Incidence based reporting rates: Methodological and substantive issues in cross-national research

• In Event: Youth Offending and Victimization: Results of the Second Wave of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD2)

Abstract

Knowledge of incidence based rates of reporting victimizations to the police is important in order to compare the volume of registered crime across groups or time and to interpret differences or changes of officially
known crime rates. However, estimates f reporting rates based on survey data lack precision and tend to be unstable due to erratic answering
behavior of respondents which results in extremely high and unlikely counts of incidences of victimizations. As a consequence, comparisons of reporting rates across regions, subgroups, or time are compromised. A method to identify and to deal with extreme counts based on theoretical
assumptions of the probability distribution of the events will be applied to data of the second International Self-Report Delinquency
(ISRD2) study. Results show considerable differences in reporting rates
across countries, demonstrating the feasibility, usefulness, and
relevance of the suggested approach to analyze incidence based reporting
rates.

Author

• Dirk Enzmann, University of Hamburg