National Crime Victims Survey Analysis Paper Example

Briefly explain how Data is collected in The NCVS, The National Crime Victims Survey?

According to Karmen (2016), the National Crime Victims Survey provides projections for various regions and for the whole country based on incidents voluntarily disclosed to interviewers by a broad national sample retrieved from the public. The lack of consistent statistics regarding rates of criminal activities by the local enforcement agencies prompted victimologists and criminologists to collect their separate data. The specialists rely on the National Crime Victims Survey to collect relevant data. The NCVS survey is person-centered and it is designed to uncover the suffering and the losses experienced by entire households housing individuals of twelve years of age and above. The questionnaire focuses on crimes of violence such as burglary, forcible rape, and aggravated assault (Bureau of Justice Statistics, n.d). The survey also inquires two types of theft from individuals, which include personal larceny with contact such as pickpocketing, and personal robbery without direct contact. Three types of stealing directed at the common property of households are also evaluated in the questionnaire. The process of data collection involves the use of small self-report survey. In this first method, small samples of individuals are promised anonymity and confidentiality if they confess about questions regarding some of the crimes they have committed. The purpose of this procedure is to reveal greater levels of illegal acts that are not available in the official statistics of government reports. The next step that researchers undertake is to query people from different regions about any street crimes that have been committed against them rather than them (Karmen, 2016). The NCVS respondents answer questions that are more than twenty pages. The participants are interviewed every six months for a period of three years. The questions in the questionnaires involve a series of screening items where the participant is required to answer yes or no and provide additional information regarding the response. Further questions attempt to discover any relationships between the offender and the victim. Additionally, the participants of the survey are also asked to provide the reasons why they reported or did not report the crime to the nearest police. The survey tracks relevant information such as age, sex, race, ethnicity, income level, marital status, and place of residence of the individuals disclosing their information to the interviewers. The survey provides physical injuries or financial losses sustained. It also records victims' perceptions about the perpetrators of the crime.

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What Types of Crime and Victimization Data is Provided by this Survey that Is not Available in other Official Crime Data Sources such as the Uniform Crime Reports?

According to Karmen (2016), the NCVS provides information about the respondents who claim street criminals harmed them. The NCVS is also a great source for a more inclusive accounting of criminal activities that happened in a particular year. The survey also contains information about crimes that were reported and those not reported to the police. On the other hand, the Uniform Crime Report offers particular information that is not found in the NCVS. Firstly, the UCR provides data about murder victims who have committed homicide. The file contains information regarding the slain person such as sex, ethnicity, place of residence, ancestry, and birthplace. The UCR also provides data about officers who were slain on the line of duty. The report also includes college students harmed on campuses and hate crimes among various street gangs. Moreover, the report also contains geographically based statistics such as information about offenses conducted against law officials in various cities, towns, counties, metropolitan areas, and the whole country (Karmen, 2016). The UCR report also calculates the proportion of reported crimes that are solved by police departments.

What are some of the Weaknesses of the NCVS

Similar to other data collection surveys, the NCVS is coupled with many shortcomings. The process of asking participants about their recent misfortunes was thought as a breakthrough that would provide accurate statistics of data than those found in the UCR; however, the method has failed to display its dominance in proving the amount of interpersonal violence and theft. Equally important, the findings of the NCVS are only reliable when the national sample is the true representative of the whole country. The presence of bias in the findings results in the projections of the individuals that were not interviewed to be too high or too low. Furthermore, the fact that NCVS is house-based, it might make the survey fail to collect data and the experiences of transients such as homeless people, inmates, and individuals who wish to keep a low profile, especially immigrants (Karmen, 2016).

The credibility of the information provided to the pollsters is also an issue that requires further investigation. Underreporting is also a significant shortcoming of the NCVS. Some individuals fail to report criminal activities because of communication barriers, which can hinder them to narrate an incident that was conducted against them. Besides, some individuals also choose to keep the information to themselves instead of telling the police. Over-reporting is another weakness in the survey where some participants exaggerate information or lie due to various individual motives. The problem in this scenario is that experienced professionals filter out any information provided by the respondents; however, the NCVS lacks a quality control over what people tell the interviewers. Equality important, the survey fails to verify some of the assertions made by the respondents. For instance, when an individual narrates of an incident that was reported to the police, the interviewers fail to double check the story of the participant with that of the police records. Over-reporting also results in telescoping, which is the tendency to remember traumatic events and believe that the past events were serious crimes that were committed recently. For this case, forward telescoping results in over-reporting. Another weakness that faces the NCVS is that any systematic suppression of facts would throw off the survey's projection of the truth regarding criminal activities. Examples of evidence that could draw off the study include young men being robbed while trying to purchase illegal drugs in the streets, teenage girls to disclose that they suffered date rapes, and women refusing to reveal information regarding husband battery (Karmen, 2016).

The NCVS also fails to probe crimes committed against children under the age of twelve. The survey lacks information about physical and sexual abuse by the caretakers, kidnappings by acquaintances, and child molestations (Karmen, 2016). Memory decay among the participants interviewed also causes the loss of significant information that would have been used to indicate minor offenses that resulted in severe injuries. Another weakness of the NCVS is that it surveys a smaller sample size to identify the crime and victimization rates. Statistics indicate that data from small subsamples contain numerous margin errors (Karmen, 2016). The NCVS thus requires a larger sample to obtain optimum results; however, the process is expensive to conduct. Furthermore, the seriousness of a crime in a particular county or metropolitan area cannot be recorded accurately because the national sample cannot be broken down into smaller subgroups that can be utilized to determine effective sizes for statistical analysis. The confidence interval is another weakness of the NCVS. The rates of the survey are quantified by plus or minus a particular margin of error that depends on the size of the sample. Therefore, it becomes statistically questionable to determine actual results when using a smaller subsample.

What is a Prevalence Rate?

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (n.d), a prevalence rate is the number of individuals or households per one thousand, who have experienced at least one victimization during that particular year.

Define Comparative Risks. What is the purpose of Reporting Crime, Victimization or Health Data in Comparative Rates?

A comparative risk is an error that arises during the systematic evaluation of changes in a population to determine data that can be used for comparison between two or more survey measures then there lacks comparability between the findings. For instance, a comparative risk is a process of measuring data obtained by the UCR and the NCVS and look for comparability between the outcomes. Both the UCR and the NCVS collect data about the same crimes, but due to the differing definitions of particular offenses, a comparative risk arises that makes it difficult to compare data from the two surveys (Karmen, 2016). For instance, the definitions for burglary and robbery are not the same in the two data collection methods. Additionally, the denominations of the two methods also differ thus creating a comparative risk.

Reporting crime, victimization, and health data in comparative rates are essential facts that can help victimologists to collect relevant data regarding the prevalence of a particular crime, number of perpetrators, number of victims, and incidence reported and those not reported to the police. Equally important, data collected from crime, victimization, and health date by both UCR and NCVS can assist the two survey approaches to compare their findings for credibility and future policymaking.

Explain why the Crime Clock is a Manipulative Measure of crime?According to Karmen (2016), Crime Clock is a set of statistics with the intention to summarize the big picture issued yearly by the FBI in the UCR. The Crime Clock assumes that as time passes in each second, minute, hour, and day, the amount of criminals and criminal activities keeps on rising, and the number of victims continues to increase. The statistics provided by the Crime Clock alerts the reader that crimes of violence and theft are too prevalent in the society. As time elapses, a significant number of casualties stream morgues, hospitals, and police stations throughout the nation. The statistics offered by the Crime Clock depicts that becoming a victim of crime in this contemporary society is inevitable. However, the Crime Clock is a manipulative measure of crime that is meant to elicit mixed feelings regarding crime and victimization in the country. The findings of the Crime Clock are mere underestimates arising from various shortcomings of the methodology. The FBI argues that the findings of the Crime Clock are a tip of the iceberg and should be interpreted with care. However, the Crime Clock approach results in media sensationalism, marketing ploys, and fear-mongering political campaigns. The heightened anxiety among the public can result in the sales of automobile antitheft devices, burglar alarms, and crime insurance. For this case, it is evident that the Crime Clock manipulative effect relies on underestimates that enable the citizens to be manipulated by individuals who sell various security programs and devices that comprise of other hidden costs unknown to the customer. The data, therefore, influences an increase of crime in the country...