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Measuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experiment

NCJ Number
183160
Journal
Journal of Quantitative Criminology Volume: 16 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2000 Pages: 1-19
Author(s)
David McDowall; Colin Loftin; Stanley Presser
Date Published
March 2000
Length
19 pages
Annotation
An experimental study examined the impact of methodological differences between the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and other studies on estimates of crime victims’ defensive use of guns, because estimates from the NCVS are consistently lower than are those from other studies.
Abstract
The research used a standard crossover design. Telephone interviews collected the information from 3,001 households. Half the participants answered questions from the NCVS, followed by questions from the other surveys. The other half answered the questions in the reverse order. The research examined two hypotheses: (1) Survey methods account for the divergent results, and (2) The questions cover unrelated activities. Results provided some support for the first hypothesis, but participants also reported many more defenses to the questions from the other surveys than to the NCVS questions. Findings were consistent with the second hypothesis in suggesting that the NCVS and the other surveys measure responses to largely different provocations. Findings also indicated the need to avoid comparing other survey estimates of defense to NCVS estimates of crime. 22 references (Author abstract modified)

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