The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in partnership with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), is working with Westat and the University of New Hampshire to develop improved methodological strategies to produce national estimates of children's exposure to violence. The team is reviewing and assessing the recent administrations of OJJDP's National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) and recommending items to be included in the survey instrument, frame development, sampling plan, modes of data collection, strategies for reducing nonresponse bias, reference periods for trend analysis, and viability of supporting various subgroup estimates. The team is also (1) reviewing previous approaches used to collect NatSCEV data; (2) reviewing current literature on collecting information on sensitive topics and from hard-to-reach populations, including young children; (3) analyzing data collected in previous NatSCEV administrations; (4) developing and testing appropriate measures of exposure to violence; (5) designing alternative data collection strategies and methodologies to increase the utility of the data; (6) conducting cognitive and pilot tests to evaluate the proposed alternatives; and (7) providing detailed cost estimates for administering the proposed approaches.

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