Chapter_6 Measuring_Crime
True / False
1. Researchers must decide on offenses, units and purposes before specifying measures of crime.
a. True
b. False
2. Crimes must at a minimum have an offender, because without an offender there is no crime.
a. True
b. False
3. A single incident cannot include multiple offenses, but may have one offense and multiple offenders.
a. True
b. False
4. For fear of being sued, governmental agencies rarely keep records that document their actions and areas of
responsibility.
a. True
b. False
5. The UCR accounts for all types of crime, even those crimes that are not observed.
a. True
b. False
6. NIBRS reports each crime incident rather than the total number of certain crimes.
a. True
b. False
7. One important step in selecting a measure of crime is deciding what crimes will be included.
a. True
b. False
8. Methods of reporting crime are never updated and have been continually used since their inception.
a. True
b. False
9. Delinquency, victimless crimes and crimes rarely observed may be measured by self-report studies.
a. True
b. False
10. The NIBRS has a relatively low level of sophistication and cost.
a. True
b. False
Chapter_6 Measuring_Crime
Multiple Choice
11. Which of the following is a fundamental variable in criminal justice and criminology?
a. timeliness
b. applicability
c. crime
d. arrest rates
12. The broad questions that influence all measures of crime include all of the following except:
a. what offenses should be measured
b. what units of analysis should be used
c. why do offenders commit crimes
d. what is the research or policy purpose in measuring crime
13. Which of the following is not a general purpose of measuring crime?
a. monitoring
b. agency accountability
c. deterrence
d. research
14. With regard to measures of crime, the specific entities that researchers collect information about are known as:
a. policies
b. procedures
c. criminal codes
d. units of analysis
15. Which of the following is a data series that has been collected since 1930?
a. USPS
b. DAWN
c. UCR
d. NICVS
16. UCR crime data is reported broken down into how many parts?
a. one whole report
b. two parts
c. four different sections
d. three parts
17. Part II offenses of the UCR are counted when:
a. the crime is reported to police
b. crimes resulting in an arrest and criminal charge
c. the crime is observed by police
d. crimes lead to prosecution in the form of a trial
18. In an incident containing multiple crimes, the most serious one is counted in the UCR. This practice is known as the:
a. hierarchy rule
b. multiple offense rule
c. seriousness clause
d. selection method
19. If a burglar breaks into a house, rapes one of the occupants, and flees in the owners’ car, which one of the crimes
will be counted in congruence with the hierarchy rule?
a. vehicle theft
b. breaking and entering
c. rape
d. all of the above
20. Different measures of crime tend to focus on different types of crime, primarily because:
a. not all crimes can be measured the same way with any degree of reliability or validity
b. not all crimes can be measured
c. not all definitions of crime are suitable to measurement
d. none of the above
21. It is fair to say that the UCR is:
a. a mutually exclusive measure
b. not a truly reliable measure
c. an exhaustive measure
d. all of the above
22. Which of the following are referred to as a summary based measure of crime?
a. UCR
b. NCVS
c. NIBRS
d. ADAM
Chapter_6 Measuring_Crime
23. Which of the following are considered to be crime measurement “units of analysis”?
a. households
b. businesses
c. victims of assault
d. all of the above
24. The main difference between the UCR and NIBRS is:
a. the name of the crime report
b. reporting each crime incident rather than reporting the total number of certain crimes for each law
enforcement agency
c. the method of gathering data
d. nothing, they are the same report
25. Which term best describes “an individual act of burglary, auto theft, or bank robbery”?
a. victim
b. offense
c. crime
d. incident
26. Unlike the UCR, NIBRS does not implement:
a. a higher level of sophistication in reporting
b. the hierarchy rule
c. single time reporting
d. all of the above
27. Which term best describes “one or more offenses committed by the same offender, or group of offenders acting in
concert, at the same time and place”?
a. victim
b. offense
c. crime
d. incident
28. When crimes are selectively reported to police and selectively recorded by police, this falls under which method of
reporting crime?
a. UCR
b. Incident based reports
c. NCVS
d. NIBRS
29. Which instrument asks people whether or not they have been the victim of a crime?
a. self reported survey
b. victim survey
c. computer-based survey
d. random survey
30. The most widely known victim survey is the:
a. NIBRS
b. UCR
c. NCVS
d. DAWN
31. The NVCS is based on a nationally representative sample of:
a. arrests
b. offenders
c. households
d. types of crime
32. Which of the following are not accounted for by the NCVS?
a. crimes committed upon those 12 and over in a household
b. items stolen from your car
c. crimes that have commercial establishments as victims
d. all of the above
33. Telescoping refers to:
a. when respondents may not accurately recall when an incident occurred
b. when only certain victims are interviewed
c. when only certain crimes are reported
d. none of the above
34. Which of the following is a weakness of the NCVS?
a. by using a six month time frame, you decrease the likelihood of subjects forgetting about their victimization
b. it finds out the number of unreported crimes
c. people that have been victims repeatedly in a six-month period may not recall each one
d. all of the above
35. According to the textbook, which two series of crime measures seek to assess the magnitude, nature, and impact of
crime in the Nation?
a. UCR and NIBRS
b. UCR and NCVS
c. UCR and Part I Crimes
d. UCR and ADAM
36. In the field of public health, “monitoring” (in order to measure crime) is referred to as a(n):
a. index system
b. surveillance system
c. classification system
d. data system
37. A major issue of the NCVS is that only residents over the age of may be interviewed.
a. 18
b. 12
c. 10
d. 5
38. The most effective method of accounting for certain crimes such as delinquency and victimless crimes is:
a. anonymous surveys
b. self-report surveys
c. observation surveys
d. uniform crime reports
39. Which of the following surveys have been conducted since 1971, surveys households, and is designed to monitor
nationwide patterns?
a. UCR
b. NIBRS
c. NSDUH
d. NCVS
40. Which of the following crimes are detected almost exclusively by police observation?
a. traffic offenses
b. victimless crimes
c. drug sales
d. all of the above
41. The core sample of the Monitoring the Future is:
a. households
b. high school seniors
c. college students
d. jail inmates
42. Police measurement of crime is imperfect because:
a. people do not always report crimes to the police
b. police do not always record crimes that become known to them
c. police do not always record crimes that they observe
d. all of the above
43. A victim’s insistence that the police not arrest a suspect results in no documentation of the incident (i.e. the police
officer does not file a report on the incident). This circumstance supports the idea:
a. that crime is subjective
b. that discretion in police work is inappropriate
c. that police measures of crime are problematic
d. none of the above
44. With regard to the UCR, one of the reasons that Part II offenses are counted only if an arrest is made is:
a. that individual states have different definitions of crimes
b. that crimes are only relevant to researchers if an arrest is made
c. that the arrest serves to validate the criminal activity
d. none of the above
45. With regard to the UCR, Part I offenses are counted only when:
a. the offenses are reported to police
b. the offenses are recorded by police
c. a and b are correct
d. none of the above
46. UCR data suffers from:
a. clerical problem
b. data processing problem
c. political problem
d. all of the above
47. One of the primary reasons for conducting crime surveys was to illuminate unreported crimes; this concept is called:
a. the dark figure of crime
b. crime measure falsification
c. false positive reporting
d. shadow reporting
48. What is one of the chief advantages of measuring crime through victim surveys?
a. cheaper cost to collect data
b. assists with obtaining counts of incidents not reported to police
c. more honest and detailed incident reporting
d. police reports tend to use legal jargon that is hard for evaluators to understand
49. The Drug Abuse Warning Network gathers data from which of the following?
a. samples of hospitals
b. samples about medical examiners nationwide
c. drug episodes
d. all of the above
50. Drug episodes are defined as:
a. excessive use of drugs during a certain time frame
b. withdrawal from a certain drug that lasts for an extended period
c. visits to a hospital emergency room that are produced by or directly related to the use of illegal drugs or non–
medical use of drugs
d. lengthy periods of drug use exceeding one year
51. DAWN is based on units of analysis that are:
a. directly related to the use of drugs
b. indirectly linked to criminal offenses
c. directly reported to the survey by the offender
d. indirectly related by the victim
52. Monitoring the Future is a survey that targets a specific population, namely:
a. high school teachers
b. high school seniors
c. parents of high school seniors
d. high school counselors
53. The main purpose of ADAM was to provide an ongoing assessment of the prevalence of drug use among:
a. high school seniors
b. persons enrolled in drug addiction rehabilitation
c. persons arrested for criminal offenses
d. persons under the age of 18
54. One of the most interesting aspects of ADAM was that it combined urinalysis and:
a. selfreport measures of drug use
b. brainscan images
c. conviction rates
d. confessions
55. Surveys are especially useful for learning about which of the following?
a. crimes reported to police
b. crimes not reported to police
c. crimes resulting in conviction
d. crimes with multiple offenders
56. Measures of crime are said to be selective. In what way is the ADAM program selective as a measure of drug use?
a. it operated in a relatively small number of cities
b. it includes only arrested persons
c. it includes voluntary interviews and testing
d. all of the above
57. With regard to limitations of a crime measure, self report studies can tell us something about shoplifters, but it would
be difficult to use this method to measure:
a. total shoplifting incidents
b. total theft incidents
c. effectiveness of probation for shoplifters
d. none of the above
58. Which of the following is a characteristic of directed observations of crime?
a. has a fairly specific research or policy purpose
b. focuses on a relatively small sample
c. the expected incidents made observation an appropriate way to measure crime
d. all of the above
59. If a researcher wanted to determine the amount of cocaine use in an inner city area of Chicago, which type of study
would he most likely use?
a. police data
b. in person interviews
c. self-report survey
d. victimization survey
60. Every local and state enforcement agency:
a. shares records among themselves
b. maintains its own records
c. transfers all information and data to the Internet
d. destroys all information not pertinent to crime studies
61. When compared with UCR, which measure has the chance to provide greater detail to a broader range of offenses?
a. NCVS
b. Monitoring the Future
c. NIBRS
d. DAWN
62. Which technique is best for measuring crimes that do not have easily identifiable victims?
a. NCVS
b. UCR
c. NIBRS
d. Self-report surveys
63. When crimes happen at home and/or against persons, what is the best measure to use if the crimes are not reported
to police?
a. NCVS
b. DAWN
c. UCR
d. NIBRS
64. According to your text, what do police cite as a main problem to the enforcement of drug laws?
a. the laws are too complicated
b. drug use/sales are normally not witnessed by the police
c. drug users/seller will not tell on one another
d. all the above
65. Most of us have committed traffic offenses and have not been caught. This statement reinforces the fact that:
a. crime is not measureable
b. crimes known to the police are not a good measure for some offenses
c. most traffic offenses are not crimes
d. none of the above
66. The most widely used measures of crime are based on police records and are commonly referred to as:
a. crimes known to police
b. victimless crimes
c. unreportable crimes
d. none of the above
67. What is considered a major draw-back to the accuracy of NCVS data?
a. it does not explain all crime that goes unreported
b. it does not allow the estimate of victimizations for individual cities
c. it is not a thorough as UCR
d. all of the above
68. Data that is based upon households has which of the following as potential problems?
a. they are inherently inaccurate
b. law enforcement cannot use them
c. they are difficult to generalize to other populations
d. they are not that different from official measures like NIBRS
69. Which of the following is used to gather data for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health?
a. households
b. schools
c. doctors
d. prisons
70. One purpose for measuring crime is to:
a. anticipate correctional facility populations
b. predict future crime trends
c. monitor potential threats to public safety and security
d. estimate the economic costs associated with crime
Chapter_6 Measuring_Crime
Completion
71. of crime are important for many criminal justice research purposes.
72. The four elements of a crime for reporting purposes are offender, victim, , and incident.
73. At a minimum, crimes need to have a(n) to be considered a crime.
74. The victim in crimes such as prostitution, drug use and bookmaking is .
75. Two methods that police come to know about crimes are and reports by others.
76. UCR crime data is compiled by the .
77. is an effort to convert the UCR to a more comprehensive crime report.
78. Like reporting, NIBRS is voluntary; no agency is required to submit crime reports to the
FBI in any form.
79. The challenge of developing reliable and valid measures of such offenses as drug use has prompted researchers and
policy makers to search for approaches.
80. Delinquency, , and crimes rarely observed may be measured by self-report surveys.
81. There are no nationwide efforts to collect self-report measures to all types of crimes.
82. Samples based on households may not be readily to other populations, as well as results
obtained from high school seniors.
83. systems have been developed to obtain alternative measures of drug use.
84. affords a comparatively long-term time series that monitors the most serious medical
consequences of drug use.
85. surveys are best at measuring crimes that do not have readily identifiable victims and
those that are less observed by police.
86. Compare and contrast UCR and NCVS with respect to the type of crime data they collect and how they collect it.
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of each.
87. Identify the major efforts to gather information about drug abuse in the United States. How do these measures
compare with one another? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?
88. Discuss the validity and reliability of self-report measures.
89. Discuss the improvements that have been made to UCR through the NIBRS and the Redesigned NCVS. Predict
whether these changes will make a major difference in our understanding of crime in America.
90. Discuss what your text refers to as “measuring crime for specific purposes.” Compare these with the traditional
methods.