12 Interestingly, the multinomial logit results 

(Model 2) for this period indicate that this increase is primarily due to changes in the likelihood 

of police notification by third-parties (b=.071, p < .05); there was no comparable increase in 

reporting directly by victims during this period (b=.004, p > .50). Model 3 of Table 2 also 

reveals that the likelihood of police notification in rape incidents increased significantly during 

the 1990s (b=.098, p < .05). The magnitude of this increase is larger than observed for the 

earlier period.13 However, unlike the earlier period, the multinomial logit analysis indicates that 

in the 1990s the likelihood of police notification increased considerably both for victims and 

third parties, though the increase observed among third parties is not quite statistically significant 

at conventional levels (see Model 4). 

Turning to the question of whether there are significant effects of victim-offender 

27 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
relationship on police notification during the two periods examined in the study, the results 

shown in Model 1 reveal that during the 1970s and 1980s rapes by non-strangers were 

significantly less likely (b=-.541, p < .05) to be reported than those committed by strangers (see 

also Dukes and Mattley, 1977; Feldman-Summers and Ashworth, 1981; Greenberg and Ruback, 

1992; Lizotte, 1985; Williams, 1984); the effect of this relatively crude indicator of relationship 

on third-party reporting is stronger than the effect on victim reporting (see Model 2). In contrast, 

the findings for relationship effects in the 1990s, presented in Models 3 and 4 of Table 2, are 

consistent with Bachman’s (1998) conclusions. Controlling for other factors, rapes disclosed to 

NCVS interviewers by women assaulted by non-strangers are just as likely to be reported to the 

police as rapes committed by strangers (b=.078, p > .50). 

Table 3 displays a similar set of regression models, save for the victim-offender 

relationship variable, which now is represented by a series of dichotomous variables that reflect 

more detailed types of non-stranger relationships. As seen in Model 1, the more detailed 

analyses of relationship categories for the 1973-1991 period reveals negative coefficients for all 

non-stranger relationships, indicating a general reluctance to notify the police when the victim 

and offender know each other in any way; however, not all effects are statistically significant. In 

addition, Model 2 shows that the effects of two victim-offender relationships are much stronger 

for third party than victim reporting: third parties are particularly unlikely to report incidents 

involving spouses and persons known by sight-only (see also Felson et al., 1999). For the 1992-

2000 period, the results displayed in Table 3 indicate that victim-offender relationship does not 

affect the likelihood of police notification during this period, net of other factors. 

Table 3 about here 

Table 4 presents findings from a more direct examination of changes over time in the 

28 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
likelihood of police notification within the different relationship types, as well as whether the 

gap the likelihood of police notification between stranger and non-stranger rapes has diminished 

over time. Results are shown for seven distinct multiplicative equations within each period. 

Equation 1 evaluates changes in reporting of rapes by non-strangers relative to rapes by strangers 

during the two periods; equations 2-6 examine changes in reporting for each of the detailed 

relationship classifications, respectively (in each case, relative to all other incidents); and 

equation 7 shows how reporting for the detailed categories changed relative to change in stranger 

incidents in particular. These equations were estimated both for the binary measure of police 

notification using logistic regression and the polytomous measure using a multinomial regression 

approach. For ease of presentation, only the coefficients and standard errors for the interaction 

terms relevant to these issues are shown (the actual equations also include the additive terms for 

year and relationship and all control variables discussed above). 

Table 4 about here 

The left side of Table 4 (Models 1 and 2) displays results for the 1973-1991 period. The 

first row (equation 1) shows a statistically significant interaction between year and non-stranger 

relationship from 1973-1991. This indicates that, during this period, changes in police 

notification of rapes by non-strangers were greater than changes in police notification of rapes by 

strangers. Thus, although a significant difference was observed overall in the likelihood of 

police notification in stranger and non-stranger rape cases during the 1970s and 1980s (see 

Model 1 of Table 2), this difference has diminished slightly during the period (see also Bachman, 

1993).14 Inspection of the remaining rows in Table 4 (equations 2 through 7) for this period 

reveals a statistically significant interaction for only one of the relationship types: spouses. 

Increases in the likelihood of police notification for rapes committed by husbands and ex29 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
husbands between 1973-1991 were larger than those observed for other types of incidents, 

including stranger incidents (the reference category in equation 7), for which police notification 

did not increase significantly. Given that the main effects for year in the equations that include a 

multiplicative term for the interaction between year and spouse are effectively zero, this indicates 

a significant increase in the likelihood of police notification during the 1970s and 1980s in police 

notification among women raped by spouses. Moreover, the larger relative increase in reporting 

in spousal rape cases is partly responsible for the overall relative increase in reporting for nonstranger rapes during the 1970s and 1980s. 

On the right hand side of Table 4 (Models 3 and 4), parallel results are presented for the 

1990s. They reveal no statistically significant interactions, suggesting that changes over time in 

the likelihood of police notification during this period did not differ by victim-offender 

relationship and, consequently, differences in the likelihood of reporting between strangers and 

non-strangers did not change significantly during the period. 

Figure 3 about here 

The main story that emerges from the analysis of rape incidents is summarized visually in 

Figure 3, which presents predicted probabilities of police notification over time for the two 

periods, assuming mean values for all variables except the year of incident (e.g., Bachman and 

Paternoster, 2004; Long, 1997). Figure 3 illustrates that, net of other factors, the probability of 

police notification in non-stranger rapes increased at a greater pace than stranger rapes during the 

1970s and 1980s and, consequently, the difference in the likelihood of reporting between 

stranger and non-stranger incidents by the early 1990s was quite small. Consistent with this 

pattern, the NCVS data from the 1990s reveal trends in police notification that are quite similar 

for stranger and non-stranger rapes; the likelihood of police notification among women raped by 

30 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
both strangers and non-strangers has increased considerably during the 1990s, and the gap in 

reporting between stranger and non-stranger incidents is relatively small throughout the period.15 

Supplementary Analyses 

Although not listed as an objective in the original proposal, to better understand the 

context of the findings presented for rape, a supplementary analysis was conducted for other 

(non-sexual) assaults experienced by females and reported in the NCS and NCVS between 1973-

2000. Assessments about the forces that may have driven changes in police notification by rape 

victims may be confounded by other factors (e.g., declines in social capital, which could have 

stimulated broader increases in police notification) that may have influenced reporting during 

this period; comparing the results obtained for rape with other offenses may help to shed further 

light on the matter. 

The samples for the supplementary analyses include 14,724 non-sexual assaults reported 

by females in the NCS (1973-1991) and 6,519 non-sexual assaults reported by females in the 

NCVS (1992-2000). The measures and methods used for this analysis parallel exactly those 

described above for rape incidents. The corresponding results are presented in Tables 5-8. 

Table 5 about here 

Descriptive statistics for the samples used in the supplementary analysis are displayed in 

Table 5. Unlike the findings for rape, the descriptive results for non-sexual assaults indicate that 

rates of police notification are not much lower in the redesigned NCVS as compared to the NCS. 

In both periods, about half of all non-sexual assaults experienced by women were reported to the 

police, and about 15 percent of incidents disclosed to interviewers were reported to the police by 

third parties. Other aspects of the sample more closely mirror those observed in the analysis of 

31 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
rape incidents. During the 1970s and 1980s, about two-thirds of the non-sexual assaults were 

reported to have been committed by a non-stranger, but in the 1990s, the redesigned data reveal 

that this fraction had increased to nearly four-fifths, with most of the change attributed to 

movement within the “well-known” acquaintance category. 

Table 6 presents regression models that evaluate whether the likelihood of police 

notification among non-sexual assault victims has increased since the early 1970s and whether 

the likelihood of police notification differs significantly between victims assaulted by strangers 

and non-strangers during this period. As with the analysis of rape incidents, results are shown 

separately for 1973-1991 (Models 1 and 2) and 1992-2000 (Models 3 and 4), and within each 

period results are presented from logistic regression models that contrast police notification with 

non-reporting, and from multinomial logit models that disaggregate police notification into 

victim reporting and third-party reporting. 

Table 6 about here 

In contrast with the results observed for rape, the findings shown in Models 1 and 2 

indicate that the likelihood of police notification (by victims, third parties, or overall) did not 

increase significantly between 1973 and 1991, net of changes in the types of victims, offenders, 

and characteristics of these incidents. Thus, whatever the forces responsible for the increases 

observed in the likelihood of police notification among rape victims during this period, they 

apparently were not equally influential to women who experienced other types of assaults. 

The results for the 1990s are more consistent with those observed in the analysis of rape 

incidents. As shown in Model 3, between 1992 and 2000 the likelihood of police notification 

among female victims of non-sexual assault increased significantly (b=.061, p < .05). The 

magnitude of this increase is smaller than that observed for rape, however, like the pattern shown 

32 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
for rape, the magnitude of observed changes in the likelihood of police notification by female 

victims of other assaults is similar among both victims and third parties to these incidents (see 

Model 4).16 

Table 6 also presents evidence on the matter of whether there were significant differences 

in the likelihood of police notification in stranger and non-stranger assaults within the two study 

periods. The patterns are generally similar to those observed for rape incidents (compare with 

Table 2). During the 1970s and 1980s assaults committed by non-strangers were significantly 

less likely (b=-.338, p < .05) to be reported than those committed by strangers (Model 1), and the 

effect on third-party reporting was stronger than the effect on victim reporting (Model 2). In 

contrast, for the 1990s (Model 3), the results indicate no significant differences in the likelihood 

of police notification between strangers and non-strangers overall. However, third parties do 

appear to be significantly less likely to notify the police in non-stranger assaults than stranger 

assaults during the 1990s, which was not the case for rapes (Model 4). 

Table 7 about here 

Table 7 shows a similar set of regression models with more detailed relationship 

categories. Overall, the findings for non-sexual assaults are very similar to the findings observed 

for rape incidents (compare with Table 3). For the 1973-1991 period, the results shown in Table 

7 reveal negative coefficients for all relationship types, indicating a general reluctance to notify 

the police when the victim and offender know each other (Models 1 and 2). The negative 

coefficients observed for all but one of the relationship types (“sight only acquaintances)” in the 

1990s (Model 3) suggest that women who were assaulted by somebody they knew during this 

period also were somewhat less likely to notify the police than women attacked by strangers, 

however, the only statistically significant difference observed was for non-intimate family 

33 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
members; these incidents are significantly less likely to be reported than are stranger incidents, 

with most of that difference attributed to low levels of reporting by third parties (Model 4). A 

more distinct pattern that emerges is that third parties remain very reluctant to report assaults 

when the victim and offender are acquainted, especially when they are closely acquainted. 

Overall, however, the results for 1992-2000 indicate weaker effects of victim-offender 

relationship on the likelihood of police notification among female victims of non-sexual assault 

than observed in the prior period. 

Table 8 examines more directly changes over time in the likelihood of police notification 

within the different relationship types (only the coefficients and standard errors for the 

interaction terms relevant to these issues are shown; the actual equations also include the additive 

terms and the control variables discussed above). The results shown in Table 8 clearly indicate 

that there have not been significant and distinctive increases in the likelihood of police 

notification among women assaulted by acquaintances. The first row of Table 8 (equation 1) 

shows a statistically significant interaction between year and non-stranger relationship for victim 

reporting during the 1973-1991 period, but in contrast to the results observed for rape, this 

interaction term is negative. This indicates that during the 1970s and 1980s the likelihood of 

police notification among females assaulted by non-strangers declined significantly more than 

the likelihood of police notification in stranger assaults. As equations 2 and 7 further reveal, this 

pattern mainly reflects a distinctive change in the likelihood that women assaulted by spouses 

notified the police as compared to women assaulted by other types of acquaintances or by 

strangers. Given that the main effect for year in these equations is approximately zero (not 

shown), the results indicate that there was a significant decline during the 1970s and 1980s in the 

likelihood that females victimized by spouses notified the police. Thus, it appears that forces 

34 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
were at work during the 1970s and 1980s which lowered the likelihood that persons involved in 

marital (or ex-marital) relationships would contact the police. At the same time, however, 

women assaulted by non-intimate family members, well-known acquaintances, and those whom 

they knew only by sight became slightly more likely (albeit not significantly so) to contact the 

police during this period, which appears to be the principal reason for the declining significance 

overall of differences in the likelihood of police notification between strangers and non-strangers 

over the full period (compare the NCS and NCVS results in Table 8). 

Table 8 about here 

On the right side of Table 8, a parallel set of regression models are presented for the 

1990s. Similar to the results presented for rape, they reveal overall that changes over time in the 

likelihood of police notification during this period did not differ by victim-offender relationship 

and differences in the likelihood of reporting between strangers and non-strangers did not change 

significantly during this period. The only significant interactions observed for this period was 

for incidents involving non-intimate family members. During the 1990s, increases in third party 

reporting were greater in instances where a female was assaulted by a non-intimate family 

member than in other types of assaults. 

Figure 4 summarizes the key findings from the analysis of changes in the likelihood of 

police notification among female non-sexual assault victims. The predicted probabilities 

displayed assume mean values for all variables except the year of incident. As Figure 4 

illustrates, controlling for other factors, the likelihood of police notification among female 

victims of non-sexual assault did not increase significantly during the 1970s and 1980s, nor is 

there evidence of greater increases in police notification among females assaulted by nonstrangers. In fact, the likelihood of police notification in non-stranger assaults declines slightly 

35 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
during this period, while the trend in reporting stranger assaults is relatively flat. One 

consequence of these patterns is a slight increase in the gap in the likelihood of police 

notification in female stranger and non-stranger assaults during the period, with females 

assaulted by non-strangers becoming relatively less likely to notify the police as compared to 

females assaulted by strangers (see also Table 8). Figure 4 also shows that a moderate, albeit 

non-significant, difference in the probability of police notification in stranger and non-stranger 

female assault incidents remains during the 1990s, but the two most noteworthy patterns for this 

period are that relatively large and comparable increases in the likelihood of police notification 

are observed for both stranger and non-stranger assaults, and that because non-stranger incidents 

compose such a large majority of the incidents, the temporal trend in police notification for these 

cases is virtually indistinguishable from the trend in non-sexual assaults overall. 

Figure 4 about here 

In summary, the temporal patterns in police notification by non-sexual assault victims 

during the 1970s and 1980s diverge from the patterns found for rape incidents. Whereas a 

significant increase in the likelihood of police notification overall was observed for rape 

incidents during this period, this was not the case for other assaults. Further, unlike the findings 

for rape, the likelihood of police notification by females assaulted by non-strangers did not 

increase significantly during the 1970s and 1980s. A different story emerges in the 1990s. The 

NCVS data reveal patterns of police notification that are more similar across crime types – the 

likelihood of police notification increased significantly during the 1990s both among female 

victims of rape and female victims of other types of assaults. 

36 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
VI. CONCLUSIONS 

This study examined whether the overall likelihood of police notification by rape victims 

has increased during the past three decades, whether any observed increase in the likelihood of 

police notification during this period has been more prominent among (or perhaps restricted to) 

incidents involving non-strangers, and whether differences in the likelihood of police notification 

between incidents involving strangers and non-strangers have diminished significantly over time. 

In addition, a parallel analysis was conducted on reporting among females who disclosed that 

they were victims of non-sexual assaults. 

The results suggest that the likelihood of police notification for incidents of rape has 

increased since the early 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s the increase in reporting was due 

mainly to changes in third-party reporting and changes in victims’ reporting of non-stranger 

rapes; the increase in reporting was particularly large among women raped by their husbands or 

ex-husbands. During the 1990s, the rate of change accelerated and broadened in scope: there 

was an increase in both victim and third party reporting of rapes committed by strangers as well 

as non-strangers, though the increase among third parties was not quite statistically significant. 

The study also suggests that the difference between the likelihood of police notification for 

incidents involving strangers and non-strangers diminished during the 1970s and 1980s and, by 

the early 1990s there was no significant difference. In the 1990s, rapes committed by nonstrangers were apparently just as likely to be reported to the police as rapes committed by 

strangers. Finally, the results suggest that it is important to distinguish between victim and third 

party reporting. Note, however, that third parties and victims may influence each other to report 

an incident (Ruback et al., 1984; Ruback, 1994). In addition, increases in third party reporting 

may reflect either increases in the tendency for victims to confide in them more or an increased 

37 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
proclivity of third parties to report to the police. It is not possible to differentiate between these 

alternative possibilities with the NCS or NCVS data. 

The findings are consistent with the univariate and bivariate analyses of studies based on 

aggregate data that show an upward trend from 1973 to the mid-1980s in police notification in 

non-stranger rapes (Orcutt and Faison, 1988; Jenson and Karpos, 1993). The present study 

shows that this trend continued through the early 1990s. However, contrary to some prior 

research (Jenson and Karpos, 1993), the present research also reveals a significant increase in the 

likelihood of police notification overall after controlling for other factors. The results also bear 

on a debate that emerged in the literature during the mid-1990s about whether victim-offender 

relationship remains an important predictor of the likelihood of police notification by rape 

victims (see Bachman, 1993, 1995; Pollard, 1995; Ruback, 1993). Consistent with Bachman’s 

(1993, 1998) research on rape cases and with recent research on non-sexual assaults (Felson et 

al., 1999), the study suggests that in the 199s women are just as likely to report to the police 

rapes by people they know as they are to report rapes by strangers. Comparisons of coefficients 

from the 1990s with the earlier period suggests that the divergence in findings regarding the 

effects of non-stranger relationship on police notification across the two periods might have 

arisen because women raped by acquaintances (i.e., those known well, casually, or by sight only) 

are no longer significantly less likely to notify the police than are women raped by strangers. 

It is possible that the social and legal changes associated with the rape reform movement 

influenced the responses women give to survey administrators when asked about sexual 

victimizations. For instance, perhaps for many of the same reasons women have become more 

likely to notify the police, during the past three decades women who are raped, especially those 

raped by an acquaintance, have become more likely to disclose their victimizations to 

38 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
interviewers in the NCS and NCVS. A comparison of the nature of rape incidents disclosed in 

the NCS (1973-91) and NCVS (1992-2000)—that is, before and after the redesign—reveals 

evidence consistent with this assertion and, although less certain, a similar trend may have 

occurred within the periods covered by these two data collections. Yet, if women have become 

more likely to disclose rapes to interviewers, the present analyses would underestimate the 

magnitude of the increase in the true likelihood of police notification for rapes during the past 

three decades, particularly if the previously undetected incidents that became more likely to be 

acknowledged to survey administrators were unlikely to be reported to the police. The influence 

of changes in survey response patterns on the role of victim-offender relationship in reporting is 

more complex, but assuming that the fraction of women in the U.S. raped by non-strangers who 

acknowledge these crimes to NCS and NCVS interviewers grew over time (relative to stranger 

rapes), the analysis would underestimate both the initial gap in reporting between stranger and 

nonstranger incidents and, even more important, the pace at which that gap diminished (see also 

Gartner and Macmillan, 1995; Harlow, 1991; Lizotte, 1985). Thus, the empirical pattern that 

emerges from the present study cannot be easily dismissed as an artifact of changes in survey 

response; the NCS and NCVS data appear to provide a meaningful assessment of the extent to 

which the likelihood of police notification has changed overall, and in relative terms for stranger 

and non-stranger incidents. 

One interpretation of the results presented for rape is that they reflect broader trends in 

police notification of violent crime between 1973-2000. For instance, levels of social capital 

have declined significantly during the past three decades in the U.S. (e.g., Putnam 2000), and it is 

plausible that, confronted with fewer informal mechanisms in the aftermath of a crime, crime 

victims overall became more likely to enlist the help of the police during this period. However, 

39 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
the supplementary analyses of non-sexual assaults suggest that the changes in police notification 

observed among rape victims were unique, at least during the 1970s and 1980s. The results for 

rape for this period are consistent with the intended objectives and expected outcomes of legal 

reforms and cultural changes about rape. Much of the early rape reform movement focused on 

broadening the legal definition and public perception of rape to include incidents committed by 

acquaintances, which are most likely to elicit controversy over definitions. Consistent with those 

efforts, the analysis showed a significantly larger increase in police notification for non-stranger 

rapes only during the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, police notification of rapes but not other 

types of assaults committed by spouses were particularly likely to increase during this period. 

This pattern may be due to publicity and changing attitudes toward marital rape and violence. 

The passage of laws in various states regarding spousal rape occurred in the 1980s (Allison and 

Wrighsman, 1993), and mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence were instituted in the 1980s 

and early 1990s (Bachman, 1995). 

Legal, social, and political efforts to alter the way Americans define and respond to rape 

intensified in the latter part of the 1980s and during the 1990s (Campbell, 1998; Campbell and 

Ahrens, 1998; Epstein and Langenbahn, 1994; Iovanni and Miller, 2001; Ledray, 2001; Little, 

2001; Valente et al., 2001). Consistent with this expanded scope, the analysis indicates that 

increases in police notification have broadened over time. During the 1970s and 1980s the 

increases were primarily due to changes in reporting by third parties and in victim reporting of 

rapes committed by non-strangers, but during the 1990s increases occurred both among third 

parties and victims and in rapes by non-strangers and strangers. Although the increases among 

third parties were not statistically significant, they were relatively large and comparable to the 

significant increases observed among victims. This pattern is consistent with the increase in the 

40 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
scope of the rape reform movement and other social changes that have occurred during the past 

30 years. Moreover, the expansion of legal reforms in the 1990s that have focused more 

generally on violence against women may help to explain why similar temporal patterns were 

observed for rapes and non-sexual assaults during this period. 

Finally, in the 1990s the findings for rape and non-sexual assaults reveal little consistent 

evidence that the police are less likely to be notified by rape victims when the offender is known 

to the victim. This pattern seems surprising given discussions of privacy, fear of reprisal, and 

other factors that scholars have suggested inhibit reporting when the offender is a family member 

or friend. However, recent research suggests that researchers have ignored the possibility that 

there are also greater incentives for reporting assaults when victims know the offender (Felson et 

al., 1999; Felson et al., 2002). For example, victims often call the police in order to gain 

protection from future attack, and this incentive is much greater when they know the offender; 

strangers are unlikely to be seen again. These factors apparently counteract the inhibitory 

factors, producing no victim-offender effect on reporting. 

In sum, with respect to the key issues addressed in the project, the results indicate a 

significant increase during the 1970s and 1980s in the likelihood of police notification by female 

rape victims; the increase was greater among third-party reporting, and among women raped by 

non-strangers, which resulted in a declining significance of differences in reporting between 

strangers and non-strangers over time. These changes coincided with the large-scale media and 

social campaigns that occurred during this period and that focused the public’s attention stigma 

on the issue of these “hidden” rapes. During the 1990s, the scope and momentum of these 

campaigns appear to have accelerated, translating into increases in police notification among 

both victims and third parties, and in both stranger and non-stranger rapes. 

41 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Although the project did not formally evaluate criminal justice operations or policies, the 

results provide the first definitive evidence on temporal patterns in the likelihood of police 

notification among rape victims, and this evidence can be used to indirectly assess the efficacy of 

practices designed to affect women’s reporting behaviors and to highlight potentially fruitful 

avenues of future research that could do so more directly. The temporal patterns of police 

notification presented for rape are suggestive that the substantial legal reforms and the growth in 

legal and non-legal services available to rape victims have been influential in elevating the 

likelihood that women notify the police when they are raped. The results also support the claim 

that the expansion of prevention and response efforts to encompass in a more coordinated 

fashion criminal justice, medical, and community resources during the past decade has been 

particularly influential, with the likelihood of police notification in rape incidents increasing 

nearly two-fold during this period. Thus, the results of this study point in favor of recent policy 

practices geared toward increasing police notification. Nonetheless, the most recent data 

presented above indicate that a majority of rape victims still do not report their attacks to the 

police, so the research also points to a need for further efforts aimed at encouraging and assisting 

rape victims in contacting the police to help initiate legal proceedings. 

Further research is needed to more precisely identify the types of practices that might best 

facilitate additional increases in police notification among rape victims. Although the present 

study was well-suited for identifying whether the likelihood of police notification has changed, 

the type of analyses presented herein are not capable of isolating which specific policies or 

practices affected the observed changes, nor does a set of policies that might help continue those 

changes emerge from the study. Future large-scale studies of police notification could provide 

more detailed information for policy by capturing jurisdictional differences in legal statutes and 

42 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
procedures, social norms, and victim perceptions. Such a multilevel, longitudinal analysis is 

feasible with the area-identified NCS and NCVS data, and if pursued should capitalize not only 

on the collection of policy relevant external data that can be merged to the NCVS, but also on the 

inherent panel structure of the NCVS. The present study relied on repeated cross-sectional data, 

an approach that does not allow for a direct examination of changes in police notification within 

persons over time or for an examination of the effects of changes in survey administration such 

as time in sample and the prevalence of unbounded interviews. Capitalizing on the panel 

structure of the NCVS in future investigations of police notification could provide valuable 

policy insights, especially if combined with data on temporal or jurisdictional difference in 

existing policy approaches and social conditions. Doing so, however, would be a substantial and 

expensive undertaking and would require logistical support from the U.S. Census Bureau and the 

Bureau of Justice Statistics in addition to one or more funding agencies. Retrospective 

ethnographic studies of rape victims from different jurisdictions also would provide beneficial 

data for criminal justice policymakers if the design could incorporate sufficient differences in the 

legal, social, service, and family environments to which rape victims are exposed. Finally, it 

would be useful to implement new policies aimed at increasing police notification among rape 

victims and field more concentrated victimization surveys in these (and matched, control) 

jurisdictions before and after implementation to determine whether police notification is greater 

or increasing at a faster pace in areas with particular types of programs and policies. These types 

of studies would help illuminate ways in which to increase police notification, which in turn may 

increase the likelihood of arrest and prosecution and, ultimately, the deterrent efficacy of the 

criminal justice system. 

43 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
ENDNOTES 

1

The data shown are from annual publications of Criminal Victimization in the United States. 

Following Bachman (1993), the data points have been smoothed using three-year running 

averages to illustrate more clearly the general trend in rates of police notification. See Hart and 

Rennison (2003) for comparable figures based on data from the NCVS. 

2

Changes in rates of completion, weapon use, police notification, and other aspects of rape cases 

as measured in self-report surveys may reflect changes in victim responses in addition to actual 

changes in the nature of rapes experienced in the United States. For instance, it is plausible that 

the pattern shown for weapon use in Figure 2 partially reflects a disproportionate increase in the 

reporting to NCS interviewers by women raped by unarmed offenders (compared to those raped 

by armed offenders); if so, the NCS data would reveal a decline in the proportion of rapes 

committed with a weapon even if the actual prevalence of weapon use in rapes did not change. 

The implications of changes in survey response as they relate to the results obtained in the 

present study are discussed in the conclusion. 

3

The data for weapon use and completion rates are presented to illustrate the logic of the 

argument. There are several other factors that exhibit significant bivariate relationships with 

police notification among rape victims and significant temporal variation over this period (e.g., 

occurrence in a private location, offender age, number of offenders, victim race and educational 

attainment, and victim injury) and, therefore, may complicate the interpretation of aggregate 

trends in police. 

44 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
4

Data on rape victimizations for this research are from ICPSR studies #6406, #8864, #8608, and 

#8625 (see U.S. Department of Justice, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2002). The analysis of the NCS 

data is restricted to incidents that were reported to have occurred in 1991 or earlier because, 

although the data include some incidents from 1992, the sample for this year is very small (n=18) 

due to the phase-in of the redesign. Further, sexual assaults other than rapes are excluded from 

the analysis of the 1992-2000 data. It is unclear whether and, if so, how these incidents (sexual 

assaults not perceived as incidents of rape by victims) were classified in the NCS (see also Rand 

et al., 1997), but restricting the redesigned sample to reported rapes seems like the most 

defensible strategy for comparisons with the NCS data. 

5

There were 2,015 rapes reported in the NCS between 1973-1991, 1,844 of which involved a 

male offender and female victim; the analysis excludes 217 of these incidents due to missing 

data on the dependent and independent variables. In the 1992-2000 redesigned NCVS there 

were 787 incidents of rape reported, of which 709 involved a male offender and female victim; 

the analysis focuses on 636 of these cases for which complete data were available on the 

dependent and independent variables. In both periods, the majority of cases that were excluded 

did not contain information on key attributes of the offender, including relationship to the victim. 

6

This operationalization of “year” allows for an assessment of whether the likelihood of police 

notification changed in a linear fashion within the two periods. Several other functional forms 

were considered as well. In analyses not shown, squared and cubed terms were added to models 

containing the linear year variable. Supplementary analyses also modeled the year effects with 

spline functions defined in various ways (e.g., using different combinations of adjacent years to 

45 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
form multiple time segments) within the two periods. None of these analyses revealed evidence 

of a significant departure from linearity in temporal patterns. 

7

It is important to note that reports published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and 

research based on the data presented in these reports (e.g., Jensen and Karpos, 1993; Orcutt and 

Faison, 1988) use a broader definition of “stranger violence” that includes both offenders who 

are unknown to the victim and offenders who are known to the victim by sight only. On its face, 

this seems like a reasonable strategy. However, the results presented below suggest that, at least 

during the 1970s and 1980s, a more appropriate strategy would be to classify persons known by 

sight only as non-strangers. 

8

For multiple offender incidents, victim-offender relationship is coded according to the closest 

relationship, offender age refers to the age of the oldest offender, and offender sex is coded with 

responses consistent with the majority of offenders. The few incidents that involved multiple 

offenders of different races were excluded from the analysis. 

9

These models were estimated using Stata, 7.0 (StataCorp, 2001). The PSU and strata variables 

needed to estimate survey regression models were not available for three interview quarters 

during the 1992-2000 period (the last quarter of 1992, and the first and second quarters of 1993). 

To account for this gap, survey regression models based on data for all other data collection 

quarters during the period were estimated and the corresponding covariate-specific design effects 

obtained in those models were applied to the data collection quarters for which the design 

variables were missing. The substantive conclusions drawn are not sensitive to this decision: the 

46 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
magnitude of the standard errors obtained in the model-based and design-based regression 

approaches was very similar. 

10An important methodological objective of the project was to go beyond past work on police 

notification by estimating survey regression models for the full period covered in the study 

(1973-2000). This was not possible because the 1973-1986 NCS files that contain the strata and 

cluster variables needed to estimate survey regression models have not yet been made available 

to researchers outside the Census Bureau. 

11This approach assumes that the covariate-specific design effects observed for the 1987-1991 

period are identical to those observed for the 1973-1986 period. This is a questionable 

assumption, however, based on the available evidence it seems more reasonable than the 

alternative, which is to assume that the covariate-specific design effects for the earlier period in 

the NSC are nearly two times larger than those observed either in the later period of the NCS or 

for the more recent data obtained from the NCVS. 

12The divergence between the findings reported here and those reported by Jensen and Karpos 

(1993) is a function of controlling for other features of rapes that change over time, not the 

inclusion of data from 1991 (their study focuses on 1973-1990). 

13The year 2000 is a slight outlier in the analysis; the year coefficients are about 30 percent 

smaller than those presented in Table 2 after data from 2000 are excluded, but are still 

statistically significant. 

47 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
14Although they do not present results separately for rape, Gartner and Macmillan (1995) draw 

similar conclusions about the effect of victim-offender relationship on police notification based 

on retrospective reports contained in cross-sectional data on violence against women in Canada. 

15Supplementary analyses (not shown in tabular form) examined whether changes in police 

notification were stronger for rapes that were less violent and thus more difficult to prosecute 

(Bryden and Lengnick, 1997). These analyses revealed no evidence in either period that change 

in police notification depended on whether the victim was injured, the offender used a weapon, 

or the offense was completed. Nor was there evidence, for the latter period, that change in police 

notifications were stronger for sexual assaults than rape. 

16Various forms of possible non-linearity in temporal trends in police notification among victims 

of non-sexual assault were considered, including quadratic and cubic functional forms. These 

analyses (not shown) revealed no evidence of a significant non-linear trend in police notification. 

48 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Figure 1. Percentage of Rapes Reported to the Police in the NCS, 1973-1991

Percentage 

70 60 50 40 30 20 

1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 

All Cases Stranger Non-Stranger 

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Percentage 

Figure 2. Trends in Characteristics of Rapes Reported in the NCS, 1973-1991

60504030201000

1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 

Rapes Commited with Weapon Non-Stranger Rapes Completed 

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Table 1. Percentage Distributions for Variables Included in Analysis of Police Notification 

by Victims of Rape (NCS 1973-91, NCVS 1992-2000). 

NCS NCVS 

Dependent Variables 1973-1991 1992-2000 

Police Notified 52.5 29.6 

Victim Reported 37.2 19.0 

Third Party Reported 15.3 10.6 

Independent Variables 

Strangers 49.4 15.7 

Non-Strangers 50.6 84.3

 Spouses 4.2 11.8

 Other Family Members 3.1 3.5

 Well-Known Acquaintances 17.5 38.7

 Casual Acquaintances 17.1 24.4

 Sight Only Acquaintances 8.7 6.0 

Control Variables 

Victim Characteristics 

Non-Hispanic Black 17.0 14.2 

Non-Hispanic White 75.7 77.0 

Hispanic 5.3 6.1 

American Indian or Asian 1.9 2.7 

Married 17.0 11.5 

Age (Mean) 24.7 27.0 

Household Poverty 30.0 33.8 

Education (Mean) 14.5 15.6 

Homeowner 33.9 34.3 

Interviewed in Person 73.6 39.1 

Interviewed by Phone (CATI) 1.8 27.2 

Interviewed by Phone (non-CATI) 24.6 33.7 

Offender Characteristics 

Black 32.9 22.5 

White 61.3 68.6 

Other 5.8 8.8 

Under age 18 9.6 8.2 

Age 18 and Older 90.4 91.8 

Incident Characteristics 

Completed Crime 34.6 57.6 

Multiple Offenders 13.8 5.2 

Offender Had Gun 8.6 4.7 

Offender Had Other Weapon 13.9 6.3 

Offender Had No Weapon 67.8 84.1 

Weapon Use Unknown 9.7 4.9 

Third Party Present 26.4 22.6 

Other Physical Injury to Victim 39.0 33.5 

Offender Used Physical Force 28.0 20.4 

Private Location 48.0 74.8 

Unweighted N 1,609 636 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 2. Regression Coefficients for Time and Relationship Effects on Police Notification by Rape Victims (

 1973-1991 1992-2

(1) (2) (3) 

 Logistic Multinomial Logistic 

 Regression Regression Regression 

Police Victim Third Party Police V

Notified Reported Reported Notified Re

Inde

pendent Variables 

Year .023* .004 .071* .098* 

(.010) (.015) (.015) (.037) (

Non-Strangers -.541* -.483* -.719* .078 

(.137) (.137) (.190) (.308) (

Control Variables Victim Characteristics Non-Hispanic Black -.134 -.124 -.160 -.029 

(.178) (.189) (.244) (.362) (

Hispanic .448 .473 .406 -.787 

(.266) (.270) (.352) (.457) (

Other -.670 -.657 -.670 -1.309 

(.399) (.422) (.645) (.779) 

Married .159 .152 .199 .232 

(.158) (.165) (.239) (.302) (

Age .005 .013* -.026* .003 

(.008) (.005) (.012) (.011) (

Household Poverty -.055 -.118 .128 .483 

(.149) (.140) (.207) (.266) (

Education -.040* -.035* -.052* -.055* 

(.011) (.013) (.019) (.023) (

Homeowner .147 .128 .168 .275 

(.120) (.140) (.192) (.259) (

Interviewed by Phone (non-CATI) -.066 -.130 .089 -.703* -

(.118) (.146) (.193) (.241) (

Interviewed by Phone (CATI) -.213 -.166 -.366 -.778* -

(.347) (.415) (.533) (.280) (

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Table 2. (Continued)

 1973-1991 1992-2

(1) (2) (3) 

 Logistic Multinomial Logistic 

 Regression Regression Regression 

Police Victim Third Party Police V

Notified Reported Reported Notified Re

Offender Characteristics 

Black .141 .062 .335 .546 

(.145) (.157) (.206) (.280) (

Other -.162 -.106 -.333 -.302 

(.235) (.254) (.395) (.383) (

Under age 18 .392* .344 .473 -.242 

(.186) (.220) (.284) (.394) (

Incident Characteristics 

Completed Crime .174 .067 .435* -.118 

(.122) (.135) (.177) (.240) (

Multiple Offenders .235 .199 .300 .047 

(.165) (.195) (.232) (.562) (

Offender Had Gun .630* .637* .563* 1.39* 

(.201) (.230) (.281) (.483) (

Offender Had Other Weapon .576* .612* .478* .425 

(.177) (.185) (.242) (.399) (

Weapon Use Unknown .181 .175 .176 -.257 

(.196) (.205) (.276) (.422) (

Third Party Present .214 .105 .480* .587* 

(.135) (.146) (.183) (.283) (

Other Physical Injury to Victim .349* .353* .362* .233 

(.155) (.142) (.179) (.241) (

Offender Used Physical Force .409* .301* .674* .546* 

(.142) (.146) (.196) (.265) (

Private Location .405* .370* .503* -.390 

(.139) (.138) (.185) (.235) (

-2 Log Likelihood 2078.47 3021.02 675.51 

Model Chi-Square 150.29* 217.15* 97.50* 

*p <

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

 .05, two-tailed test 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 3. Regression Coefficients for Detailed Relationship Effects on Police Notification by Rape Victims (N

 1973-1991 1992-2

(1) (2) (3) 

Logistic Multinomial Logistic 

 Regression Regression Regression 

Police Victim Third Party Police V

Notified Reported Reported Notified Re

Independent Variables 

Year .023* .003 .073* .099* 

(.010) (.015) (.016) (.036) (

Spouses -.449 -.188 -1.32* -.072 

(.280) (.289) (.490) (.503) (

Other Family Members -.448 -.521 -.396 .812 

(.326) (.366) (.433) (.650) (

Well-Known Acquaintances -.613* -.599* -.694* .073 

(.167) (.182) (.225) (.329) (

Casual Acquaintances -.431* -.418* -.492* -.159 

(.169) (.179) (.240) (.356) (

Sight Only Acquaintances -.664* -.511* -1.13* .586 

(.202) (.215) (.335) (.444) (

Control Variables Victim Characteristics Non-Hispanic Black -.122 -.113 -.138 -.009 

(.179) (.190) (.246) (.358) (

Hispanic .463 .488 .446 -.721 

(.267) (.271) (.351) (.464) (

American Indian or Asian -.676 -.638 -.740 -1.26 

(.400) (.423) (.643) (.791) 

Married .161 .143 .252 .285 

(.159) (.164) (.238) (.313) (

Age .005 .013* -.024* .004 

(.008) (.005) (.012) (.012) (

Household Poverty -.051 -.111 .134 .447 

(.148) (.140) (.206) (.257) (

Education -.041* -.035* -.052* -.053* 

(.011) (.014) (.020) (.022) (

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 3. (Continued)

 1973-1991 1992-2

(1) (2) (3) 

 Logistic Multinomial Logistic 

 Regression Regression Regression 

Police Victim Third Party Police V

Notified Reported Reported Notified Re

Victim Characteristics Homeowner .146 .122 .173 .267 

(.120) (.139) (.190) (.267) (

Interviewed by Phone (non-CATI) -.057 -.116 .094 -.670* -

(.119) (.145) (.195) (.230) (

Interviewed by Phone (CATI) -.186 -.118 -.390 -.685* -

(.345) (.414) (.534) (.280) (

Offender Characteristics Black .145 .065 .344 .515 

(.146) (.155) (.209) (.287) (

Other -.160 -.091 -.378 -.304 

(.235) (.252) (.400) (.388) (

Under age 18 .398* .356 .472 -.215 

(.188) (.221) (.286) (.391) (

Incident Characteristics Completed Crime .173 .068 .435* -.074 

(.122) (.139) (.175) (.241) (

Multiple Offenders .238 .206 .281 .012 

(.166) (.193) (.233) (.558) (

Offender Had Gun .636* .645* .568* 1.44* 

(.202) (.231) (.280) (.493) (

Offender Had Other Weapon .582* .626* .463* .363 

(.177) (.184) (.225) (.387) (

Weapon Use Unknown .192 (.199) .190 (.203) .170 (.279) -.268 (.406) 

(

Third Party Present .206 .096 .475* .546* 

(.135) (.144) (.184) (.275) (

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 3. (Continued)

 1973-1991 1992-2

Incident Characteristics Other Physical Injury to VictimOffender Used Physical ForcePrivate Location-2 Log Likelihood Model Chi-Square *p < .05, two-tailed test 

(1)

 Logistic

 Regression 

Police 

Notified 

.344*

(.155) 

.410* 

(.143) 

.403*

(.139) 

2076.61152.16*

 (2) 

Multinomial

 Regression

Victim Third Party 

Reported Reported 

.349* .358* 

(.144) (.179) 

.284 .709*

(.148) (.195) 

.363* .506* 

(.137) (.184) 

3010.56

227.61*

(3)

 Logistic

 Regression 

Police 

Notified 

.284 

(.236) 

.537* 

(.270) 

-.438 

(.243) 

669.45

103.56*

V

Re

(((

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Table 4. Regression Coefficients for Temporal Variation in Effects of Relationship on Police Notification by R

(NCS & NCVS)

 1973-1991 1992

(1) (2) (3) 

 Logistic Multinomial Logistic 

 Regression Regression Regression 

Police Victim Third Party Police 

Notified Reported Reported Notified R

Equation Interaction Terms 

(1) Year*Non-Stranger .038* .044* .023 .045 

 (.018) (.022) (.042) (.102) 

(2) Year*Spouses .158* .182* .096 -.021 

 (.068) (.071) (.113) (.180) 

(3) Year*Other Family Members -.047 -.064 -.044 -.160 

 (.089) (.109) (.103) (.187) 

(4) Year*Well-Known Acquaintanc

e .010 .005 .014 -.026 

 (.037) (.037) (.046) (.081) 

(5) Year*Casual Acquaintances .035 .035 .028 .085 

 (.036) (.039) (.046) (.090) 

(6) Year*Sight Only Acquaintances .014 .011 .062 .118 

 (.046) (.045) (.075) (.194) 

(7) Year*Spouses .165*

 (.066)

Year*Other Family Members -.044

(.077)

Year*Well-Known Acquaintanc

e .020

 (.035)

Year*Casual Acquaintances .043

 (.038)

Year*Sight Only Acquaintances .025

 (.044)

 .189* .097 .013 

 (.067) (.101) (.160) 

-.056 -.052 -.108 

 (.099) (.106) (.222) 

.020 .012 .016 

 (.038) (.049) (.103) 

.046 .026 .103 

 (.039) (.047) (.133) 

.025 .067 .147 

 (.045) (.078) (.237) 

*p < .05, two-tailed test Note: Models shown include main effects for year and all victim, offender, and incident 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Proportion 

.10 .20 .30 .40 .50 .60 .70 .80 .90 

1.00 

Figure 3. Predicted Probabilities of Police Notification for Female Victims of Rape, 1973-2000 

NCS NCVS 

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

All Incidents Stranger Non-Stranger 

.00 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 5. Percentage Distributions for Variables Included in Analysis of Police Notification 

by Female Victims of Non-Sexual Assault (NCS 1973-91, NCVS 1992-2000). 

NCS NCVS 

Dependent Variables 1973-1991 1992-2000 

Police Notified 54.3 49.3 

Victim Reported 39.5 33.9 

Third Party Reported 14.8 15.4 

Independent Variables 

Strangers 33.8 22.8 

Non-Strangers 66.2 77.2

 Spouses 17.4 16.9

 Other Family Members 5.6 6.9

 Well-Known Acquaintances 24.1 31.1

 Casual Acquaintances 11.1 13.1

 Sight Only Acquaintances 7.9 9.2 

Control Variables 

Victim Characteristics 

Non-Hispanic Black 13.0 12.6 

Non-Hispanic White 79.8 77.0 

Hispanic 5.7 7.9 

American Indian or Asian 1.6 2.7 

Married 29.3 28.2 

Age (Mean) 29.3 31.5 

Household Poverty 42.0 25.6 

Education (Mean) 14.5 16.03 

Homeowner 43.5 46.7 

Interviewed in Person 68.5 35.3 

Interviewed by Phone (CATI) 2.9 32.4 

Interviewed by Phone (non-CATI) 28.6 32.3 

Offender Characteristics 

Black 25.4 23.4 

White 70.7 67.7 

Other 3.9 8.3 

Under age 18 18.0 17.5 

Age 18 and Older 82.0 82.5 

Incident Characteristics 

Completed Crime 32.8 60.3 

Multiple Offenders 18.2 12.2 

Offender Had Gun 10.2 7.5 

Offender Had Other Weapon 15.8 12.3 

Offender Had No Weapon 64.8 72.3 

Weapon Use Unknown 8.3 6.8 

Third Party Present 61.8 59.3 

Physical Injury to Victim 34.8 28.0 

Offender Used Physical Force 36.1 28.3 

Private Location 50.2 54.3 

Unweighted N 14,724 6,519 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 6. Regression Coefficients for Time and Relationship Effects on Police Notification by Female Victims of No

Assault (NCS & NCVS)

 1973-1991 1992-2000 

(1) (2) (3) (

 Logistic Multinomial Logistic Multi

 Regression Regression Regression Regr

Police Victim Third Party Police Victim 

Notified Reported Reported Notified Reported 

Inde

pendent Variables 

Year -.013 -.012 -.015 .061* .066* 

(.013) (.015) (.025) (.014) (.015) 

Non-Strangers -.338* -.271* -.687* -.070 .042 

(.055) (.048) (.099) (.083) (.095) 

Control Variables Victim Characteristics 

Non-Hispanic Black .206* .279* -.205 .405* .416* 

(.069) (.075) (.130) (.106) (.118) 

Hispanic -.073 -.049 -.215 .257* .274* 

(.090) (.092) (.170) (.122) (.133) 

Other -.019 -.024 .014 -.183 -.318 

(.170) (.173) (.306) (.176) (.215) 

Married .258* .313* -.055 .103 .160 

(.055) (.050) (.085) (.080) (.088) 

Age .011* .010* .017* .012* .015* 

(.002) (.002) (.004) (.002) (.003) 

Household Poverty -.017 -.053 .172* .066 .160 

(.045) (.046) (.079) (.081) (.084) 

Education -.030* -.028* -.045* -.021* -.012* 

(.006) (.005) (.009) (.005) (.005) 

Homeowner .030 .050 -.061 .047 .036 

(.045) (.046) (.078) (.075) (.077) 

Interviewed by Phone (non-CATI) -.134* -.142* -.082 -.150 -.119 

(.057) (.058) (.105) (.079) (.088) 

Interviewed by Phone (CATI) .254 .001 1.19 -.533* -.535* 

(1.40) (1.75) (.2.25) (.085) (.094) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 6. (Continued)

 1973-1991 1992-2000 

(1) (2) (3) (

Logistic Multinomial Logistic Multi

 Regression Regression Regression Regr

Police Victim Third Party Police Victim 

Notified Reported Reported Notified Reported 

Offender Characteristics 

Black -.094 -.099 -.097 -.069 -.144 

(.056) (.058) (.095) (.086) (.100) 

Other -.242* -.190 -.544* -.058 -.056 

(.105) (.109) (.222) (.107) (.122) 

Under age 18 -.550* -.527* .693* -.626* -.868* 

(.062) (.066) (.100) (.094) (.110) 

Incident Characteristics 

Completed Crime -.687* -.696* -.631* -.112 -.150 

(.099) (.102) (.145) (.077) (.085) 

Multiple Offenders .310* .330* .197* .301* .322* 

(.058) (.060) (.090) (.106) (.120) 

Offender Had Gun .762* .716* 1.02* .894* .898* 

(.078) (.075) (.115) (.144) (.148) 

Offender Had Other Weapon .240* .186* .509* .392* .323* 

(.053) (.053) (.099) (.094) (.108) 

Weapon Use Unknown .288* .281* .311* .228 .225 

(.077) (.075) (.112) (.148) (.159) 

Third Party Present .331* .278* .627* .449* .176* 

(.046) (.044) (.088) (.067) (.075) 

Victim Physical Injury .885* .814* 1.23* .515* .355* 

(.096) (.099) (.159) (.095) (.107) 

Offender Used Physical Force .269* .244* .423* .254* .229* 

(.070) (.065) (.105) (.094) (.103) 

Private Location .663* .789* -.085 .608* .722* 

(.049) (.050) (.086) (.074) (.085) 

-2 Log Likelihood 18910.11 24888.98 8274.95 1162

Model Chi-Square 1493.10* 1906.59* 754.46* 1129

*p < .05, two-tailed test 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 7. Regression Coefficients for Detailed Relationship Effects on Police Notification by Female Victims of Non

Assault (NCS & NCVS)

 1973-1991 1992-2000 

(1) (2) (3) (

Logistic Multinomial Logistic Multi

 Regression Regression Regression Regr

Police Victim Third Party Police Victim 

Notified Reported Reported Notified Reported 

Independent Variables 

Year -.012 -.011 -.015 .060* .065* 

(.013) (.013) (.022) (.014) (.015) 

Spouses -.553* -.483* -.877* -.011 .125 

(.070) (.072) (.125) (.127) (.139) 

Other Family Members -.061 .063 -.873* -.324* -.111 

(.096) (.100) (.225) (.139) (.147) 

Well-Known Acquaintances -.366* -.331* -.542* -.140 -.027 

(.065) (.069) (.142) (.093) (.107) 

Casual Acquaintances -.438* -.370* -.804* -.147 -.121 

(.070) (.072) (.160) (.102) (.118) 

Sight Only Acquaintances -.014 .090 -.620* .135 .281* 

(.072) (.074) (.147) (.121) (.131) 

Control Variables Victim Characteristics Non-Hispanic Black .212* .290* -.220 .414* .420* 

(.068) (.070) (.125) (.105) (.117) 

Hispanic -.070 -.046 -.210 .246* .265* 

(.092) (.096) (.160) (.121) (.132) 

American Indian or Asian -.008 -.018 .037 -.181 -.315 

(.170) (.175) (.307) (.175) (.215) 

Married .243* .296* -.057 .094 .147 

(.055) (.052) (.065) (.080) (.085) 

Age .011* .009* .018* .011* .015* 

(.002) (.002) (.003) (.002) (.003) 

Household Poverty -.021 -.055 .164* .081 .174* 

(.045) (.041) (.080) (.080) (.084) 

Education -.030* -.027* -.046* -.021* -.012* 

(.006) (.008) (.009) (.005) (.005) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 7. (Continued)

 1973-1991 1992-2000 

(1) (2) (3) (

 Logistic Multinomial Logistic Multi

 Regression Regression Regression Regr

Police Victim Third Party Police Victim 

Notified Reported Reported Notified Reported 

Victim Characteristics Homeowner .033 .053 -.053 .052 .038 

(.045) (.048) (.080) (.075) (.077) 

Interviewed by Phone (non-CATI) -.133* -.140* -.085 -.143 -.116 

(.059) (.062) (.106) (.077) (.087) 

Interviewed by Phone (CATI) .216 -.044 1.15 -.531* -.534* 

(1.55) (1.85) (2.44) (.084) (.095) 

Offender Characteristics Black -.109 -.115* -.107 -.071 -.134 

(.057) (.059) (.099) (.087) (.100) 

Other -.247* -.194 -.556* -.053 -.045 

(.104) (.108) (.225) (.107) (.120) 

Under age 18 -.593* -.572* -.718* -.598* -.838* 

(.055) (.059) (.107) (.091) (.104) 

Incident Characteristics Completed Crime -.679* -.690* -.617* -.100 -.140 

(.096) (.100) (.125) (.076) (.085) 

Multiple Offenders .299* .319* .187* .268* .291* 

(.058) (.065) (.092) (.104) (.118) 

Offender Had Gun .761* .715* 1.01* .891* .897* 

(.078) (.080) (.121) (.142) (.148) 

Offender Had Other Weapon .234* .180* .505* .382* .315* 

(.056) (.054) (.086) (.094) (.108) 

Weapon Use Unknown .278* .273* .302* .212 .208 

(.080) (.083) (.130) (.147) (.158) 

Third Party Present .328* .272* .636* .470* .196* 

(.048) (.049) (.085) (.069) (.076) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 7. (Continued)

 1973-1991 1992-2000 

Incident Characteristics Victim Physical InjuryOffender Used Physical ForcePrivate Location-2 Log Likelihood Model Chi-Square *p < .05, two-tailed test 

(1)

 Logistic

 Regression 

Police 

Notified 

.894*

(.093) 

.295*

(.068) 

.710*

(.055) 

18849.711553.50*

 (2) 

Multinomial

 Regression

Victim Third Party 

Reported Reported 

.822* 1.23*

(.092) (.160) 

.272* .430*

(.068) (.102) 

.836* -.040

(.065) (.088) 

24842.12

1988.06*

(3)

 Logistic

 Regression 

Police 

Notified 

.502*

(.094) 

.266*

(.094) 

.641*

(.079) 

8260.52

768.86*

 (

 Multi

 Regr

Victim 

Reported 

.340* 

(.1018) 

.237* 

(.108) 

.738* 

(.087) 

1160

1152

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 8. Regression Coefficients for Temporal Variation in Effects of Relationship on Police Notification by F

of Non-Sexual Asault (NCS & NCVS)

 1973-1991 1992-2

(1) (2) (3) 

 Logistic Multinomial Logistic 

 Regression Regression Regression 

Police Victim Third Party Police V

Notified Reported Reported Notified Re

Equation Interaction Terms 

(1) Year*Non-Stranger -.032 -.042* .014 .008 

 (.025) (.019) (.035) (.028) 

(2) Year*Spouses -.065* -.085* .062 .019 

 (.029) (.030) (.055) (.034) 

(3) Year*Other Family Members .018 .023 -.038 -.010 

 (.054) (.054) (.111) (.046) 

(4) Year*Well-Known Acquaintances .021 .018 .039 .010 

 (.026) (.028) (.048) (.026) 

(5) Year*Casual Acquaintances -.026 -.026 -.026 .005 

 (.039) (.037) (.070) (.033) 

(6) Year*Sight Only Acquaintances .044 .070 -.170 -.049 

 (.046) (.048) (.103) (.038) 

(7) Year*Spouses -.071*

 (.031)

Year*Other Family Members -.001

(.055)

Year*Well-Known Acquaintances -.003

(.030)

Year*Casual Acquaintances -.045

(.038)

Year*Sight Only Acquaintances .013

 (.047)

 -.093* .060 .021 

 (.035) (.056) (.040) 

-.004 -.025 -.004 

 (.055) (.115) (.048) 

-.013 .038 .013 

 (.034) (.055) (.033) 

-.052 -.019 .011 

 (.039) (.074) (.041) 

.032 -.179 -.040 

 (.049) (.110) (.045) 

*p < .05, two-tailed test Note: Models shown include main effects for year and all victim, offender, and incident 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Proportion 

.10.00.20 .30 .40 .50 .60 .70 .80 .90 

1.00 

Figure 4. Predicted Probabilities of Police Notification for Female Victims of Non-Sexual Assaul

NCS NCVS 

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

All Stranger Non-Stranger 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Appendix A. Definitions and Metrics for Control Variables Included in Analysis of Changes in 

the Likelihood of Police Notification, 1973-2000 

Dependent Variables 

Police Notified 

Victim or Third Party 

Reported 

Explanatory Variables 

Year 

Non-Strangers 

Spouses 

Other Family Members 

Well-Known Acquaintances 

Casual Acquaintances 

Sight Only Acquaintances 

Variable Definition and Metric 

Dichotomous variable coded 1 if the victim or somebody else reported the 

incident to the police and coded 0 for incidents in which the police were not 

notified. 

Polytomous variable coded 1 if the victim reported the incident to the

police, coded 2 if a third party (i.e., another household member, a non law 

enforcement official, or anybody else) reported the incident, and coded 3 

if the incident was not reported to the police. 

Continuous indicator of the year of occurrence of the incident reported by the 

victim, coded chronologically within the two study periods. 

Dichotomous variable coded 1 for incidents in which the victim identified the 

offender as a spouse or ex-spouse, parent, brother, sister, child, other relative, 

current and former boyfriend/girlfriend, friend, co-worker, neighbor, or 

roommate, and coded 0 for incidents that involved an offender who was 

a stranger. 

Dichotomous variable coded 1 for incidents committed by current and former 

husband, and coded 0 otherwise. 

Dichotomous variable coded 1 for incidents committed by a parent, sibling, 

child, or other relative, and coded 0 otherwise. 

Dichotomous variable coded 1 for incidents committed by a current or former 

boyfriend, co-worker, neighbor, roommate, or other non-relative who the 

victim knew well, and coded 0 otherwise. 

Dichotomous variable coded 1 for incidents committed by a co-worker, 

neighbor, roommate, or other non-relative who the victim knew casually, and 

coded 0 otherwise. 

Dichotomous variable coded 1 for incidents committed by somebody known 

only by sight, and coded 0 otherwise. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Appendix A. (Continued) 

Control Variables 

Victim Characteristics 

Race 

Marital Status 

Age 

Household Poverty 

Education 

Homeowner 

Offender Characteristics 

Race 

Age 

Incident Characteristics 

Completed Crime 

Multiple Offenders 

Offender Weapon Possession 

Third Party Present 

Physical Injury to Victim 

Offender Used Physical Force 

Private Location 

Interview Type 

Variable Definition and Metric 

Four dichotomous variables that distinguish between victims who 

self-identify as Hispanic, non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, 

or American Indian or Asian. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 for victims who report being married 

at the time of the interview and 0 for all others. 

Victim's age in years. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 for victims with household income below the 

federal poverty threshold for year of interview and coded 0 for all others. 

Number of completed years of schooling. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 for victims who own their home 

(or whose family owns its home) and 0 for all others. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 for offenders identified by victims 

as black and 0 for offenders identified as non-black. 

Dichotomous variables indicating the victim's report of whether the offender 

was under age 18 or 18 and older. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 for completed rapes and 0 for attempted 

rapes. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 for incidents involving more than one 

offender and 0 for incidents committed by a lone offender. 

Four dichotomous variables that distinguish incidents in which the victim 

reported that the offender had a gun, the offender had some other 

weapon, the victim was not certain about whether the offender was armed, 

and the offender was unarmed. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 if somebody besides the victim and 

offender was present during the incident, and coded 0 otherwise. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 if the victim received gunshot or knife 

wounds, broken bones or teeth, internal injuries, or bruises, cuts, or 

scratches, and coded 0 otherwise. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 for incidents in which the offender hit or 

shot the victim, stabbed or attacked the victim with a knife, hit the victim 

with another object, or slapped or knocked down the victim, and coded 

0 if no force was used. 

Dichotomous variable scored 1 if the incident occurred in a private place, 

and coded 0 otherwise. 

Three dichotomous variables that distinguish incidents in which the victim 

was interviewed in person, through CATI, or by phone (non-CATI). 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.