National Crime Victimization Survey, 1992-2005: Concatenated Incident-Level Files

This data collection is an extract created from the
individual years of the National Crime Victimization Survey. Each
record contains information on a crime incident occurring in the given
calendar year. Part 1 contains all crime incidents, and data Part
2 contains the crimes of rape and attempted rape only. The National
Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), previously called the
National Crime Surveys (NCS), has been collecting data on personal and
household victimization through an ongoing survey of a
nationally-representative sample of residential addresses since
1973. The NCVS was designed with four primary objectives: (1) to
develop detailed information about the victims and consequences of
crime, (2) to estimate the number and types of crimes not reported to
the police, (3) to provide uniform measures of selected types of
crimes, and (4) to permit comparisons over time and types of
areas. The survey categorizes crimes as "personal" or "property."
Personal crimes include rape and sexual attack, robbery, aggravated
and simple assault, and purse-snatching/pocket-picking, while property
crimes include burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and
vandalism. Each respondent is asked a series of screen questions
designed to determine whether she or he was victimized during the
six-month period preceding the first day of the month of the
interview. A "household respondent" is also asked to report on crimes
against the household as a whole (e.g., burglary, motor vehicle
theft). The data include type of crime, month, time, and location of
the crime, relationship between victim and offender, characteristics
of the offender, self-protective actions taken by the victim during
the incident and results of those actions, consequences of the
victimization, type of property lost, whether the crime was reported
to police and reasons for reporting or not reporting, and offender use
of weapons, drugs, and alcohol. Basic demographic information such as
age, race, gender, and income is also collected, to enable analysis of
crime by various subpopulations.