As important as national-level estimates of rape and sexual assault are, there is an equivalent need for quality estimates for certain subpopulations to ascertain which demographic groups are more “at risk” to become victims and to look at regional differences in criminal victimization levels. These more focused estimates are important because they allow for better allocation of resources to prevent crime and support victims.
Unfortunately, the sampling error for estimates of victimization rates for many subpopulations of interest can become quite large on the NCVS because there are very few affirmative responses to questions about serious violent criminal victimization in the sampled groups. Thus, BJS does not provide estimates for rape and sexual assault for these subpopulations; they only provide estimates for the larger category, serious violent crimes.
For the aggregated category, serious violent crime, Table 7-2 shows that the CVs at the national level are approximately 6 percent. However, the CVs for important subpopulations are much higher because of their smaller sample sizes. For example, the NCVS estimates that blacks experienced an estimated serious violent victimization rate of 10.8 percent in 2011, which were 65 percent higher than that experienced by whites, 6.5 percent, and the CVs for blacks were high (13 percent). American Indians/Alaska Natives experienced an estimated serious violent victimization rate of 47.3 percent in 2010 and 12.6 percent in 2011, and the CVs for those years were 24 and 51 percent, respectively. It is clear that the sampling errors for these important “at-risk” subpopulation were large and the estimates were very unstable from year to year.
Do you know what they are referring to when they say subpopulations? I do. They are talking about state-by-state and city statistics. Young and old. And they are referring to victims not perps. Meaning, the statistics are accurate but limited to the national level.
