NCJ Number
227311
Journal
Criminology Volume: 47 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2009 Pages: 427-438
Date Published
May 2009
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This is a rejoinder by the authors to a critique of their methodology in examining comparative trends of male and female nonlethal violent crime over time, which concluded that National Crime Survey (NCS)/National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) could be used to study trends in rates of offending across subgroups and that the data showed a narrowing of the gap between males and females in the commission of aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault.
Abstract
The critique was offered by Schwartz, Steffensmeier, Zhong, and Ackerman (SSZA), who conducted a similar study but concluded that findings regarding the gender gap were contradictory or ambiguous. Due to space limitations for this article, the authors (LHL) focus on the major issues that have emerged regarding changes in the gender gap in offending over time and the use of the NCVS to show such changes. The first part of the rejoinder addresses SSZA's (2009) claim that the NCVS may not be well-suited for examining changes over time in the gender gap in offending. LHL disagrees with this claim, finding it to be inconsistent with Steffensmeier et al. (2005, 2006) reliance on the NCVS to support points in their previously published work and parts of the SSZA comment. LHL then address the key SSZA critiques of their methodology and offer additional empirical evidence in support of their approach. Specifically, LHL address the counting of female and male involvement in multiple-offender incidents and the weighting adjustments to account for changes in the redesigned NCVS. An appendix includes LHL's estimates of female and male rates for aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault, as well as the corresponding gender-rate ratios. 9 references