At the request of the Demographic Surveys Division, staff from the Center for Survey Methods Research (CSMR) in the Statistical Research Division cognitively pretested proposed changes to the 2007 School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The changes resulted from requests for content changes by the survey sponsors, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics, as well as the results of debriefing of field representatives (FRs) who administered the 2005 SCS.

The purpose of the SCS is to provide the most current detailed statistical information on the nature of crime in schools as well as on the way to and from school. Of the 56,000 households designated to participate in the NCVS, 10,000 households containing approximately 12,500 respondents are eligible to participate in the SCS. This supplement asks questions of students in U.S. households who are between the ages of 12 and 18 (grades 6 through 12). The survey has been conducted six times since 1989 and will conducted again from January through June of 2007.

This report contains the results of cognitive pretesting of the 2007 School Crime Supplement. The next section contains a description of the methodology and characteristics of the respondents interviewed, followed by a presentation of the pretesting results and recommendations for questionnaire revision.