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Measuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experiment

Journal of Quantitative Criminology volume 16, pages 1–19 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

Estimates of the incidence of victim gun use from the National CrimeVictimization Survey (NCVS) are consistently lower than are those fromother studies. To examine the divergence, we conducted a survey that gaugedthe impact of methodological differences between the NCVS and the otherstudies. For half of the sample, we asked questions from the NCVS, followedby questions from the other surveys. For the other half of the sample, wepresented the questions in the reverse order. We examined two hypotheses:(1) survey methods account for the divergent results, and (2) the questionscover unrelated activities. The results provided some support for the firsthypothesis, but respondents also reported many more defenses to thequestions from the other surveys than to the NCVS questions. Consistent withthe second hypothesis, this suggests that the NCVS and the other surveysmeasure responses to largely different provocations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Violence Research Group, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, New York, 12222

    David McDowall & Colin Loftin

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 20742

    Stanley Presser

Authors
  1. David McDowall
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  2. Colin Loftin
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  3. Stanley Presser
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McDowall, D., Loftin, C. & Presser, S. Measuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experiment. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 16, 1–19 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007588410221

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007588410221

  • defensive gun use
  • firearms
  • survey research
  • experimental designs
  • crossover designs