DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38149.v1
title: National Survey of Victim Service Providers, [United States], 2019
title: Version 1

description: The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) entered into a cooperative agreement with Westat to design and conduct the National Survey of Victim Service Providers (NSVSP). The NSVSP is jointly funded by the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and BJS. It is part of BJS's Victim Services Statistical Research Program that aims to provide comprehensive information about what services are being provided to victims, who is being served, and what gaps in service delivery may exist. The NSVSP provides a critical opportunity to address the existing knowledge gaps and enhance the victim services field to better serve the needs of crime victims. It collected detailed information on the number of victims served by type of crime, victim characteristics, services provided, criminal justice and community relationships, service gaps, and VSP staff size, turnover, and characteristics.
description: VSP weight included to produce point estimates of totals, means, and percentages. See the NSVSP Data User's Guide in the appendix of the codebook for more information.
description: Response Rates: Approximately 17.6% (1,276) of the 7,237 sampled VSPs were deemed ineligible. An additional 20.2% (1,460) had an unknown eligibility status. There were 3,269 eligible VSPs that responded to the NSVSP and the overall response rate was 57.7%. BJS used response rate 3 (RR3) as determined by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). RR3 is the most appropriate for the NSVSP because of the high proportion of VSPs that have an unknown eligibility status.
description: Using the 2017 National Census of Victim Service Providers (NCVSP) as the known universe of victim service providers (VSPs), the 2019 National Survey of Victim Service Providers (NSVSP) is the first follow-up survey that aims to collect detailed information on (1) services provided to crime victims, (2) staffing, and (3) organizational constraints to providing services from a nationally representative sample of victim service providers. The final NCVSP frame included 12,196 organizations in the United States that served victims as their primary function or with dedicated staff or programs. Informal and for-profit VSPs were considered ineligible for the NSVSP. After removing the ineligible and duplicate VSPs from the roster, 11,879 VSPs were left in the NSVSP sample frame, from which 7,237 VSPs were sampled. The NSVSP sample was selected using a single-stage stratified design to produce estimates for the nation as a whole and for the 14 U.S. states with the largest number of VSPs. This includes the 10 largest states based on population size (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan) as well as Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, and Colorado. The sample was also designed to produce sub-national estimates based on Census regions (South, West, Midwest, and Northeast). There were 39 primary strata based on geography and VSP types, and samples were drawn independently from each stratum. Some strata were sampled at a rate of 80% or more to account for small sample sizes, expected response rate, and possible VSP ineligibility. A 15% ineligibility rate was predicted due to the time between the NCVSP and NSVSP collections (see Services for Crime Victims, 2019, BJS web, for more information). In the strata sampled at a rate of 50 percent or lower, the VSPs were sub-stratified by the number of employees. VSPs with more employees were sampled at higher rates than VSPs with fewer employees due to the small number of them in the universe and NCVSP data showing they can have different characteristics from the smaller ones.
description: Datasets: DS1: National Survey of Victim Service Providers, [United States], 2019
description: All civilian organizations or programs that are dedicated to serving victims of crime or abuse in the United States that were included in the 2017 National Census of Victim Service Providers (NCVSP) frame. Smallest Geographic Unit: United States, select states and Census region
description: telephone interview; web-based survey