DOI: 10.3886/icpsr36828.v3
title: National Crime Victimization Survey, [United States], 2016
title: NCVS 2016
title: Version 3

description: In October 2019, NACJD released a revised set of 2016 NCVS Public-Use Files. The National Crime Victimization Survey, [United States], 2016: Revised Version (ICPSR 37296) data collection contains the official 2016 NCVS data and replaces the previously published National Crime Victimization Survey, 2016 (ICPSR 36828) Public-Use Files. The initial files remain available for research purposes. 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.
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: 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: National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Series
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI)
description: face-to-face interview
description: All persons in the United States aged 12 and older. Smallest Geographic Unit: region
description: Stratified multistage cluster sample.