National Victimization Statistical Support Program

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

The NVSSP is designed to be complementary to and directly supportive of larger NCVS redesign and general survey efforts and to the regular, annual core functions related to statistical analyses, report writing, and documentation. The goal of this program is to support general methodological research related to improving the utility and cost effectiveness of the NCVS. Through the NVSSP, BJS intends to achieve the following objectives: (1) enhance the capabilities of the NCVS to address key current and emerging substantive issues in criminal victimization and to better understand the limitations of the current design for addressing these issues; (2) enhance BJS’s capacity to use the NCVS and other statistical collections to report and disseminate information on key policy issues in criminal victimization; and (3) enhance the use of the NCVS by the broader research and stakeholder communities as well as the general public.

The NVSSP will assist BJS in its efforts to increase the utility and value of the NCVS, both internally and externally, and assist BJS with further developing its robust statistical research program in criminal victimization. The primary tasks related to achieving these objectives include the following:
1) Devise and implement a statistical research agenda, to include—
a) general methodological research related to improving NCVS estimates and their utility
b) general substantive research related to the NCVS
c) work to identify external research affiliates and facilitate their involvement in expanding and implementing the NVSSP statistical research agenda
2) Conduct research on relevant considerations for a potential, future sample redesign to take advantage of a web-based, self-administered instrument for a more efficient and effective design
3) Enhance the NCVS subnational estimation program
4) Develop and test an NCVS supplement on the need for, access to, and use of civil legal aid
5) Assist BJS with implementing improved measures of sensitive crimes in the NCVS
6) Assist BJS and the Census Bureau as needed with efforts related to the annual production of NCVS data including weighting, sampling, as well as the implementation of the redesigned survey instrument and mode into the existing NCVS framework
7) Assess the impact of adopting recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences Modernizing Crime Statistics panel, which are slated for release in the summer of 2017
8) Produce routine statistical tabulations from the NCVS and respond to requests for routine statistics.

(CA/NCF)

Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.