DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37296.v2
title: National Crime Victimization Survey, [United States], 2016: Revised Version
title: Version 2

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 1973. 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, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism. 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. This version of the NCVS, referred to as the collection year, contains records from interviews conducted in the 12 months of the given year. This dataset represents the revised version of the NCVS on a collection year basis for 2016. A collection year contains records from interviews conducted in the 12 months of the given year. Under the collection year format, victimizations are counted in the year the interview is conducted, regardless of the year when the crime incident occurred. The 2016 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) violent and property crime estimates were significantly higher than 2015, but it was not possible to determine the degree to which the change in rates resulted from the sample redesign rather than real changes in U.S. victimization levels. Therefore, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) examined the 2015 and 2016 victimization rates separately for new and continuing sample counties in the 2016 Criminal Victimization bulletin. The BJS requested that the Census Bureau create a 2016 revised file with outgoing county interviews from July-December 2015, continuing county interviews from January-June 2016, and all interviews (continuing and new counties) from July-December 2016. In other words, the outgoing 2015 cases replaced the new 2016 cases in the first half of 2016. The files in this study serve as a separate research file to allow data users to make comparisons between 2015, 2016, and 2017 NCVS estimates using a nationally representative sample. It provides a sample that still represents the entire country but does not have the inflated crime rates seen in the new counties in 2016.
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: 2016 Collection Year Incident-Level Extract File
description: All persons in the United States aged 12 and older. Smallest Geographic Unit: region
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); face-to-face interviewIn February 2018, several errors in classifying cases on the collapsed occupation code variable (V4482B) were discovered. The corrected data are only included in the NCVS 1992-2017 concatenated data file (study number 37198). Data users should download these files if they want to use this variable. More information on the corrected data are in the 1992-2017 codebook. The incorrect data are still in the NCVS 2011-2016 collection year and concatenated year files.In 2016, the NCVS sample was redesigned. Working with the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Justice Statistics devised a methodology for creating the revised 2016 NCVS data file to allow for comparisons between the 2016 data and prior (and future) data years. This study includes revised data from a previously published study (ICPSR 36828).The 2016 Collection Year Incident-Level Extract File was created from the record-type files and includes information on victims of crime; nonvictims are not included. Under the collection year format a crime incident is included based on when the interview is conducted, not on when the crime incident occurred.The data were collected by the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.Beginning with the 2011 collection year, data contain replicate weights for household, person, incident, and victimization to facilitate standard error computations given the sampling design of NCVS.Beginning with the 2012 collection year, data have a change in how the victimization totals are computed. Series crimes are now included with up to 10 occurrences.