CRIME RATESNCVS Data. The NCVS may well provide a
more accurate picture of crime rate trends and
comparative crime rates than the UCR. As Sellin’s
(1931, p. 346) dictum suggests, ‘‘the value of a
crime for index purposes decreases as the distance
from the crime itself in terms of procedure in-
creases.’’ Further, the NCVS standardizes the pro-
cedures it uses in compiling crime incidents. When
the NCVS changes its procedures, careful meth-
odological studies evaluate the changes.
Although the incidents reported to NCVS in-
terviewers need not depend upon a respondent
contacting the police, the police responding to the
contact, and eventually police recording of the
incident as founded, respondents do need to re-
spond appropriately in an interview situation in
order for an incident to be recorded as a victimiza-
tion in the NCVS. In this context, note that the
interview situation is a social interaction. The in-
terviewers have little to offer respondentd for
their time. Respondents may be reluctant to share
embarrassing information with the interviewer,
such as a fight at a bar, an assault by a relative, or a
sexual assault. As noted earlier, sometimes respon-
dents may forget about incidents or telescope the
incidents into or out of the reference period.
Turner (1972) used ‘‘reverse record’’ checks
to investigate 206 cases of robbery, assault, and
rape found in police records. Interviewers inter-
viewed these ‘‘known victims’’ using an NCVS-like
technique. Only 63.1 percent of these ‘‘known
incidents’’ were reported to interviewers. The per-
centage reporting these incidents to the interview-
er was strongly related to the relationship of the
offender to the victim. Respondents reported 76.3
percent of the incidents involving a stranger; 56.9
percent of the incidents involving known offend-
ers; and only 22.2 percent of the incidents involv-
ing a relative.
Not all of this underreporting of incidents to
the interviewers is attributable to embarrassment.
Turner (1972) found a strong relationship be-
tween the number of months between the inter-
view and the incident and the respondents’ report-
ing of the incident to the interviewer. Respondents
recalled 69 percent of the incidents occurring one
to three months before the interview, 50 percent
of those occurring four to six months before, 46
percent of those occurring six to nine months
before, and only 30 percent of those occurring ten
to twelve months before.
Self-Report Data. Like UCR and NCVS data,
self-report data contain their own weaknesses. As
with the NCVS data, the survey research situation
raises questions of honesty, forgetting, bounding
the reference period, and so on. Some problems
are more severe than those encountered by the
NCVS. One of these problems is sample size; even
the best-financed surveys—like the National Youth
Survey (Elliot et al. 1983)—have samples of less
than 2,000. Such small samples almost guarantee
large sampling errors associated with the resulting
crime rates (especially for serious crimes). Small
sample size further limits the usefulness of these
data for conducting regional analyses (e.g., esti-
mating the crime rates for states or cities). Similar-
ly, it limits the accuracy of these estimates for
comparing the crime rates for groups such as
Hispanics or Asian females. Unlike the NCVS,
many self-report surveys do not involve panels in
which respondents are reinterviewed over an ex-
tended period of time (the NYS is an exception) so
that the interviews cannot be bounded. Often the
response rates are quite low. In the NYS (Elliot et
al. 1983), a sample of 2,360 eligible youth original-
ly were selected and of these 73 percent agreed to
participate in the first wave of data collection in- By 1980 the sample size dropped to 1,494 or
63 percent of the original sample. This contrasts
with initial response rates well in excess of 90
percent for the NCVS.
Two other issues need mention. First, self-
report studies concentrate on relatively trivial be-
haviors, such as lying to parents, defying authority,
or cheating on tests. One reason for concentrating
on such behaviors is that they are more commonly
reported. Given the small sample sizes typical of
self-report studies, these behaviors may be more
reliably measured. Second, some studies do not
accurately gauge the frequency of ‘‘delinquent
behaviors.’’ They use response sets such as ‘‘no,’’
‘‘once or twice,’’ or ‘‘several times.’’ Experienced
researchers now ask about a wide range of behav-
iors and more specifically ask about the frequency
of these behaviors. In the NYS, Elliot et al. (1983)
ask about ‘‘arson,’’ ‘‘prostitution,’’ and ‘‘physical
threat for sex’’ as well as ‘‘skipped class’’ and
‘‘didn’t return change.’’ They use response catego-
ries such as ‘‘2–3 times a day,’’ ‘‘once a day,’’ ‘‘2–3
time a week,’’ ‘‘once a week,’’ ‘‘once every 2–3