Response to OMB Passback

Q 23 – first response option needs to be more parallel to other – money to hire/train to DO WHAT?  Presumably to do incident-level reporting but please confirm.  More generally, there seem to be a lot of potential issues that one could check in Q22 that are not (clearly) in the “solution” set in Q23.   Finally, this is question most in need of further thought given the discussion at the CNSTAT panel meeting.

We have modified the first response option to read “Funding or grants to hire or train personnel in the effective reporting and analysis of IBR data”. This response option has also been moved so that it appears 4^th in the list of response options.

Many of the issues posed in Q22 are reasons for not participating in NIBRS that agencies have reported at national meetings.  However, most of these issues have never been measured in a systematic manner and the NCS-X team is using the agency survey to try to determine, through proper survey techniques, whether these issues are of major consequence or not to the sampled agencies. Therefore, some issues raised in Q22 will not have parallel solutions in the proper sense in Q23 (e.g., “We have concerns about reporting rape/sexual assault incidents to other reporting systems…”).

However, we have added additional response options to Q23 that cover a broader range of incentives which are not specifically financial (in terms of providing direct funding to agencies) in nature and which also help address more of the issues posed in Q22 . For example, in Q22 one issue raised is “…the incidence of crime will appear to increase.” We have added a response option in Q23 that says “Provide a service to convert local IBR data into UCR data for the purposes of public release of crime statistics” and providing “…talking points for chiefs and law enforcement executives addressing potential changes in crime reporting levels as the agency implements an IBR system” as incentives that could address this issue.

Other incentives added to Q23 include items such as providing training to crime analysts, providing research-driven analytic models to agencies and states to effectively utilize their IBR or NIBRS data, and providing online analysis tools to agencies and states to analyze their IBR or NIBRS data. We have also revised Q23 to read “…more likely for agencies to begin contributing…” instead of “…easier for agencies to begin contributing…”.

Finally, we have added a sub-question each under Q22 and Q23 which asks the respondent to name the top 3 issues (for Q22) or incentives (for Q23) that are important to their agency. The purpose of these sub questions is to focus in on the main issues or incentives that are of concern/interest to agencies. This will help reduce the effect of agencies simply marking every response option in Q22 and Q23 as agree or strongly agree. New questions Q22a and Q23a are shown below.

22a. Using the list of reasons some agencies have given for why they are reluctant to contribute to their state’s IBR system or to NIBRS directly from Q22 (above), please select the 3 reasons that are most important to your agency.

1.  _______________________________________

2. _______________________________________

3. _______________________________________

23a. Using the list of factors that could make it easier for agencies to begin contributing to their state’s IBR system or directly to NIBRS (from Q23 above), please select the 3 factors that are most important to your agency.

1._______________________________________

2. _______________________________________

3. _______________________________________

Q 24 – I really don’t like this question.  It seems to be leading: “do you need even more money for this than I’ve already offered you above.”  Should it instead ask about any other solutions that aren’t in 23 that they listed in 22?

Q24 was intended to capture any other unique resource needs that each responding agency might have that would encourage them specifically to begin contributing to NIBRS in order to help the NCS-X team during the implementation phase. We have reworded Q24 to better reflect the purpose of this question. Q24 now reads “Do you envision any additional resources -- beyond those described in question 23-- that would be needed by your agency for it to begin contributing to your state’s incident-based reporting system or (if necessary) directly to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)?”.

More generally – Q 24 asks about NIBRS, Q 23a and Q 25 are asking about a much broader set of incident-level systems.  Are we skirting the issue of NIBRS itself by not asking about it directly?  Do we need to ask these questions twice (once for NIBRs and once for the larger scope of system options)?

In all questions, the survey is only talking about NIBRS; however, there have been many negative connotations of NIBRS in the minds of some of the chiefs and we believe using the broader terminology in some questions will allow respondents to answer with less bias. We have changed the introductory text to Q22 to read “…reluctant to contribute their incident-based data to their state’s incident-based reporting (IBR) system or to NIBRS directly (in the absence of a state IBR system).” NCS-X will utilize existing state incident-based reporting programs (which ultimately submit data to NIBRS) where they exist so local agencies may not be thinking of NIBRS when they complete the survey, but rather their state’s IBR program. We also included “…or to NIBRS directly (in the absence of a state IBR system)…” for those agencies that are in states where there is no state IBR program. This terminology has been reflected in Q23-Q28 to make the questions consistent.

Some response options in Q22 and Q23 have been adjusted to ensure that they are consistent with the above terminology. While the implementation of NCS-X will rely solely on agencies reporting to NIBRS (either through their state IBR program or directly to the FBI), there are aspects of reporting incident-based data that we would like to obtain information on through this survey. For example, one response option in Q25 is how incident-based reporting might provide “improved comparisons to other agencies”. The issue of comparisons between law enforcement agencies is not specifically tied to NIBRS reporting as agencies could compare themselves to each other now to a minimal degree using UCR summary data.

Q 27 – is this “increasing crime reporting” really BJS’s main goal here?  Should “incident-level” be added before crime (to link this question to the rest of the survey) or should we link the survey here to the “higher calling” of something like “more informative” or “useful” or “complete” crime reporting?

We agree that Q27 should be revised to more closely tie it to the larger survey and the overall goals of the NCS-X. We have revised it to read:

“Is there anything that was not addressed in previous questions that would help us in our efforts to assist agencies as we work toward a goal of being able to generate a useful and informative set of incident-based national crime statistics using NIBRS data that can serve to shed light on policy and program issues of importance to law enforcement and society?”.