trends in the gender gap in violence: reevaluating ncvs and other evidence

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TRENDS IN THE GENDER GAP INVIOLENCE: REEVALUATING NCVS ANDOTHER EVIDENCE*

JENNIFER SCHWARTZDepartment of SociologyWashington State University

DARRELL STEFFENSMEIERDepartment of Sociology & Crime, Law and JusticeThe Pennsylvania State University

HUA ZHONGDepartment of SociologyThe Chinese University of Hong Kong

JEFF ACKERMANDepartment of SociologyTexas A&M University

Lauritsen, Heimer, and Lynch (hereafter LHL) (2009, this issue) had anambitious goal—“to resolve the gender gap debate” over increases infemale-to-male violence that has been ongoing since the 1970s (andperhaps earlier). Based on a gender gap comparison of Uniform CrimeReport (UCR) arrest trends with National Crime Survey (NCS) andNational Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) incident trends, LHLconcluded that Adler’s (1975) claim of a long-term decline in the violencegender gap is now confirmed, and the authors urged researchers to “movebeyond the debate over whether these changes in offending by genderhave occurred.” Their conclusion diverged with our work (Schwartz,Steffensmeier, and Feldmeyer, 2009; Steffensmeier et al., 2005, 2006),based on victim data as well as on self-reports, post-arrest statistics, and

* The authors would like to thank Jim Short, Clay Mosher, John Kramer, BenFeldmeyer, Casey Harris, Miles Harer, and Erik Johnson for their helpfulcomments, and Meredith Williams for her web assistance. Any remaining errorsare our own. Direct correspondence to Jennifer Schwartz, Department ofSociology, Washington State University, PO Box 644020, Pullman, WA 99164-4020 (e-mail: [email protected]).

2009 American Society of Criminology

CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 47 NUMBER 2 2009 401


402 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

qualitative information, which suggested no major shifts in girls’ orwomen’s relative violence.1

Our primary goal in responding to LHL’s (2009) critique of our work isto focus on the two major methodological differences2 in our procedures(hereafter SSZA) that explain the divergence in our findings and haverepercussions for the conclusions we can draw. In calculating offendingrates, we based our analyses on counting offenders, whereas LHL basedtheir work on counting incidents; we also employed a more precisemethod for assigning offender gender when survey respondents reportedmultiple offenders. Second, unlike LHL, our computational proceduresalso took into account the sex-specific effects of the major NCS surveyredesign. We believe our estimation strategies are substantially moreaccurate and more comparable with UCR arrest data.

A second objective is to address an apparent epistemological differencebetween our view and their view of whether the NCVS is essentially freefrom the social forces that affect law enforcement and citizen-reportingpractices long recognized by scholars as affecting UCR arrest trends. Wecaution against uncritical acceptance of the NCS/NCVS as a continuousmeasure of the sex ratio of violent crime because of the changing mannerin which violence is socially constructed and the accompanying changes inthe culture of crime control that we believe strongly shape NCVSreporting practices. Exemplary of these cultural shifts is the massive 1992redesign of the NCS, as well as continuous changes in NCVS methodology

1. We included a forthcoming article in Social Problems by Schwartz, Steffensmeier,and Feldmeyer (2009), which examined adult gender gap trends in violenceacross stages of the criminal justice system and in comparison to NCVS victimestimates, because an earlier draft was provided to one of the authors (August2006), and it is likely that this coauthor was one of the first-round reviewers. Themanuscript also addressed in some detail the decline in male violence rates thatLHL identify as causing the narrowing gender gap in violence.

2. We address additional distinctions and similarities in LHL’s (2009) analyses andour own (cooley.libarts.wsu.edu/schwartj/crim09.htm). On that website, weprovide additional analyses to support the following conclusions: 1) LHL’s sex-rate ratio shows greater year-to-year fluctuations and a somewhat steeper inclinein the gender gap than our female percent measure; also, percentage-versus-ratiomeasures are preferable to examine subgroup trends, because ratios areextremely unstable when the number of events is small as with female violence(Anderson and Zelditch, 1968); 2) time-series analyses, which prevent theselective discussion of data, point to stable gender-gap trends once multipleoffenders are more accurately taken into account; and 3) significance tests fordifferent redesign effects on female and male offenders show greater increases inreporting of female versus male violent offenders. We also provide addedinformation on the following: 1) redesigned screener questions in comparisonwith previous questions; 2) subtle differences in rate estimates by Hindelang(1981), Lynch (2002), Steffensmeier et al. (2005), LHL, and SSZA; and 3)directions for future research.


TRENDS IN THE GENDER GAP IN VIOLENCE 403

that tend to inflate female violence estimates and lower male estimates,particularly in recent years.

A third key objective is to address LHL’s (2009) claim that sufficientevidence exists of convergence in female-to-male levels of violentoffending. Instead, we show that the existing evidence is eithercontradictory or ambiguous and therefore requires additional empiricalinquiry.

Our evaluation first provides a background on problems with the NCVSthat compromise its continuity over time and its ability to generateaccurate gender gap estimates. We then delineate our (SSZA) templatefor deriving NCS/NCVS estimates (hereafter NCVS) in contrast to LHL’s(2009) more simplified procedures.

NCVS ACCURACY AND CONTINUITY

The original intent of the NCVS survey was to augment the FederalBureau of Investigation’s UCR by more accurately measuring year-to-yearchanges in crime trends through reliance on victim interviews rather thanon arrest data that may be biased by changes in crime policy. LHL (2009)contended that the NCVS, unlike the UCR, has “used consistent defini-tions of violent incidents over time and [is] unaffected by changing crimi-nal justice system policies” (emphasis is our own). It may be that theNCVS is less affected by criminal justice policy changes and biases thanthe UCR and that its intent is to provide relatively consistent definitions ofcriminal behavior, but we believe LHL have overstated these benefits.

Instead, we remain suspicious of the ability of the NCVS to track gen-eral crime trends accurately and are more skeptical of its ability to esti-mate offending trends adequately among subpopulations like femaleoffenders because of changes in the recall of male and female “violence”by survey respondents, as recorded by the survey administrators. Thisproblem is compounded by the increasingly undersized and less represen-tative samples in the NCVS data. We agree more closely, for example,with recent National Research Council (NRC, 2008: 78–9; our emphaseswere added) evaluations:

[I]n its size and available resources, the current NCVS is not capableof matching the original version of the survey. . .the standard errors ofchange estimates are too large to detect changes of importance to thecountry . . . the NCVS is not achieving and cannot achieve BJS’s legis-latively mandated goal to “collect and analyze data that will serve as acontinuous and comparable national social indication of the preva-lence, incidence, rates, extent, distribution, and attributes of crime.

The NRC based its critique on declines in NCVS sample size, responserate, and representativeness that have hastened since the 1992 redesign.


404 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

For example, the number of households currently participating in theNCVS is half the number of that in 1973, with future sample size cutsplanned. Response rates of individuals also have fallen from near com-plete participation to less than 85 percent.

These caveats are more substantial when estimating subpopulations ofthe full sample. In recent years, NCVS female violence rates fluctuatedgreatly because they were based on a small number of incidents and thuswere prone to greater inaccuracy. For example, in LHL’s (2009) figure 4on robbery, the gender rate ratio triples from a 30+-year low in 2001 (.06)to a 30+-year high in 2003 (.20). These are not likely real changes in thegender gap.

A key problem with representativeness is that nonresponse is greatestamong young minority males who also exhibit the highest victimizationand offending rates. Greater attrition and nonresponse by these individu-als means the NCVS will increasingly underestimate male violence. TheNCVS does include the ability to weight data to account for shifts in thesurvey composition, but it is only effective when those who do respond aresimilar to nonrespondents. The NCVS also replaces nonrespondents withothers willing to participate, but if high-risk male nonrespondents arereplaced with lower risk counterparts, male violence will be underesti-mated and the gender gap will be artificially narrowed. For these reasons,even if LHL’s (2009) characterization of the NCVS as providing consistentcrime definitions across time were accurate, which operationally is not thecase, problems related to sample size reductions and representativenesswould still bias violence gender gap estimates.

The ability of the NCVS to estimate gender-gap changes adequately hasalso decreased severely in recent years because of a net-widening effect asa result of changes in crime definitions, which have increasingly inflatedfemale offending counts relative to male counts, thus raising estimates ofthe female share of violence.

The massive NCVS redesign, which was fully phased in by 1993, was themost consequential of a series of changes. The aim of the redesign was toenumerate 1) less serious offenders, 2) offenses against intimates orknown victims, 3) nonstereotypical incidents, and 4) acts in which the mar-gins of violence are blurred or the incidents are less salient and more diffi-cult to recall. More specifically, NCVS respondents are now asked tomention the incident “even if you are not certain it was a crime” (fordetails, see Mosher, Miethe, and Phillips, 2002; see also Lynch and Add-ington, 2007).

When this aim was achieved, the behaviors recorded by the survey wereclearly altered despite the stability of technical offense definitions.Because of changes in screener questions and prompts, behaviors notdefined by prior NCS respondents as crime were now being reported by



NCVS respondents. For example, by including prompts to recall knownoffenders, the redesign increased reports of violent offending by relativesand friends more than by strangers, and it also disproportionatelyincreased victim reports of incidents not reported to the police, moreminor forms of violence, and other “grayer” areas of offending.

Although these net-widening redesign effects have been well establishedin the literature, their differentiated effects on rate estimates for male andfemale offenders have been largely ignored. The axiom that the gendergap is smaller for less serious forms of violence, as well as for offenses thattake place in private settings (Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996), suggeststhat the revised NCVS questions caused victims to recall a greater numberof less serious types of offenses that typically have a greater share offemale offenders.

A closely related issue is the extent to which NCVS respondents areaffected by changes in societal definitions of violence in ways that altersubsequent expectations about the most appropriate ways to interpret andrespond to victimization. Steffensmeier et al. (2005: 373) write: “Weshould expect victims to be more inclined in recent years to report girls[and women] as violent offenders, in particular, by labeling gray areas ofaggressive behavior as assaultive that in the past would have been ignoredor defined in milder terms.”

Figure 1 depicts how these changes might impact arrest trends as well aschanges in victim-based trends in ways that will lead to considerable corre-spondence in the gender gap movement between the UCR and NCVSbecause both share common sources of variation. Although the UCR issusceptible to changes in police and citizen responses to crime, NCVSrespondents and Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) interviewers areexposed to cultural cues that shift definitions of “acceptable” forms of vio-lence and expectations about proper responses. Notably as well, recalling aviolent victimization in itself will be a function in part of whether the inci-dent has been reported to the police.

A respondent’s ability and willingness to recall and report a violentevent during the interview is shaped by survey cues and question wording,as in redesign effects, and by exogenous social definitions of what consti-tutes an attempted or completed attack or threatening behavior. As well, aminor event’s salience is increased when police or witnesses respond; morereporting to police will increase reporting in victim surveys.

The NCVS interviewer exercises discretion in probing for and judgingwhether a violent victimization occurred (e.g., an attack is defined by“physical contact”). Census Bureau and BJS staff train interviewers inhow and what to probe for and set rules for interpreting, coding, and rec-onciling information. The NCVS training manual instructs that “Choosing


406 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

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the best probing technique will help you to casually persuade the respon-dent to expand and/or clarify an answer” (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/manual.pdf). In some ways, the number of crimes elicited is limited onlyby interviewer persistence and respondent patience (Gove, Hughes, andGeerken, 1985).

LHL’s (2009) position that the NCVS is unaffected by criminal justicepolicies overlooks the spawning by social and legal forces of more proac-tive reporting of violence to police by victims or witnesses and moreproactive reporting by NCVS respondents. Such net-widening changes insocial definitions of violence inadvertently elicit female-typical forms ofoffending with narrower gender gaps. Combined, the 1992 redesign andthe greater decreases in sample representativeness over the 1990s wouldtend to bias upward the sex ratio because the redesign better addressedthe female undercount and the male rates were increasingly underesti-mated due to nonresponse, attrition, and sample reductions. Our analyticdecisions were weighed against these shortcomings.

KEY COMPUTATIONAL DIFFERENCES:OFFENDING RATE ESTIMATES

A major methodological divergence between the LHL (2009) analysisand our work involved the type of crime statistic on which each group ofauthors based their analyses. Although sex-specific UCR statistics are gen-erally based on the number of offenders arrested, different types of crimerates may be computed using NCVS data. This possibility exists becauseseveral offenders can victimize one or more respondents during the sameincident, and the NCVS records these details. When this occurs, the ana-lyst can use each victimization as a single count or can determine the num-ber of total offenders by multiplying each incident by the number ofoffenders reported to be involved. The latter most closely parallels theoffender-based rate calculations commonly used when examining UCRarrest data.

LHL (2009) elected to use incident counts as their unit of analysis,whereas we constructed a measure using offender counts that is morecompatible with UCR arrest tabulations. Comparing both methods, LHLopted for the more easily calculated incident rates, concluding that theyachieved similar results with each, contrary to our findings.

LHL’s (2009) analytic unit introduces a dilemma for assigning offendergender when multiple offenders of both sexes are involved, because eachincident is counted only once. LHL chose to attribute any incident thatinvolved a female as a count toward the female rate, regardless of the sizeor sex composition of offender groups. Using LHL’s decision criterion, thefemale rate would increase, but the male rate would not if the incidence of


408 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

“mostly male” crime groups increased over time. Even when one offenderis male and the other female, only the female rate is affected by changes inco-offending. Attributing mostly male and sex-equal group incidents solelyto female counts is consequential for gender gap calculations because 1)these types of incidents outnumber multiple-offender incidents involvingall females and 2) misclassifying these incidents as solely female confoundschange in female violence with that of males. Clearly, this would be alesser issue if the proportion of mixed-sex groups and of females withinthese groups remained stable across time. LHL note, however, that thepercent of mixed-sex, multiple-offender incidents increased over time.This statement suggests that LHL’s methods have artificially inflatedfemale representation in recent years.

In contrast, our method, which followed the precedent of Hindelang(1981) and Lynch3 (2002), weighted incidents by number of female andmale offenders using known information about single and multiple offend-ers to produce sex-disaggregated offending counts that more accuratelyaccount for the sex distribution of offenders across groups of various sizes.Most robbery offenders and over half of aggravated assault offenders werepart of a group. Yet, when using an incident measure like LHL’s (2009),solo offender trends are weighted disproportionately because the propor-tion of solo incidents is much higher than that of solo offenders.

To demonstrate the impact of LHL’s (2009) methodological decisionson gender-gap trend estimates, figure 2 contrasts LHL’s incident rateratios with our offending estimates for the postredesign period(1993–2005). We also included results not shown by LHL for offendingestimates generated using equations 1 and 2 in LHL, which are offenderbased. The results align closely with our estimates. The consequences of anincident-based approach also are made clearer by examining gender-gaptrends in solo offending versus trends in multiple-offender incidents thatinvolve all or mostly single-sex offenders (i.e., the sex ratio for multiple-offender incidents, excluding incidents by sex-equal groups). We focusedon aggravated assault and robbery because space is limited and a greaterdisagreement exists about gender-gap trends for serious violence.

In contrast to LHL’s (2009) incident ratios, our offending estimatesdepict a stable 10-year trend in female-to-male involvement in aggravated

3. Like Lynch (2002), we weight incidents by number of offenders in the group upto ten. For mixed-sex groups, we counted all offenders as the majority sex (e.g., amostly male group would add only to the male count) and we drop the case if nosex was in the majority (evenly divided group). Equations 1 and 2 (LHL) arevery similar except equal sex incidents are divided among females/males, the sexof all offenders in groups is approximated, and the number of offenders is cappedat five.



Figure 2. Gender Rate Ratios across Offending Estimates,NCVS 1993–2005

Panel a. Aggravated assault

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Panel b. Robbery

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NOTES: The sex ratio is the female rate/male rate. Multiple-offender incidents includeexclusively and mostly female (or male) incidents.


410 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

assault and robbery (1993–2003). LHL suggested their decision to use inci-dents rather than offenders impacted only the level of the gender gap, butour replication shows a more complex relationship. The trajectory offemale-to-male offending is much flatter after multiple offenders are prop-erly accounted for and grouped more accurately by sex (SSZA). UsingLHL’s equations 1 and 2 to analyze offending rates (groups of offenderscapped at five and evenly divided sex groups split equally) revealed littlechange since 1993 in the sex rate ratio for aggravated assault or robbery.By giving disproportionate weight to solo incidents and falsely dichotomiz-ing mixed-sex incidents, LHL’s incident method confounds changes inmale and female offending in ways that inflate female levels and distortgender-gap trends.

Changes in the single-offender sex ratio do not necessarily reflect pat-terns consistent with shifts in the sex rate ratio among multiple offenders,but LHL’s (2009) incident-rate method cannot detect periodic or sustainedchanges in the same manner as offender-based ratios. Solo aggravatedassault trends nearly overlap with LHL’s incident measure and do notreflect the decrease in the female-to-male ratio of group incidents over thelate 1990s through early 2000. The greater decline in incidents thatinvolved exclusively and mostly female offenders means the small female-to-male gains among solo offenders ought to be at least partially offset bygreater female-to-male declines in group incidents. For robbery, LHL’smeasure also tracks solo offending closely. Based on the stability demon-strated in this figure for both single- and multiple-offender incidents, wequestion the extent to which even LHL’s incident measure depicts changein the sex ratio for robbery. For example, LHL’s sex ratio for robbery is.13 in 1993 and remains less than .15, except in 2003 and 2005.

KEY COMPUTATIONAL DIFFERENCES:ADJUSTMENT FOR THE 1992 REDESIGN

It is well established that the 1992 redesign increased reporting of moremarginal forms of violence, which necessitated an upward calibration ofearlier NCS estimates for many offenses to establish a more reliable timeseries. Improved measurement of ambiguous or previously hidden vio-lence is likely to impact more on female offending estimates because thesex ratio is closer to equal for minor violence. Disagreement remains,however, about how best to calculate the required redesign factors for sub-populations of offenders.

LHL (2009) raised the following three major concerns about ourapproach to dealing with the 1992 redesign: 1) We did not provide adetailed explanation of our methodology, 2) we used a different correctionfactor for male and female offenses (sex-specific correction factor), and 3)



we incorporated data from several years surrounding 1992 when calculat-ing the redesign correction factors rather than using only data from the1992 split sample. Unfortunately, LHL overlooked our offer to provideinterested readers with a detailed explanation of our methodology (Stef-fensmeier et al., 2005: 368–9). A fuller treatment was included in our origi-nal submissions, but these details were dropped from our publishedarticles for economy of space at the editors’ requests.

Concerns 2) and 3), although analytically distinct, overlap because a sex-disaggregated analysis that uses different correction factors for males andfemales increases the number of cases necessary to perform these calcula-tions. The number of rare events necessary to detect reliably a meaningfulNCVS-NCS difference (redesign effect) depends on numerous factors, butmost would agree that 11 female robbery incidents in the 1992 NCS versus14 in the 1992 NCVS are too few to draw meaningful conclusions aboutredesign effects. Female aggravated assault incidents numbered only 39and 61 in the 1992 NCS and NCVS samples, respectively, including countsof both solo female incidents and incidents involving all female groups(see figure 3, panels a and b). These low counts strongly counseled thatadditional years surrounding the 1992 redesign were necessary to assesssex-specific effects of the redesign accurately.

In contrast to our use of different correction factors for males andfemales, LHL (2009) argued that sex-specific adjustments are unnecessary;they “compared the gender specific offending estimates . . . for the NCS/NCVS overlap period and found small but statistically insignificant differ-ences in the NCVS/NCS ratio according to the gender of the offender.”Although the specific test is unclear, it is apparent that LHL used only theoverlap period and, therefore, low-power statistical tests. Basing a decisionon underpowered significance tests because of small samples risks a Type 2error—incorrectly concluding no difference when a true difference exists.When female and male rates are affected differently by the redesign, fail-ing to use a sex-specific correction leads to biased NCS gender-gap esti-mates and to overestimates of change in the gender gap.

Regardless of our position, we conducted preliminary significance testsfor whether the 1992 redesign differentially affected reporting increases offemale and male offenders using multiple years of data. We did so by con-structing confidence intervals around the difference in female and malecorrection factors and by using a logistic regression framework and fullNCS and NCVS files (1990–1991 and 1993–1994) to examine redesign dif-ferences in reporting. Virtually all multiyear measures of redesign effects,which were derived from incident or offender counts, demonstrated a sig-nificantly stronger effect on female versus male aggravated assault and


412 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

robbery.4

Our decision to use a multiyear adjustment factor is consistent with theposition of other NCVS analysts that published BJS estimates of redesigneffects, when based on 1 year’s data (overlap period), are appropriate onlyat the most aggregate levels, unsuitable for estimates other than victimiza-tion rates, and potentially unreliable for subgroup disaggregated analyses(Rand, Lynch, and Cantor, 1997). Cantor and Lynch (2005) examined theredesign’s impact on various subgroups across different crimes and statedthat the 1992 overlap sample is “quite limited” and “not particularlyappropriate” because the NCS and NCVS split samples were only one halfthe size of the typical sample. To double the sample size effectively andincrease the power of their analyses to detect significant redesign effects,Cantor and Lynch (2005) used preredesign data from January 1990 to July1991 and postredesign interviews from August 1993 to December 1994.

Similarly, we used data on violent events in 1990/1991/1992 (NCS) ver-sus 1992/1993/1994 (NCVS) after carefully considering how previousresearchers handled abrupt survey design changes (Liu and Messner,2001). We consulted with BJS statisticians as well as a leading BJS NCVSconsultant who advised that our multiyear method “makes sense to me.”We also took into account the convention in criminology of averagingacross several years to smooth short-run fluctuations and to reduce theinfluence of outliers for rarer forms of offending such as female violence.LHL (2009) objected that systematic decreases in offending during theyears used in our calculations would underestimate redesign effects andoverstate changes in offending; however, UCR arrest trends are at oddswith such claims.5 Moreover, we believe that the most important issue isNCVS integrity over time, and that official trends are of limited use.

To illustrate more clearly the effects of sex-specific adjustment factorscalculated using multiple years of data surrounding the 1992 redesign, fig-ure 3 compares female and male redesign correction factors for various

4. We followed an approach similar to Cantor and Lynch (2005), except we usedreports of female/male offending instead of victimizations reported by respon-dents as the dependent variable. We did not include control variables like Cantorand Lynch because missing data in those measures would negatively impact oursample size and statistical power. Our future agenda is to explore differentialredesign effects on offending counts across subgroups. In contrast, LHL’s (2009)analysis relied on redesign correction factors calibrated based on changes in theway respondents reported victimizations.

5. Male homicide arrest rates in 1990–1994 are as follows: 21, 22, 21, 22, and 20 per100,000 males. The female homicide arrest rate is 2 per 100,000 females eachyear. The female percent is 8.7, 8.3, 8.7, 8.3, and 9.1. Male robbery arrest rates areas follows: 163, 169, 166, 165, and 162 per 100,000. Female robbery arrest ratesare as follows: 14, 15, 14, 15, and 15 per 100,000. The female percent is 7.9, 8.2,7.8, 8.3, and 8.5.



Figure 3. NCVS/NCS Sex-Specific Redesign AdjustmentFactors and Their Effects on Sex Ratios forIncident and Offending Rates

Panel a. Sex-Specific Redesign Factors: Aggravated Assault

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Panel b. Sex-Specific Redesign Factors: Robbery

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414 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

Figure 3. NCVS/NCS Sex-Specific Redesign AdjustmentFactors and Their Effects on Sex Ratios forIncident and Offending Rates (continued)

Panel c. Sex Ratios across Redesign Factors: Aggravated Assault

Uncorrected Incidents LHL Corrected Offending SSZA

2-year (92+93)/(91+92) Incidents LHL 3-year (92+93+94)/(90+91+92) Incidents LHL

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Panel d. Sex Ratios across Redesign Factors: Robbery

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NOTES: The redesign correction factor is the redesign rate/preredesign rate. Female counts (n) inpanels a and b include solo female incidents as well as exclusively and mostly female group inci-dents. Star lines in panels a and b refer to the standard “ONE”: Adjustment factors greater than 1indicate a redesign effect. The vertical lines in panels c and d denote the 1992 redesign.



combinations of years estimated using weighted rates from several mea-surement strategies. Correction factors greater than 1 indicated a redesigneffect and the amount by which NCS rates should be multiplied for greaterconsistency with the NCVS. All multiyear measures, across indicators ofoffending and combinations of years, document the substantially largerredesign effect on female than on male offending.

Redesign effects nearly double female solo aggravated assault rates andsubstantially increase female offending estimates by 55 percent or more.Male assault rates also increased with the redesign, but by no more than 20to 40 percent. Male robbery rates are hardly affected by the redesign (cor-rection ~1.0), whereas female rates increase substantially. All multiyearmeasures show female solo robbery rate estimates to be about twice ashigh in the redesign. Robbery estimates that include multiple offenders(SSZA and LHL’s [2009] equations 1 and 2) indicate the redesign substan-tially increased female rates, on average by about 30 percent, as doesLHL’s incident method. LHL’s use of only the overlap period concealedsex differences in redesign effects for robbery and caused them to con-clude wrongly that a sex-specific redesign correction was unnecessary.More reliable multiyear sex-specific estimates of pre-redesign and post-redesign violence rates present strong evidence that the redesign had amore sizeable impact on robbery and aggravated assault rates of femaleoffenders.

The selection of redesign factor does not affect the slope directly, butthe solid lines superimposed by LHL (2009) in figures 3 to 5 presented the1992 transition as a more gradual increase beginning before the redesign.Inspection of the actual data, however, is inconsistent with this claim.After the redesign, LHL’s uncorrected incident ratios jump for aggravatedassault from .13 (1991) to .19 (1993) and double for robbery (.07 to .13).Redrawing LHL’s aggravated assault and robbery trends for 1980–2005using any of the multiyear, sex-specific redesign factors, it is less obviousthat any marked increase in female violence has occurred (figure 3, panelsc and d).6 SSZA’s adjusted offender-based sex ratio trends also show littlechange in the gender gap for assault or robbery.

6. Using linear regression on LHL’s (2009) uncorrected sex ratios, the time trendindicates a .0022 yearly increase in the sex ratio, or a total increase of nearly .06over 1980–2005. Dropping the last two data points, which are much higher thanother estimates, the slope decreases nearly by half (x = .0014) and indicates anincreases of .01 every 9–10 years. Applying the sex-specific correction factor toLHL’s incident estimates, the slope for aggravated assault equals .0004, or a totalprojected increase of .01 over 26 years. For robbery, the linear regression coeffi-cient is .0024, a total increase in the sex ratio of about .06. Applying any multi-year, sex-specific correction factor, the slope is .0011, a total increase of about.02. Although utilizing a multi-year, sex-specific correction factor is preferable tothe alternative, as the reader can easily see in figure 3, panels c and d, there


416 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

Clearly, the NCVS redesign that sought to enumerate less serious andmore hidden offenders was successful. In defining violence in these moreencompassing ways, an unintended by-product was the eliciting of rela-tively more female incidents and offenders. Based on the evidence, wejudged it necessary for those using the NCVS for longitudinal purposes totake into account these sex-specific shifts when calibrating pre-1992 surveyestimates or risk overestimating change in the gender gap over time.7

ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE ON THE GENDER GAP INVIOLENCE: THE DEBATE IS NOT OVER

At the end of the article, LHL (2009) wrote: “It seems that the time hascome to move beyond the debate over whether these changes in [violent]offending by gender have occurred and focus research efforts on explain-ing the reasons for differential changes in female and male rates of violentoffending.” LHL’s conclusion goes beyond their data and is inconsistentwith other evidence on violence gender-gap trends. Such a statement isdisappointing because, along with the contested figures in the text, it issusceptible to serving media and social science reports searching for sup-port that women are becoming more violent. Our aim here is to sketch, byno means exhaustively, gender-gap trends in violent offending across datapulled together from our ongoing investigation of continuity and change infemale participation across the criminal landscape. Confidence in our con-clusions is increased by data triangulation—using multiple data sourceswith various methodologies—to lessen the influence of biases in any oneviolence measure. Our approach also exercises a high standard of evidencewith the burden of proof on change.

Figure 4 depicts very stable gender gap trends across the most seriousforms of violence. Serious violence measures lower the impact from thechanging culture of crime control or social construction of violence; theirmeasurement reliability in establishing gender-gap trends is high com-pared with other forms of violence.

• Homicide gender-gap trends have remained very consistent sincethe 1980s (slight narrowing of gender gap). Today, as 2–3 decadesago, females comprise about 12 to 14 percent of all homicideoffenders.

remains an obvious short-term shift in the post-redesign sex ratio that is not cap-tured by the correction factor, even when following SSZA’s countingmethodology.

7. We recommend 1979/1980 as a starting point for analysis because these data con-tain detail about multiple-offender groups to determine their sex composition.Earlier surveys from 1973–1978 do not contain sufficient detail on mixed-sexgroups.



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418 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

• Suicide, which is serious violence turned inward and usuallyinvolving a gun, shows female involvement to be about 20 percentfor the past 2–3 decades. This gender gap is consistent.

• Rape is overwhelmingly a male crime, as it was 20–30 years ago(despite some definition broadening). The female percent of allrape arrestees remains 2 to 3 percent. The NCVS shows a similarstable pattern in female sexual assault. Because it is such a seriousand predatory form of sexual violence, it is reasonable, perhapsessential, to include rape in assessments of gender differences inviolence.

• Imprisonment for violence shows an unchanged female percentfor violent index crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, and assault).From the mid-1980s to today, about 5 to 6 percent of newly admit-ted violent prisoners were female. Prison admissions include themost serious violent offenders and are a good marker of trendsbecause of fewer changes in working definitions of serious vio-lence. In-stock incarceration statistics also indicate an unchangedfemale percent of violent offenders—about 3 to 4 percent.

Widening the purview of criminal violence even more, existing detailedlongitudinal evidence consistently shows that males remain predominantlyinvolved (90 to 95 percent) in the most violent offenses—kidnapping moti-vated by profit or sex; predatory sexual offending; stalking or other formsof intimidation; mass murder, bank robbery, carjackings; violence involv-ing street gangs, outlaw biker groups, mafia networks, and militia groups;terrorist activities; mid- and upper-level trafficking/smuggling of arms,drugs, human body parts, or endangered species; dog fighting; as well asenforcers, hit men, extortionists, arsonists, assassins, war criminals, hijack-ers, and pirates.

The lack of evidence for a narrowing gender gap in serious violence isremarkable given the expectation that women’s violence must havechanged over time as well as the larger shifts in the social construction of“violence.” The only offenses for which there seems to be any evidence offemale-to-male increases are assault and, to a lesser extent, robbery. Addi-tional evidence from national longitudinal sources leads us to be skepticalof LHL’s (2009) sweeping conclusion that female-to-male violence hasincreased in recent years.

• Assault indices, counting self-reports by high school seniors viaMonitoring the Future (MTF) and by 9–12th graders via theNational Youth Risk Behavior Survey (NYRBS), show littlechange in the female share (see figure 4, panel b)—about 30 per-cent in the MTF in each of the past three decades; and in theNYRBS, about 38 percent in the early 1990s and 2000s. The



female percent is relatively high because self-report data tend tomeasure less serious violence and the gender-gap tends to be nar-rower among adolescents.

More in-depth NCVS analyses of attempted and completed assaults areshown in figure 4, panel c (4-year averages). Only attempted assault showsa small female increase.

• Completed aggravated and simple assaults show no change infemale percent, 17–18 and 21–20, respectively.

• Attempted assaults, more subject than completed violence tosocial constructionist influences on victim-reporting and BJS prob-ing, show marginal female increases from 12 to 16 percent forattempted aggravated assault in early 1990 compared with 2000and by 3 percent over this period for attempted simple assault.

A key part of data triangulation is the growing body of qualitative stud-ies of women as victims or offenders of violence, which are spawned byincreasing numbers of women arrested on charges of assaulting a partneror household member (e.g., in CA, the female share for “domestic assault”arrests, coded beginning in the 1980s, rose from 2 percent to about 20percent by 2000). An exemplar, key themes emerging from Susan Miller’s(2005) in-depth study of Delaware’s experience in dealing with domesticviolence enforcement include the following: 1) greater impacts on femalearrests from recent policy changes aimed at reducing male partner vio-lence and 2) skepticism about media claims of women’s increased violenceor a narrowing gender gap (see also Schwartz, Steffensmeier, andFeldmeyer, 2009).

Robbery trends, which are also prone to stretched definitions in recentyears, are compared in figure 4, panel d.

• UCR arrests show a small female percent increase: 7 percent(1983–1985) to 9 percent (1993–1995) to 11 percent (2003–2005).Convictions (NJRP) and Imprisonment (NCRP), markers formore serious, less ambiguous robberies, show the female percentis about the same across decades for convictions and 1 percentgreater for imprisonment.

• Self-reported robbery trends (MTF) of adolescents show a gendergap that oscillates from about 18 percent (1983–1985) to 15 per-cent (1993–1995) to 17 percent (2003–2005)—essentially nochange.

• NCVS robbery reports, compared with arrest, present a lesserincrease—if any—in the female percent, from 9 (1983–1985) to 10(1993–1995) to 11 (2003–2005). Our work showed in 2001–2003that the female share was 10 percent, which is the same as1993–1995.


420 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

• Robbery with a weapon, as reported in the NCVS, involves simi-larly few females (6 percent) in 1993–1996 and in 2002–2005.Although objects considered weapons may expand with the socialconstruction of violence, this less ambiguous type of robberyshows no female increase when compared with total robberies.

• NVCS person theft, purse snatching, pocket picking, and burglaryshow steady female percentages of 12 percent. (A caveat here islow counts.) When pocket picking is excluded, the female percentdrops from 12 to 6 percent over 10 years.

To the extent that any change has occurred in the female percent acrossvarious data sources or measures, it is small or negligible for well-definedforms of robbery (with a weapon) and assault (completed/attempted).Looming large here is the following question: How much change in thegender gap is cause for concern? The dilemma of interpreting the meaningof very small increases for some but not all measures of assault or robberyis not easily resolved.

CONCLUSIONS

The LHL (2009) article defends the validity and reliability of the NCVSand relies on it to show that the gender gap in violence is narrowing.Fueled by recent changes in NCVS methodology, we are skeptical ofLHL’s approach and consequently their conclusion. After examining arange of evidence and probing more deeply into the NCVS data, we findthe evidence to be more equivocal than supportive. Criminologists andconsumers of social science research face a quandary in interpreting these,at best, mixed findings with regard to gender-gap violence trends. Whatcan the reader take away from this current debate?

• Assault is driving claims and conceptions of rising female-to-maleviolence. But even for assault, arguably the most ambiguouslydefined violent crime, there is contrary evidence depending ondata source or method.

• Evidence from data triangulation strategies shows more stabilitythan change in the violence gender gap. When one considers thebroader landscape of violence, claims that female-to-male violenceis rising are not supported, especially for more serious and preda-tory forms of violence where most offenders continue to be male.Alternative measures of less serious violence also tend to showstable or only slightly changed gender-gap trends.

• Caution is warranted in using the NCVS to detect subgrouptrends. NCVS gender-gap trends are compromised by the massiveredesign that changed how victims identify assailants in ways thatenhance reporting especially of female-typical violent offending,



and by erosion in data quality and sampling in ways that tend tounderestimate male offending. Despite its limitations and withappropriate scrutiny, the NCVS can be a valuable data source andmore research is needed that dissects the series vis-a-vis femaleviolence trends (see footnote 2). To mitigate these limitations par-tially, researchers can use our template to estimate offendingcounts and either 1) employ a sex-specific, multiyear correctionfactor to calibrate NCS estimates or 2) conduct separate analysesof the NCS and NCVS to limit data assessment to short-termtrends. We and LHL agree that little change has occurred in theNCS gender gap, so substantive studies should focus on differ-ences among subgroups in trends since 1993 across offendingcontexts (public/private; attempted/completed). Localized longitu-dinal case studies of official agency materials (e.g., police and pro-bation) also can help researchers understand the context of violentbehavior and the actual behaviors engaged in by classifying andcoding behaviors according to consistent definitions of violence.Methodologically, research is needed on how the NCVS redesign,sample size/composition changes, and other reliability issuesimpact female and offending estimates.

• The social construction of violence and changing culture of crimecontrol has pervasive effects on citizen perceptions and actions,police–citizen interactions, and data collection efforts regardingviolence. A challenge to researchers is to contend with contamina-tion of data sources owing to the effects of change in cultural con-ceptions of violence that increasingly prescribe the right to be freefrom all violence everywhere. The trend toward stretched defini-tions of violence, targeting partner or acquaintance violence, andperhaps greater willingness to see females as violent—can beexpected to impact all data sources, not just the UCR but also theNCVS.

We welcome this exchange with LHL (2009) and hope to involve themand others in future dialogue as we continue to follow trends in women’sviolence and other crimes using various methods and data sources. Ouranalysis has highlighted key differences, but we agree with LHL on manyimportant issues. We are pleased that they extend our observation thatmale declines are primarily responsible for any “real” narrowing of thegender gap (Steffensmeier et al., 2005: 378, 393). In a forthcoming SocialProblems article, (Schwartz, Steffensmeier, and Feldmeyer, 2009), we sug-gested multiple factors that may lead to larger male declines, whichinclude deterrence policies and prevention programs targeted predomi-nantly at male offending patterns and the civilizing effects of messages andpolicy response focused initially and primarily on the unacceptability of


422 SCHWARTZ ET AL.

men’s violence against women.8

Likewise, we agree with LHL (2009) and past scholars that changes inwomen’s and men’s lives may have reduced the gender gap for some formsof crime, including perhaps more minor forms of “assault” that womenhave always been proportionately more likely to commit. However, likeSteffensmeier (1980; Steffensmeier and Cobb, 1982) and Simon (1975)nearly 35 years ago, we remain skeptical that recent social transformationshave led women to be as crime-prone or as seriously violent as men(Adler, 1975). The debate over trends and underlying causes of the vio-lence gender gap should continue. Relative to the NCVS, we believe ourmethod of studying gender-gap trends to be sounder than that of LHL,and the balance of evidence from the NCVS and other sources showsmore stability than change.

REFERENCES

Adler, Freda. 1975. Sisters in Crime. New York: McGraw Hill.

Anderson, Theodore R. and Morris Zelditch, Jr. 1968. A Basic Course inStatistics, with Sociological Applications. New York: Holt, Rinehart,and Winston.

Cantor, David, and James P. Lynch. 2005. Exploring the effects of changesin design on the analytical use of the NCVS data. Journal of Quantita-tive Criminology 21:293–319.

Gove, Walter, Michael Hughes, and Michael Geerken. 1985. Are UniformCrime Reports a valid indicator of the index crimes? An affirmativeanswer with minor qualifications. Criminology 23:451–502.

Hindelang, Michael J. 1981. Sex differences in criminal activity. SocialProblems 27:143–56.

8. The importance of considering male declines as shaping gender-gap trends forsome offenses (e.g., burglary) has been a central feature of Steffensmeier andcolleagues’ multicausal framework that also entails considering separate andcombined effects of changes in the organization of gender, including liberationand female economic marginality and shifts in crime opportunities more suitablefor skills and orientations of one sex relative to the other (Steffensmeier, 1993).We found intriguing LHL’s (2009) hypothesis of the male decline as a product ofmen’s greater involvement with childcare in the domestic sphere, but we cautionthat these gains in fathering are small and are likely offset, in the aggregate, byincreased divorce, nonmarital births, incarceration of young men, and othersocial trends associated with men’s divestment from parenting.



Lauritsen, Janet L., Karen Heimer, and James P. Lynch. 2009. Trends inthe gender gap in violent offending: New evidence from the NationalCrime Victimization Survey. Criminology. This issue.

Liu, Jianhong, and Steven F. Messner. 2001. Modernization and crimetrends in China’s Reform Era. In Crime and Social Control in a Chang-ing China, eds. Jianhong Liu, Lening Zhang, and Steven F. Messner.Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Lynch, James P. 2002. Trends in Juvenile Violent Offending. Washington,DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Lynch, James P., and Lynne A. Addington. 2007. Understanding CrimeStatistics: Revisiting the Divergence of the NCVS and UCR. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Miller, Susan L. 2005. Victims as Offenders: The Paradox of Women’s Vio-lence in Relationships. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Mosher, Clayton, Terence D. Miethe, and Dretha Phillips. 2002. The Mis-measure of Crime. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

National Research Council. 2008. Surveying Victims: Options for Con-ducting the National Crime Victimization Survey, eds. Robert M.Groves and Daniel L. Cork. Washington, DC: National AcademiesPress.

Rand, Michael, James P. Lynch, and David Cantor. 1997. Criminal Victimi-zation 1973-95. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Schwartz, Jennifer, Darrell Steffensmeier, and Ben Feldmeyer. 2009.Assessing trends in women’s violence via data triangulation: Arrests,convictions, incarceration and victim reports. Social Problems. In press.

Simon, Rita J. 1975. Women and Crime. New York: Lexington.

Steffensmeier, Darrell. 1980. A review and assessment of sex differencesin adult crime, 1965–1977. Social Forces 58:1080–108.

Steffensmeier, Darrell. 1993. National trends in female arrests. Journal ofQuantitative Criminology 9:411–41.

Steffensmeier, Darrell, and Emilie Allan. 1996. Gender and crime: Towarda gendered paradigm of female offending. Annual Review of Sociology22:459–87.

Steffensmeier, Darrell and Michael Cobb. 1982. Sex differences in urbanarrest patterns, 1934–1979: Stability or change? Social Problems29:37–50.


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Steffensmeier, Darrell, Jennifer Schwartz, Hua Zhong, and Jeff Acker-man. 2005. An assessment of recent trends in girls’ violence usingdiverse longitudinal sources: Is the gender gap closing? Criminology43:355–405.

Steffensmeier, Darrell, Hua Zhong, Jeff Ackerman, Jennifer Schwartz,and Suzanne Agha. 2006. Gender gap trends for violent crimes, 1980-2003. Feminist Criminology 1:72–98.

Jennifer Schwartz is an assistant professor of sociology at WashingtonState University. Her research focuses on gender and other correlates ofcrime; stratification, family structure, communities, and crime; and howsocial change impinges on trends in crime and social control. Her researchidentifying trends and correlates of girls’ and women’s violence as well assubstance abuse and social reactions to it has been published in Criminol-ogy, Journal of Marriage and Family, Homicide Studies, Addictive Behav-iors, and Sociological Perspectives.

Darrell Steffensmeier is a professor of sociology and crime/law/justice atPennsylvania State University. He is past president of the InternationalAssociation for the Study of Organized Crime, a Fellow of the AmericanSociety of Criminology, the recipient of numerous National Science Foun-dation awards for funded research, and has authored articles on a range oflaw/criminology topics in major social science and criminology outlets. Heis author of The Fence: In the Shadow of Two Worlds, (recipient of the1987 Crime and Delinquency outstanding scholarship award from theSociety for the Study of Social Problems); and (with Jeffery Ulmer), Con-fessions of a Dying Thief: Understanding Criminal Careers and IllegalEnterprise (recipient of the 2006 Hindelang Award for outstanding schol-arship from the American Society of Criminology). His current researchand writing focuses on applying multiple methods and data sources toexaminations of the effects of gender, age, and race-ethnicity on patternsand trends in crime; further developing the “gendered paradigm” offemale offending; and expanding on key themes raised in Confessions of aDying Thief.

Hua Zhong, PhD, is an assistant professor of sociology at The ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on trends in crime anddeviance, gender and age differences in crime and deviance, the impact ofsocial change on youth behavior, social forces of substance abuse, andcross-cultural comparisons.

Jeff Ackerman is an assistant professor in the Texas A&M UniversitySociology Department. His current research interests include partner



violence, female offending, juvenile delinquency and recidivism, as well asinnovation among substance abuse treatment and preventionorganizations.

trends in the gender gap in violence: reevaluating ncvs and other evidence

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