The Source for Crime and Justice Data

Description & Citation--Study No. 22900

Bibliographic Description

Study No.:

22900

Title:

National Crime Victimization Survey, 2004 [Record-Type Files]

Principal Investigator(s):

United States Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Funding:

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

Bibliographic Citation:

United States Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Crime Victimization Survey, 2004 [Record-Type Files]. ICPSR22900-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-12-11. doi:10.3886/ICPSR22900.v2

Series:

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Series

Scope of Study

Summary:

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 1972. 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, and motor vehicle theft. 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:
  • 2004

Date of Collection:
  • 2004  (First six months)
  • 2005

Unit of Observation:

household, individual, crime incident

Universe:

All persons in the United States aged 12 and over.

Data Types:

survey data

Data Collection Notes:

This version of NCVS data is an alternative to NCVS data available in hierarchical format. Under this version the four record types that comprise the hierarchical file are available as four separate rectangular files. The use of four record-type files simplifies the use of the data while maintaining all of the information and functionality present in the hierarchical format.

The 2004 Incident-Level Extract File was created from the record-type files and includes information on victims of crime. Nonvictims are not included. Records were extracted from the Incident Record-Type File and bounded by the year that the incident occurred. These records were then merged to their parent records from the Person Record-Type and Household Record-Type files.

A separate data collection, NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY, 1992-2005: CONCATENATED FILES (ICPSR 4699), contains a multi-year concatenated incident-level file and rape subset file.

The data were collected by the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

Methodology

Sample:

Stratified multistage cluster sample.

Weight:

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.

Mode of Data Collection:

computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI), face-to-face interview, telephone interview

Extent of Processing:

All archived data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. The archive 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, the archive 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.

Access and Availability

Note:

Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.

Original ICPSR Release:

2008-07-26

Restrictions:

This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited.

Version History:

  • 2008-12-11 The data collection was updated to reflect additional industry and occupation codes provided by the United States Census Bureau.

Dataset(s):
  • DS1: Address Record-Type File
  • DS2: Household Record-Type File
  • DS3: Person Record-Type File
  • DS4: Incident Record-Type File
  • DS5: 2004 Incident-Level Extract File