National Crime Surveys: Reverse Record Check Studies: Washington, DC, San Jose, and Baltimore, 1970-71

• NCJ Number: 107757
• Date Published: September 1987
• Publication Type: Publication

Annotation

This book describes pretests done in Washington, D.C.; San Jose, Calif.; and Baltimore, MD., in the early 1970's to reveal problems associated with doing a nationwide victimization study; the bulk of the presentation consists of coding information for each of the surveys.

Abstract

The surveys were conducted to determine the most effective reference period to use when questioning respondents so as to gain the fullest and most reliable victimization information, to measure the degree to which respondents move incidents occurring outside the reference period into the survey period, and to explore the possibility of identifying incidents by a few broad questions instead of more specific probing questions. Methodology and results are reported for each of the three surveys. The Fortran record layout for data from each of the surveys is presented, followed by a listing of variable items and their code numbers. The numbers of words, digits, and characters are indicated for the variable categories in each of the three studies.