BJS FY2010 Visiting Fellow: National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Redesign

BJS has initiated a number of research projects related to the NCVS redesign. Many of these projects have required the resources of large scale research organizations to effectively accomplish the tasks required. The tasks outlined in this solicitation do not require such resources, but can be effectively undertaken by a researcher with knowledge of the NCVS program, and experience in survey design working with BJS staff.

The primary goals of the NCVS Visiting Fellow are to evaluate the optimal methods to incorporate repeat victimization into annual estimates.

The tasks involved include:

1. Review of other national victimization surveys to examine how repeat victimizations are identified, classified and counted;

2. Examination of the precision and attributes of current NCVS items collected for series and other repeat victimizations;

3. Exploration of additional survey questions that could be developed to help clarify how series incidents could be integrated into national estimates, including questions about the consistency of injury and weapon use across incidents with series victimizations;

4. Generating analytical procedures and options for including individual prevalence estimates in the bulletin and other BJS reports;

5. Developing options for experiments or a detailed supplemental study to further investigate the details and characteristics of series incidents, and the impact of including them in annual estimates of victimization.

6. Analysis of NCVS longitudinal data to examine repeat victimization across a one year and/or longer time periods.

CA/NCF