National Victimization Statistical Support Program

This award will support a host of activities associated with the implementation of BJS's National Victimization Statistical Support Program (NVSSP) project.

The NVSSP is being designed to:

A. Provide scientific and technical support for statistical and methodological research, statistical analyses, documentation, and dissemination in support of BJS's efforts related to the redesign of its National Criminal Victimization Survey (NCVS);

B. Enhance BJS's statistical reporting program from the NCVS and other federal data on criminal victimization; and

C. Support BJS efforts to use the NCVS to inform its future decisions about the design and content of its victimization statistics program.

Through this project, BJS seeks to expand its capacity to conduct analyses of the NCVS and create technical documentation related to the survey's collection process. The goal is to increase the breadth of substantive issues that are addressed with the NCVS, both in the short-run and longer-term.

Through the NVSSP, BJS seeks to achieve various NCVS-reklated analytical enhancement. These include: (1) enhancing capabilities of the current NCVS to address key substantive issues in criminal victimization and to better understand the limitations of the current design for addressing these issues; (2) enhancing BJS's capacity to use the NCVS and other statistical collections to report on key policy issues in criminal victimization; and (3) enhancing the use of the NCVS by the broader research and stakeholder communities.

The NVSSP will assist BJS in its efforts to increase the utility and value of the NCVS, both internally and externally, and contribute to BJS developing a more active statistical research program in criminal victimization.

The primary tasks necessary to achieve these objectives include:

1) implementing the statistical research agenda that BJS and NVSSP devise;

2) producing routine statistical tabulations from the NCVS and responding to requests for routine statistics;

3) enhancing technical documentation about the NCVS data;

4) establishing a secure public- and restricted-use data center;

5) compiling other data on criminal victimization;

6) identifying research affiliates and facilitating their involvement in implementing the NVSSP statistical research agenda;

7) developing a dissemination strategy; and

8) devising, implementing, and maintaining a project communications strategy.

CA/NCF