National Crime Victimization Survey, 1992-2005: Concatenated Incident-Level Files (ICPSR 4699)

Alternate Title:  NCVS, 2005

Principal Investigator(s): United States Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Summary: This data collection is an extract created from the individual years of the National Crime Victimization Survey. Each record contains information on a crime incident occurring in the given calendar year. Part 1 contains all crime incidents, and data Part 2 contains the crimes of rape and attempted rape only. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), previously called the National Crime Surveys (NCS), has been collecting data on personal and household victimization through an ongoing survey... (more info)

Series: National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Series

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United States Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Crime Victimization Survey, 1992-2005: Concatenated Incident-Level Files. ICPSR04699-v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-12-16. doi:10.3886/ICPSR04699.v3

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04699.v3

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This survey was funded by:

• United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Summary:   This data collection is an extract created from the individual years of the National Crime Victimization Survey. Each record contains information on a crime incident occurring in the given calendar year. Part 1 contains all crime incidents, and data Part 2 contains the crimes of rape and attempted rape only. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), 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.

Subject Terms:   assault, auto theft, burglary, crime, crime costs, crime rates, crime reporting, crime statistics, offenders, offenses, property crimes, rape, reactions to crime, robbery, sexual offenses, vandalism, victimization, victims

Smallest Geographic Unit:   region

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

• 1992--2005

Date of Collection:  

• 1992-01--2006-06

Unit of Observation:   household, person, crime incident

Universe:   All persons in the United States aged 12 and over.

Data Types:   survey data

Data Collection Notes:

Starting with year 2005, ICPSR split the NCVS data files into two studies, one for the concatenated incident-level files (contained in this data collection) and one for the single-year files. This allows for more complete documentation of variables that were added or dropped since the inception of the NCVS is 1992.

Sample:   Stratified multistage cluster sample.

Weight:   The data include ADJUSTED VICTIMIZATION WEIGHT - DATA YEAR (WGTVICDY) to calculate an estimate of victimizations. These data do not include sufficient records to calculate an estimate of household or person counts. To calculate household or person counts refer to the data collections for individual years' of NCVS data.

Mode of Data Collection:   computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI), face-to-face interview, telephone interview

Extent of Processing:  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.

Original ICPSR Release:  2007-05-02

Version History:

• 2008-12-16 The data collection was updated to reflect additional industry and occupation codes provided by the United States Census Bureau.
• 2008-07-16 The data were updated to reflect new weights provided by the Census Bureau.

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• ICPSR has created the following instructional guides that utilize data from this study:

  • Crime Victimization in the US: A Data-Driven Learning Guide

  Additional materials can be found on our Resources for Instructors site.

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