Methods for Counting High-Frequency Repeat Victimizations in the National Crime Victimization Survey. Technical Series Report. NCJ 237308.

Executive Summary As part of ongoing research efforts associated with the redesign of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has investigated ways to include high-frequency repeat victimizations, or series victimizations, in estimates of criminal victimization. Including series victimizations would obtain a more accurate estimate of victimization. This report summarizes the research results and describes changes in BJS's enumeration practices regarding the treatment of series victimizations when estimating annual victimization rates. The NCVS's primary purpose is to accurately estimate the number and type of criminal victimizations that occur each year in the United States. To enumerate and classify victimizations, the NCVS employs an interview procedure that asks respondents to recall specific types of criminal events that occurred over the previous 6 months. Repeatedly victimized persons have experiences that present considerable challenges for the accurate counting and description of criminal events. These experiences involve multiple crimes that are often indistinguishable to victims, making it difficult for them to separate the details of each event. Such experiences may include intimate partner violence or bullying by schoolmates. To handle these repeated victimizations, the NCVS employs a series victimization protocol. Currently, the NCVS records a series victimization when the respondent reported experiencing six or more similar crimes during the 6-month reference period and was unable to recall or describe each event in detail. If all of these conditions are met, the NCVS interviewer records the victim's report of the number of times this type of victimization occurred and collects detailed information only for the most recent victimization. Although information about series victimizations is collected in the NCVS, BJS typically excludes series victimizations from annual estimates of crime. This enumeration practice resulted from concerns about the accuracy of the victimization count, whether each victimization in the series occurred within the reference period, and whether characteristics of the most recent victimization (such as whether an injury occurred) would apply to the other victimizations in the series. To assess the strengths and weaknesses for enumerating and classifying series victimizations into national victimization estimates, this report examined the extent and the nature of series victimization in the NCVS and reviewed the general patterns and statistical properties of victims' responses to being asked how many times the incident occurred. Series victimization analyses also examined how different treatments would affect conclusions about the victimization level and annual rate of change for various crime types and …