Persons Encouraged to Participate in National Crime Victimisation Survey

With less than a month remaining to complete data collection for the 2023 Jamaica National Crime Victimisation Survey (JNCVS), the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) is encouraging citizens to cooperate with interviewers when they visit.

The survey, which got under way on November 1, 2023, will last until the end of January 2024.

It is designed to examine the experience of crime from the perspective of the individual, thereby expanding the information that would otherwise be only available from police statistics.

“I just want to encourage citizens to participate in this survey. It’s been a challenge to get households to cooperate [and] to welcome the STATIN interviewers in,” said Head of the Special Projects Unit, STATIN, Philone Mantock, during a recent interview with JIS News.

The 2023 JNCVS will capture information relating to persons 16 years and older who are usual residents of Jamaica and living in private dwelling units at the time of the survey.

Ms. Mantock assured citizens that the information shared will be kept confidential, as interviewers have signed an oath of secrecy.

“Any information [you] divulge to the interviewer is kept strictly confidential [and] when we release the data, we would never identify a person by name or their community,” she said.

She also pointed out that all interviewers are given an identification card (ID) and persons may contact STATIN to verify whether an individual is working on the survey.

Ms. Mantock informed that 17 supervisors and 58 interviewers are currently in the field conducting data collection across all parishes.

“We have a sample of approximately 3,300 dwellings and we randomly select one person from each dwelling to complete the questionnaire. We have visited at least a third of those dwellings since the start of November and completed questionnaires for them as well,” she informed.

During data collection, participants are asked various demographic questions as well as questions relating to safety.

“We ask them about themselves, education status, employment and then we ask them about safety. How safe do you feel at home, how safe do you feel in specific situations or areas. We ask them if they think certain authorities are doing a good job. We also ask them about their experience of a crime… and if they have experienced a crime in the past 12 months, we ask them specific questions about that crime,” said Ms. Mantock.

She further indicated that the Ministry of National Security relies on the information to inform policy and programme development to reduce crime and violence.

The 2023 JNCVS was commissioned by the Ministry of National Security.

It was first conducted in 2006.

The last one was done in 2019.