Measuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experiment
Authors: McDowall D.1; Loftin C.1; Presser S.2
Source: Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Volume 16, Number 1, March 2000 , pp. 1-19(19)
Publisher: Springer
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Abstract:
Estimates of the incidence of victim gun use from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are consistently lower than are those from other studies. To examine the divergence, we conducted a survey that gauged the impact of methodological differences between the NCVS and the other studies. For half of the sample, we asked questions from the NCVS, followed by questions from the other surveys. For the other half of the sample, we presented the questions in the reverse order. We examined two hypotheses: (1) survey methods account for the divergent results, and (2) the questions cover unrelated activities. The results provided some support for the first hypothesis, but respondents also reported many more defenses to the questions from the other surveys than to the NCVS questions. Consistent with the second hypothesis, this suggests that the NCVS and the other surveys measure responses to largely different provocations.
Keywords: defensive gun use; firearms; survey research; experimental designs; crossover designs
Language: English
Document Type: Research article
Affiliations: 1: Violence Research Group, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, New York 12222 2: Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
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