Deltoid

J. Neil Schulman writes:

If you start a survey by asking "Have you ever been a crime victim?" and do not survey people who answer NO because (a) their DGU prevented them from being damaged so they don't think of themselves as victims, therefore they are telling the truth but don't get counted AND

The NCVS does not ask any question like "Have you ever been a crime victim?". You haven't actually read the questions in the NCVS have you?

This is the current screening used by the NCVS for their violent crimes survey. It replaces one which was even more crime-oriented than threat-oriented, in use for fifty percent of households as recently as the 1994 NCVS.

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Violent crime screener questions

New

1. Has anyone attacked or threatened you in any of these ways --

   a. With any weapon, for instance, a gun or knife --

   b. With anything like a baseball bat, frying pan, scissors, or stick --

   c. By something thrown, such as a rock or bottle --

   d. Include any grabbing, punching, or choking,

   e. Any rape, attempted rape or other type of sexual attack --

   f. Any face to face threats --

   OR

   g. Any attack or threat or use of force by anyone at all? Please mention it even if you are not certain it was a crime.

2. Incidents involving forced or unwanted sexual acts are often difficult to talk about. Have you been forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity by --

   a. someone you didn't know before

   b. a casual acquaintance OR

   c. someone you know well

Notice that the question "Have you ever been a crime victim?" does not appear. I would have thought that Mr Schulman would apologize for misleading the readers of the newsgroup, but he didn't.

Now, I just used that screening on my father, who as I said, defended himself five times.

His answer was "No" to these questions, and the survey would have ended there.

My father would not have been surveyed because in all his DGU's, he perceived the threat early enough not to be taken by surprise, and pre-empted it by letting the potential attackers know that he was armed.

Huh? Question 1g asks about any sort of threat at all. Yet you say he "perceived the threat". Was there or was there not a threat?

The National Self Defense Survey, by focusing on the act of defense itself in its screening, is designed to detect them. The NCVS -- as Kleck and Wolfgang have written -- does not.

Utterly false. Kleck only counted cases where "the defender could state a specific crime that was being committed at the time of the incident" (p162). You would expect such an incident to show up when the NCVS asks questions about that specific crime.