Citation

Parton DA, Hansel M, Stratton JR. Br. J. Criminol. 1991; 31(1): 72-85.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1991, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper considers strategies for studying crime seriousness, reviews the requirements for using magnitude estimation, reports a method study, and identifies problems in the US National Survey of Crime Severity (NSCS). Among those problems are: (1) most NSCS sub-group differences in crime perceptions are not interpretable because of the variant of magnitude estimation used in the NSCS; (2) their cross-modality laboratory studies are irrelevant to evaluating the adequacy of the NSCS method; (3) some of the NSCS results allow the interpretation that as many as a quarter of the respondents failed to make magnitude estimations; (4) the unsystematic introduction of status information in some NSCS items introduces variance which cannot be effectively assessed; and (5) the NSCS method for developing a crime index weighted by the seriousness of crimes is less feasible than other alternatives.