National Private Security Survey Design

The National Private Security Survey Design project involves researching, developing, designing, and drafting three plan options for the implementation of a National Private Security Survey (NPSS). The primary objective of the award is to produce technical specifications for this multi-survey data collection on private security officers and the companies that employ them. When the design component of the project is later implemented, the NPSS will serve as the counterpart to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) collection. The NPSS will provide data on the demographic characteristics, workload, clients, selection, training, and expenditures of a national sample of contract security companies and a stratified national sample of employers of proprietary security officers and investigators across various industries. Under the design solicitation, the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), in cooperation with BJS and experts in the field, will design data collection instruments for both the contract and proprietary sides of the NPSS and will produce three plans for the implementation of the NPSS based on sampling methodologies with ascending levels of sample scope, estimation specificity, and budget. Based on the implementation plan selected by BJS, awardees will conduct two field tests, for the proprietary and contract security components of the NPSS, to assess the feasibility of the implementation plan. An additional objective of the project is to produce an extensive literature review and secondary analysis of existing sources of data on the private security field in general. The report produced from the literature review and secondary analysis will serve as an important source of information on what is known about private security and where there are noticeable gaps in private security research and information.

CA/NCF