Choosing the Correct File

The National Crime Victimization Survey is administered to persons age 12 or older from a nationally representative sample of approximately 90,000 households, made up of approximately 160,000 individuals, per year. Each household might include a different number of individuals and each person in the household might experience a different number of victimizations within that timeframe. In order to make analyses more efficient, the data are released as three separate files: (1) a household file, which includes information about the characteristics of the households; (2) a person file, which includes personal and demographic information about the respondents; and (3) an incident file, which includes information about the victimizations the respondents reported. Identification numbers are included in each of the files so that information can be linked across files. (There is also an address file that includes only administrative information for the household, such as the year and quarter of interview, panel identification, and household ID. This information is repeated in the three main files as appropriate).

Using the NCVS effectively requires knowledge of the types of research questions that could be answered with each data file. Calculating victimization rates requires data from the incident file and either the household or person file. For some research questions, the choice of files might be unclear. To help you think about file choice, some example research questions and their corresponding files are listed below.

Example Questions:	Files Needed:
	Incidents	Persons	Households
Are apartment dwellers more likely to be victimized than those who live in single-family homes?	X		X
Are all crimes more likely to take place after dark or are some more common during the day?	X
Are married people more likely than unmarried people to report crimes to the police?	X	X
Are single person households more likely to be victimized than households with multiple residents?	X		X
What are the most common settings in which sexual assaults take place (parks, alleys, private residences, etc.)?	X