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The British Crime Survey (BCS) is a well-established study and one of the largest social research surveys conducted in England and Wales. It is a victimisation survey in which adults living in private households are asked about their experiences of crime in face-to-face interviews. We produce a technical report providing information on survey design, weighting and survey response every survey year. The latest technical report available is:
Anonymised datasets from the BCS are available in SPSS format through the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex. They can be obtained by bona fide researchers, including students, who need data for dissertations or practical work. It is worth emphasising that the BCS is a complex study with data organised at different levels (households, individuals and incidents) but that full supporting documentation and metadata are available with access to the data. Users who need help in analysing the data can contact the ESDS Government helpdesk.
The BCS, like all voluntary surveys, suffers from some non-response among people whose households have been randomly sampled to participate in the survey. There has always been a concern that differential response to a survey may result in some groups being under-represented in the achieved sample, for example, men aged 16 to 24 years who are less likely to respond to surveys. The Office for National Statistics conducted a study in 2005 linking the 2001 Census to information on the characteristics of non-respondents from the BCS. The report compared the census characteristics of different categories of responding and non-responding households and identified the census variables which were independently associated with non-response. Read the full report: Report of the 2001 Census-linked Study of Survey Non-response Two independent reviews on the national crime statistics carried out by the Statistics Commission and Professor Adrian Smith reported during 2006. The reviews recommended that the BCS should be extended to cover crimes against those aged under 16, those living in institutions, communal establishments or on the streets, and businesses. In response to the reviews, the Home Office commissioned methodological advice to examine the feasibility of extending the BCS. This has now reported (British Crime Survey: options for extending the coverage to children and people living in communal establishments) and work is in progress to extend the BCS to the under 16s from January 2009. We will be reviewing the Commercial Victimisation Survey scope and methodology with a view to re-running a survey in 2009.
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