Split-Sample Administration of the 2019 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey

The main focus of the split-sample administration of the 2019 School Crime Supplement examined the removal of the term “bullying” from the questionnaire and found that the overall percentage of students reporting experiencing bullying at school when using the term “bullying” was not statistically different than the overall percentage of students reporting experiencing bullying at school when asked without the term in the item.

The National Center for Education Statistics released survey documentation today (DATE), entitled Split-Sample Administration of the 2019 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey. This report includes a review of the development of the 2019 SCS questionnaire, the methodology developed for the split-half administration, and the initial results from the 2019 SCS split-sample experiment.

• There was no statistical difference between the bullying estimates in version 1 (including “bullying”) and version 2 (not including “bullying”) of the survey. For both versions, the estimated rate of bullying at school was 22.2 percent.
• When testing item changes to questions about accessibility to alcohol and drugs, notable differences were found between version 1 and version 2 of the survey for availability of alcohol (25.4 percent versus 16.7 percent, respectively) and marijuana (35.8 percent versus 30.6 percent, respectively) at school.

This report uses data from the 2019 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey. The U.S. Census Bureau appended additional data from the 2017–18 Common Core of Data and the 2017–18 Private School Universe Survey to the SCS data to show the extent to which bullying is reported by students in schools with different characteristics.