DOI: 10.3886/icpsr22924.v1
title: National Crime Victimization Survey, 1997 [Record-Type Files]
title: Version 1

description: The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Series, previously called the National Crime Surveys (NCS), has been collecting data on personal and household victimization through an ongoing survey of a nationally-representative sample of residential addresses since 1972. The NCVS was designed with four primary objectives: (1) to develop detailed information about the victims and consequences of crime, (2) to estimate the number and types of crimes not reported to the police, (3) to provide uniform measures of selected types of crimes, and (4) to permit comparisons over time and types of areas. The survey categorizes crimes as "personal" or "property." Personal crimes include rape and sexual attack, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and purse-snatching/pocket-picking, while property crimes include burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft. Each respondent is asked a series of screen questions designed to determine whether she or he was victimized during the six-month period preceding the first day of the month of the interview. A "household respondent" is also asked to report on crimes against the household as a whole (e.g., burglary, motor vehicle theft). The data include type of crime, month, time, and location of the crime, relationship between victim and offender, characteristics of the offender, self-protective actions taken by the victim during the incident and results of those actions, consequences of the victimization, type of property lost, whether the crime was reported to police and reasons for reporting or not reporting, and offender use of weapons, drugs, and alcohol. Basic demographic information such as age, race, gender, and income is also collected, to enable analysis of crime by various subpopulations.
description: The data files include several weight variables used to calculate national estimates of: households, persons, victimizations, and incidents. The codebook describes how to use the weights.
description: Stratified multistage cluster sample.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Address Record-Type File DS2: Household Record-Type File DS3: Person Record-Type File DS4: Incident Record-Type File DS5: 1997 Incident-Level Extract File
description: All persons in the United States aged 12 and over. Smallest Geographic Unit: region
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI); face-to-face interview; telephone interviewThis version of NCVS data is an alternative to NCVS data available in hierarchical format. Under this version the four record types that comprise the hierarchical file are available as four separate rectangular files. The use of four record-type files simplifies the use of the data while maintaining all of the information and functionality present in the hierarchical format.The 1997 Incident-Level Extract File was created from the record-type files and includes information on victims of crime. Nonvictims are not included. Records were extracted from the Incident Record-Type File and bounded by the year that the incident occurred. These records were then merged to their parent records from the Person Record-Type and Household Record-Type files.A separate data collection, NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY, 1992-2005: CONCATENATED FILES (ICPSR 4699), contains a multi-year concatenated incident-level file and rape subset file.The data were collected by the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.