DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34907.v1
title: National Crime Victimization Survey: Concatenated Files, 1992-2012
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 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 dataset represents the concatenated version of the NCVS on a collection year basis for 1992-2012. 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. For additional information, please see the documentation for the data from the most current year of the NCVS, ICPSR Study 34650.
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: 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.; Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Standardized missing values.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: Concatenated Household File 
 DS2: Concatenated Person File 
 DS3: Concatenated Incident File
description: National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Series
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI), face-to-face interview 
The 2012 concatenated files were created from the Household, Person, and Incident-Level collection year files and include information on victims of crime; nonvictims are not included.
The data were collected by the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.
The 2012 data contain replicate weights for household, person, incident, and victimization to facilitate standard error computations given the sampling design of NCVS.
The 2012 data have a change in how the victimization totals are computed. Series crimes are now included with up to 10 occurrences.
description: All persons in the United States aged 12 and older. Smallest Geographic Unit: region
description: Stratified multistage cluster sample.