DOI: 10.3886/icpsr08608.v5
title: National Crime Surveys: National Sample, 1979-1987 [Revised Questionnaire]
title: Version 5

description: The purpose of the National Crime Surveys is to provide data on the level of crime victimization in the United States and to collect data on the characteristics of crime incidents and victims. Information about each household and personal victimization was recorded. The data include type of crime, description of the offender, severity of crime, injuries or losses, and demographic characteristics of household members.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Performed consistency checks.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: 1979 Full File 
 DS2: 1980 Full File 
 DS3: 1981 Full File 
 DS4: 1982 Full File 
 DS5: 1983 Full File 
 DS6: 1984 Full File 
 DS7: 1985 Full File 
 DS8: 1979 Incident File 
 DS9: 1980 Incident File 
 DS10: 1981 Incident File 
 DS11: 1982 Incident File 
 DS12: 1983 Incident File 
 DS13: 1984 Incident File 
 DS14: 1985 Incident File 
 DS16: 1979-1987 Incident-Level Concatenated File, All Victims, Bounded by Calendar Year 
 DS17: 1986 Full File 
 DS18: 1986 Incident File 
 DS19: 1987 Full File 
 DS20: 1987 Incident File 
 DS21: 1979 Person, All Victims for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS22: 1980 Person, All Victims for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS23: 1981 Person, All Victims for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS24: 1982 Person, All Victims for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS25: 1983 Person, All Victims, for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS26: 1984 Person, All Victims, for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS27: 1985 Person, All Victims, for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS28: 1986 Person, All Victims, for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS29: 1987 Person, All Victims, for Up to Four Incidents, 10-Percent Sample, Non-Victims 
 DS30: 1979-1987 Rape Subset, All Rape Cases, Incident-Level, Bounded by Calendar Year
description: The National Crime Surveys data are organized by collection quarter, and six quarters comprise an annual file. For example, for the 1979 file the four quarters of 1979 are included, as well as the first two quarters of 1980.
Parts 1-7 as well as Parts 17 and 19 are hierarchically structured, with four levels. The first level, the household ID, has a logical record length of 54 characters and contains 8 variables. The second level, the household, has a logical record length of 204 with 89 variables. The third, or person, level has a logical record length of 142 and 57 variables, and the final level, the incident level, has a logical record length of 481 with 327 variables. The case counts per level are as follows: household level: 178,324 to 217,814 per part, person level: 316,094 to 393,685 per part, incident level: 28,564 to 43,959 per part. The person-level files contain data on all victims with a maximum of four incidents each, and a 10-percent sample of non-victims. The unit of analysis is the victim.
The subset of rape cases includes attempts and completed rapes.
The codebooks and data collection instrument for this collection are provided by ICPSR as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.
description: All persons in the United States 12 years of age and older.
description: Stratified multistage cluster sample.