Probability of victimization over time: Results from the U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey

Victimizations are not randomly scattered through the population, but tend to be concentrated in relatively few victims. Data from the U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a multistage rotating panel survey, are employed to estimate the conditional probabilities of being a crime victim at time t given the victimization status in earlier interviews. Models are presented and fit to allow use of partial information from households that move in or out of the housing unit during the study period. The estimated probability of being a crime victim at interview t given the status at interview (t-l) is found to decrease with t. Possible implications for estimating cross-sectional victimization rates are discusssed.