This presentation provides an overview of the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the primary source of information on nonfatal criminal victimization in the United States. The NCVS is a self-report survey that is administered from January to December to persons age 12 or older from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. These data include a range of nonfatal personal crimes and household property crimes, such as rape and sexual assault, aggravated and simple assault, and motor vehicle theft and burglary, and include crimes reported and not reported to police. A key contribution of the NCVS is that it describes the nature of criminal victimizations and the characteristics of victims in addition to counts of crimes. Information from the NCVS can be retrieved in a variety of ways, such as BJS reports available through the BJS website as well as through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD). This presentation will give information on the history and structure of the NCVS and ways that members of the public can access NCVS data.
