DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37322.v1
title: National Crime Victimization Survey, Concatenated File, [United States], 1992-2018
title: Version 1

description: The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), previously called the National Crime Survey (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. Beginning in 1992, the survey categorizes crimes as "personal" or "property." Personal crimes include rape and sexual assault, 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 1992-2018. 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 on the dataset, please see the documentation for the data from the most current year of the NCVS, ICPSR Study 37297.
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: Concatenated Household File DS2: Concatenated Person File DS3: Concatenated Incident 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 included in the NCVS concatenated data files beginning in 1992-2017 (study number 37198) and going forward. Data users should download these files if they want to use this variable. More information on the corrected data are in the 1992-1997 codebook. The incorrect data are still in the NCVS 2011-2016 collection year and concatenated year files.In 2016, the NCVS sample was redesigned. This redesign impacted the victimization estimates for 2016 and their comparability to estimates from previous years. Please see the 2016 codebook for more information on those changes.The 2016 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.Beginning with 2011, annual data files contain replicate weights for household, person, incident, and victimization to facilitate standard error computations given the sampling design of NCVS.Beginning with 2012, the data have a change in how the victimization totals are computed. Series crimes are now included with up to 10 occurrences.The data were collected by the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.