Local-Area Crime Survey, [United States], 2015, 2016

The incident-level survey (ILS) retains the core NCVS approach of using victimization probes followed by questions about reported incidents, although with less detail than the NCVS. The response structure is to ask about incidents and link them to the adults in the household who experienced them. This design can support incident-, person-, and household-level estimates of victimization. The ILS instrument does not capture all the incidents a victim experiences as the NCVS does, so data from the ILS and incident-level data from the core NCVS are not comparable. The person-level survey (PLS) asks about the victimizations each adult has experienced, changing the focus from the incident to the person. The PLS approach begins with property crime at the household level and then asks about each adult's victimization experiences. The PLS crime questions include sufficient detail to assess whether the household or the individual adult experienced victimization in the 12-month reference period.