The Addition and Expansion of Demographic Characteristics in the NCVS

• Published date: 01 February 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10439862241290332
• Author: Erika Harrell,Susannah N. Tapp
• Date: 01 February 2025

https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862241290332

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2025, Vol. 41(1) 51 –70

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10439862241290332

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Article

The Addition and

Expansion of Demographic

Characteristics in the NCVS

Erika Harrell1 and Susannah N. Tapp1

Abstract

One of the advantages of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is that it is

a large-scale data collection that allows data to be analyzed on various subpopulations.

Since the survey’s inception, there have been changes to the population, law, and

areas of public interest. In July of 2016, questions were added to the NCVS on

citizenship, veteran status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. In addition,

changes were made to existing questions on disability status and household income.

This allowed for analysis of criminal victimization against more demographic groups.

This article discusses these changes and provides estimates of violent victimization by

these demographic characteristics.

Keywords

crime, victimization, veteran status, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, gender

identity, household income

Introduction

The National Crime Victimization Survey or NCVS is the nation’s primary source of

information on criminal victimization (Thompson & Tapp, 2023). Each year, NCVS

data are collected from a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 persons in

about 150,000 households from across the United States and persons are interviewed on

their experiences with nonfatal criminal victimization. The NCVS collects information

on nonfatal personal crimes (i.e., rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple

assault, and personal larceny) and household property crimes (i.e., burglary/

1Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC,

USA

Corresponding Author:

Susannah N. Tapp, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice,

Washington, DC 20531, USA.

Email: susannah.tapp@usdoj.gov

1290332CCJXXX10.1177/10439862241290332Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeHarrell and Tapp

research-article2024

52Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 41(1)

trespassing, motor vehicle theft, and other types of household theft) regardless of

whether the crime was reported to the police. Among the information that the NCVS

collects, survey respondents provide sociodemographic information about themselves

such as age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, marital status, and education level.

The NCVS has been ongoing since 1973 and was last redesigned in 1992. Bureau

of Justice Statistics (BJS) is currently in the process of modernizing the NCVS again

with its instrument redesign (Truman & Brotsos, 2022). However, this work is exten-

sive and a multiyear effort to complete. In the short term, BJS decided to make impor-

tant changes to improve the NCVS without affecting questions focused on the

victimization. Through work conducted early on in the current redesign project, one

area in need of modernization that was identified was the sociodemographic informa-

tion collected from respondents. Specifically, new sociodemographic measures were

recommended to be added to the NCVS demographic section including veteran status,

citizenship, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. As a result, in

July 2016, BJS decided to add questions on these topics to the NCVS demographic

section for all respondents to answer. At the same time, BJS decided to expand catego-

ries on the household income variable on the NCVS. These changes will allow for

analyses of criminal victimization by more sociodemographic groups.

The purpose of this article is to present background information and nonfatal vio-

lent victimization estimates based on the new NCVS measures of citizenship, veteran

status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and the expansion of categories of

household income. A discussion of the NCVS data and methods used to analyze the

data is provided, as are conclusions based on these estimates.

Background

Veteran Status

Questions asking about the respondent’s veteran status were added to the NCVS in

July 2016 (Table 1) (Morgan & Truman, 2018). These questions were modeled after

questions regarding veteran status on the American Community Survey (ACS), spon-

sored by the U.S. Census Bureau (2016a). With the addition of these questions to the

NCVS, rates of criminal victimization may be examined for veterans, who are persons

currently or previously on active duty, and nonveterans or persons who never served

in the U.S. Armed Forces or who were only on active duty for training in the Reserves

or National Guard. A follow-up question is asked to veterans on the period of time in

which they served. Because the NCVS is a household-based survey and those on

active duty are more likely to be out of the household at the time of data collection,

most veterans in the survey are former active-duty military personnel.

Citizenship Status

In July 2016, a question about U.S. citizenship was also added to the NCVS (Morgan

& Truman, 2018). Like the veteran status questions, this question was similar to the