National Crime Surveys: National Sample, 1973-1983 (ICPSR 7635)
Version Date: Oct 5, 1998 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07635.v6
Version V6
Summary View help for Summary
The National Crime Survey (NCS), a study of personal and household victimization, measures victimization for six selected crimes, including attempts. The NCS was designed to achieve three primary objectives: to develop detailed information about the victims and consequences of crime, to estimate the number and types of crimes not reported to police, and to provide uniform measures of selected types of crime. The surveys cover the following types of crimes, including attempts: rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny, and auto or motor vehicle theft. Crimes such as murder, kidnapping, shoplifting, and gambling are not covered. Questions designed to obtain data on the characteristics and circumstances of the victimization were asked in each incident report. Items such as time and place of occurrence, injuries suffered, medical expenses incurred, number, age, race, and sex of offender(s), relationship of offender(s) to victim (stranger, casual acquaintance, relative, etc.), and other detailed data relevant to a complete description of the incident were included. Legal and technical terms, such as assault and larceny, were avoided during the interviews. Incidents were later classified in more technical terms based upon the presence or absence of certain elements. In addition, data were collected in the study to obtain information on the victims' education, migration, labor force status, occupation, and income. Full data for each year are contained in Parts 101-110. Incident-level extract files (Parts 1-10, 41) are available to provide users with files that are easy to manipulate. The incident-level datasets contain each incident record that appears in the full sample file, the victim's person record, and the victim's household information. These data include person and household information for incidents only. Subsetted person-level files also are available as Parts 50-79. All of the variables for victims are repeated for a maximum of four incidents per victim. There is one person-level subset file for each interview quarter of the complete national sample from 1973 through the second interview quarter in 1980.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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Parts 101-110, the Full Files, are hierarchically structured into multiple levels. For the 1973-1977 files, the hierarchy comprises three levels: household, person, and incident. For the 1978-1982 files, the hierarchy consists of four levels: header record, household, person, and incident. There are 103 variables for an average of 35,000 households per quarter, 102 variables for an average of 65,000 persons per quarter, and 310 variables for an average of 8,000 incidents per quarter.
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Users should note that there is an introductory section in the documentation for this data collection that explains the hierarchical datasets, rate estimating procedures, and standard error estimating procedures. Additional information on the sample also is provided.
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The files are not numbered consecutively.
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The codebooks are provided as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided through the ICPSR Website on the Internet.
Sample View help for Sample
A national sample of households was drawn using a stratified multistage cluster procedure. Rotating subsamples were reinterviewed at six-month intervals. Interviews were conducted with each household member over 12 years old. In generating the person-level file, a full sample of victims and a 10-percent sample of non-victims for up to four incidents were employed.
Universe View help for Universe
Population of the United States over 12 years of age.
Data Source View help for Data Source
personal interviews
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
1984-03-18
Version History View help for Version History
- U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. NATIONAL CRIME SURVEYS: NATIONAL SAMPLE, 1973-1983. Conducted by U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. 6th ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1998. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07635.v6
1998-10-05 The column location of Variable 1028 has been corrected in three codebooks: (1) the codebook for full files 1973-1976, incident-level files 1973-1982, and person-level files 1973-1978 (Part 111), (2) the codebook for the 1977 full file, incident-level files 1973-1982, and person-level files 1973-1978 (Part 112), and (3) the codebook for the 1978 full file, incident-level files 1973-1982, and person-level files 1973-1978 (Part 113). In addition, all the codebooks are now available as PDF files, and SAS and SPSS data definition statements have been added to the collection.
1997-03-07 The column location of variable 1028 has been corrected in three codebooks: (1) the codebook for full files 1973-1976, incident-level files 1973-1982, and person-level files 1973-1978, (2) the codebook for the 1977 full file, incident-level files 1973-1982, and person-level files 1973-1978, and (3) the codebook for the 1978 full file, incident-level files 1973-1982, and person-level files 1973-1978.
1984-03-18 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 recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.
This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.