Uniform Crime Reports and Crime Data - Assignment Example

The data has been used by psychiatrists, psychologist and even students for the purpose of research because of its reliability (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI],2012). Not only this but also special studies, reports, and monographs are prepared using data obtained from UCR’s database as it provides information in various offense categories such as murder, rape, aggravated assaults, burglary, etc) Mark Twain(2012)National Crime Victimization Survey:It began its operations in 1972. This survey involves asking and interviewing people about their experiences with crime.

This method is best for knowing and recording unreported crimes. The major difference between this and uniform crime report (UCR) method is that the former method proved to be successful in providing researchers and analysts with its results. Meaning those cities and other areas which showed lower crime rates under UCR showed a high percentage of crimes when measured by victimization survey. Victimization survey is unable to measure commercial crimes which were measured under UCR.Self Report Crime Survey:This method involves making up of surveys and questionnaires.

It is used to measure the attitudes, values and personal characteristics which help to measure the extent of various crimes (“Criminal justice statistics”, 2012) this data collection technique is used mostly by academic researchers and private foundations. According to Mark Twain (2012) monitoring the future project and National youth, the survey is the example of a self-report survey. Since this method involves making up of own surveys, therefore, the problem of its reliability and validity arises most of the time.

Moreover, many people are of the view that this type of survey becomes the victim of researcher bias and measurement errors.Conclusion:There are advantages and disadvantages which are associated with each data collection method. Hence it is difficult to conclude which method is the best of all. But weighing the pros and cons of each method it is found that the National Crime Victimization Survey method is the best among all three. There are several reasons on the basis of which this method is chosen firstly because this method provides information which has not been even reported to authorities or in the uniform crime report.

Secondly, it discloses more data on individual victims and offenders meaning that it can be used more efficiently for studies on individual factors. A crime victimization survey is designed to represent nationwide levels of crime.