Citation

Gottfredson MR, Hindelang MJ. J. Crim. Justice 1977; 5(3): 205-216.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1977, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0047-2352(77)90039-3

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The relationship between memory biases and characteristics of incidents and respondents in victimization surveys were studied using National Crime Survey victimization data. Comparisons between the monthly distribution of victimizations appearing in police offense reports and the monthly distribution of victimizations reported to survey interviewers revealed evidence of substantial memory effects in victimization survey results. However, no substantial biases were found in the victimization data according to the seriosness of the event, whether or not the event was reported to the police, or respondent characteristics. That is, regardless of the characteristics of the event or characteristic of the respondent studied, the temporal distribution of victimizations reported to survey interviewers was similar. These results suggested that, whereas memory effects of the kind studied here are in evidence in reports of victimization experiences, there is no evidence that these effects are substantially related to respondent and incident characteristics, and, hence, they are much less problematic for the use of victimization survey results than would otherwise be the case.