Appendix B: Glossary of Terms
General Terms
Specific Terms Used in Various Surveys
General Terms
- Crime
- Any violation of a statute or regulation or any
act that the government has determined is injurious
to the public, including felonies and misdemeanors.
Such violation may or may not involve violence, and
it may affect individuals or property.
- Incident
- A specific criminal act or offense involving
one or more victims and one or more offenders.
- Multistage sampling
- A survey sampling technique in
which there is more than one wave of sampling. That
is, one sample of units is drawn, and then another
sample is drawn within that sample. For example,
at the first stage, a number of Census blocks may be
sampled out of all the Census blocks in the United
States. At the second stage, households are sampled
within the previously sampled Census blocks.
- Prevalence
- The percentage of the population directly
affected by crime in a given period. This rate is based
upon specific information elicited directly from the
respondent regarding crimes committed against his
or her person, against his or her property, or against
an individual bearing a unique relationship to him
or her. It is not based upon perceptions and beliefs
about, or reactions to, criminal acts.
- School
- An education institution consisting of one or
more of grades K through 12.
- School crime
- Any criminal activity that is committed
on school property.
- School year
- The 12-month period of time denoting
the beginning and ending dates for school accounting
purposes, usually from July 1 through June 30.
- Stratification
- A survey sampling technique in
which the target population is divided into mutually
exclusive groups or strata based on some variable or
variables (e.g., metropolitan area) and sampling of
units occurs separately within each stratum.
- Unequal probabilities
- A survey sampling technique
in which sampled units do not have the same probability
of selection into the sample. For example, the
investigator may oversample minority students in
order to increase the sample sizes of minority students.
Minority students would then be more likely than
other students to be sampled.
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Specific Terms Used in Various Surveys
National Crime Victimization Survey
- Aggravated assault
- Attack or attempted attack with
a weapon, regardless of whether or not an injury
occurs, and attack without a weapon when serious
injury results.
- At school (students)
- Inside the school building, on
school property (school parking area, play area, school
bus, etc.), or on the way to or from school.
- Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs)
- Geographic
entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) for use by federal statistical
agencies in collecting, tabulating, and publishing
federal statistics.
- Rape
- Forced sexual intercourse including both
psychological coercion as well as physical force.
Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal, or
oral penetration by the offender(s). Includes attempts
and verbal threats of rape. This category also includes
incidents where the penetration is from a foreign
object, such as a bottle.
- Robbery
- Completed or attempted theft, directly
from a person, of property or cash by force or threat
of force, with or without a weapon, and with or
without injury.
- Rural
- A place not located inside the Metropolitan
variety
of localities, ranging from sparsely populated rural
areas to cities with populations of less than 50,000.
- Serious violent crime
- Rape, sexual assault, robbery,
or aggravated assault.
- Sexual assault
- A wide range of victimizations,
separate from rape or attempted rape. These crimes
include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving
unwanted sexual contact between the victim and
offender. Sexual assault may or may not involve force
and includes such things as grabbing or fondling.
Sexual assault also includes verbal threats.
- Simple assault
- Attack without a weapon resulting
either in no injury, minor injury, or an undetermined
injury requiring less than 2 days of hospitalization.
Also includes attempted assault without a weapon.
- Suburban
- A county or counties containing a central
city, plus any contiguous counties that are linked
socially and economically to the central city. On the
data tables, suburban areas are categorized as those
portions of metropolitan areas situated "outside
central cities."
- Theft
- Completed or attempted theft of property or
cash without personal contact.
- Urban
- The largest city (or grouping of cities) in an
MSA.
- Victimization
- A crime as it affects one individual
person or household. For personal crimes, the number
of victimizations is equal to the number of victims involved.
The number of victimizations may be greater
than the number of incidents because more than one
person may be victimized during an incident.
- Victimization rate
- A measure of the occurrence of
victimizations among a specific population group.
- Violent crime
- Rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated
assault, or simple assault.
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School-Associated Violent Deaths Surveillance Study
- Homicide
- An act involving a killing of one person by
another resulting from interpersonal violence.
- School-associated violent death
- A homicide or
suicide in which the fatal injury occurred on the
campus of a functioning elementary or secondary
school in the United States, while the victim was on
the way to or from regular sessions at such a school, or
while the victim was attending or traveling to or from
an official school-sponsored event. Victims included
nonstudents as well as students and staff members.
- Suicide
- An act of taking one's own life voluntarily
and intentionally.
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School Crime Supplement
- At school
- In the school building, on school property,
on a school bus, or going to or from school.
- Gang
- Street gangs, fighting gangs, crews, or something
else. Gangs may use common names, signs,
symbols, or colors. All gangs, whether or not they are
involved in violent or illegal activity, are included.
- Serious violent crime
- Rape, sexual assault, robbery,
or aggravated assault.
- Total victimization
- Combination of violent victimization
and theft. If a student reported an incident of
either type, he or she is counted as having experienced
any victimization. If the student reported having
experienced both, he or she is counted once under
"total victimization."
- Violent crime
- Rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated
assault, or simple assault.
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School Survey on Crime and Safety
- At school/at your school
- Includes activities that
happened in school buildings, on school grounds, on
school buses, and at places that held school-sponsored
events or activities. Unless otherwise specified,
respondents were instructed to report on activities
that occurred during normal school hours or when
school activities/events were in session.
- Combined schools
- Schools that include all combinations
of grades, including K–12 schools, other than
primary, middle, and high schools (see definitions for
these school levels later in this section).
- Cult or extremist group
- A group that espouses radical
beliefs and practices, which may include a religious
component, that are widely seen as threatening the
basic values and cultural norms of society at large.
- Firearm/explosive device
- Any weapon that is
designed to (or may readily be converted to) expel a
projectile by the action of an explosive. This includes
guns, bombs, grenades, mines, rockets, missiles, pipe
bombs, or similar devices designed to explode and
capable of causing bodily harm or property damage.
- Gang
- An ongoing loosely organized association of
three or more persons, whether formal or informal,
that has a common name, signs, symbols, or colors,
whose members engage, either individually or collectively,
in violent or other forms of illegal behavior.
- High school
- A school in which the lowest grade is
not lower than grade 9 and the highest grade is not
higher than grade 12.
- Hate crime
- A criminal offense or threat against a
person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole
or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, color,
national origin, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability,
or sexual orientation.
- Insubordination
- A deliberate and inexcusable defiance
of or refusal to obey a school rule, authority, or
a reasonable order. It includes but is not limited to
direct defiance of school authority, failure to attend
assigned detention or on-campus supervision, failure
to respond to a call slip, and physical or verbal intimidation/
abuse.
- Intimidation
- To frighten, compel, or deter by actual
or implied threats. It includes bullying and sexual
harassment. (Intimidation was not defined in the
front of the questionnaire in 2005–06.)
- Middle school
- A school in which the lowest grade is
not lower than grade 4 and the highest grade is not
higher than grade 9.
- Physical attack or fight
- An actual and intentional
touching or striking of another person against his or
her will, or the intentional causing of bodily harm
to an individual.
- Primary school
- A school in which the lowest grade
is not higher than grade 3 and the highest grade is
not higher than grade 8.
- Rape
- Forced sexual intercourse (vaginal, anal, or oral
penetration). Includes penetration from a foreign
object.
- Robbery
- The taking or attempting to take anything
of value that is owned by another person or
organization, under confrontational circumstances
by force or threat of force or violence and/or by
putting the victim in fear. A key difference between
robbery and theft/larceny is that a threat or battery
is involved in robbery.
- Serious violent incidents
- Include rape, sexual battery
other than rape, physical attacks or fights with
a weapon, threats of physical attack with a weapon,
and robbery with or without a weapon.
- Sexual battery
- An incident that includes threatened
rape, fondling, indecent liberties, child molestation,
or sodomy. Principals were instructed that classification
of these incidents should take into consideration
the age and developmentally appropriate behavior of
the offenders.
- Sexual harassment
- Unsolicited, offensive behavior
that inappropriately asserts sexuality over another
person. The behavior may be verbal or nonverbal.
- Specialized school
- A school that is specifically for
students who were referred for disciplinary reasons.
The school may also have students who were referred
for other reasons. The school may be at the same location
as the respondent's school.
- Theft/larceny
- Taking things valued at over $10
without personal confrontation. Specifically, the
unlawful taking of another person's property without
personal confrontation, threat, violence, or bodily
harm. Included are pocket picking, stealing purse or
backpack (if left unattended or no force was used to
take it from owner), theft from a building, theft from
a motor vehicle or motor vehicle parts or accessories,
theft of bicycles, theft from vending machines, and
all other types of thefts.
- Urbanicity
- As collected by the Common Core of
Data and appended to the SSOCS data file, city
includes large cities and midsize cities, urban fringe
includes urban fringe of large and mid-sized cities,
town includes large and small towns, and rural includes
rural outside an MSA and inside an MSA.
- Vandalism
- The willful damage or destruction of
school property, including bombing, arson, graffiti,
and other acts that cause property damage. Includes
damage caused by computer hacking.
- Violent incidents
- Include rape, sexual battery other
than rape, physical attacks or fights with or without
a weapon, threats of physical attack with or without
a weapon, and robbery with or without a weapon.
- Weapon
- Any instrument or object used with the
intent to threaten, injure, or kill. Includes look-alikes
if they are used to threaten others.
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Schools and Staffing Survey
- City
- A territory inside an urbanized area (defined as
densely settled "cores" with populations of 50,000 or
more of Census-defined blocks with adjacent densely
settled surrounding areas) and inside a principal city
(defined as a city that contains the primary population
and economic center of a metropolitan statistical
area, which, in turn, is defined as one or more contiguous
counties that have a "core" area with a large
population nucleus and adjacent communities that
are highly integrated economically or socially with
the core).
- Elementary school
- A school in which the lowest
grade is less than or equal to grade 6 and the highest
grade is less than or equal to grade 8.
- Elementary school teachers
- An elementary school
teacher is one who, when asked for the grades taught,
checked: (1) only "ungraded" and was designated as
an elementary teacher on the list of teachers provided
by the school; (2) 6th grade or lower or "ungraded,"
and no grade higher than 6th; (3) 6th grade or lower
and 7th grade or higher, and reported a primary
assignment of prekindergarten, kindergarten, or
general elementary; (4) 7th and 8th grades only, and
reported a primary assignment of prekindergarten,
kindergarten, or general elementary; (5) 6th grade or
lower and 7th grade or higher, and reported a primary
assignment of special education and was designated as
an elementary teacher on the list of teachers provided
by the school; or (6) 7th and 8th grades only, and
reported a primary assignment of special education
and was designated as an elementary teacher on the
list of teachers provided by the school. A teacher
at a school that has grade 6 or lower or one that is
"ungraded" with no grade higher than the 8th.
- Instructional level
- Instructional levels divide
teachers into elementary or secondary based on a
combination of the grades taught, main teaching
assignment, and the structure of the teacher's class(es).
Those with only ungraded classes are categorized as
elementary level teachers if their main assignment is
early childhood/prekindergarten or elementary, or
they teach either special education in a self-contained
classroom or an elementary enrichment class. All
other teachers with ungraded classes are classified as
secondary level. Among teachers with regularly graded
classes, in general, elementary level teachers teach
any of grades prekindergarten through 5th; report
an early childhood/prekindergarten, elementary,
self-contained special education, or elementary
enrichment main assignment; or are those whose
preponderance of grades taught are kindergarten
through 6th. In general, secondary-level teachers
instruct any of grades 7 through 12 but usually no
grade lower than 5th. They also teach more of grades
7 through 12 than lower level grades.
- Rural
- A territory outside any urbanized area (defined
as densely settled "cores" with populations of 50,000
or more of Census-defined blocks with adjacent
densely settled surrounding areas) or urban cluster
(defined as densely settled "cores" with populations
between 25,000 and 50,000 of Census-defined blocks
with adjacent densely settled surrounding areas).
- Secondary school
- A school in which the lowest grade
is greater than or equal to grade 7 and the highest
grade is less than or equal to grade 12.
- Secondary school teachers
- A secondary school
teacher is one who, when asked for the grades taught,
checked: (1) "ungraded" and was designated as a
secondary teacher on the list of teachers provided
by the school; (2) 6th grade or lower and 7th grade
or higher, and reported a primary assignment other
than prekindergarten, kindergarten, or general
elementary; (3) 9th grade or higher, or 9th grade
or higher and "ungraded"; (4) 7th and 8th grades
only, and reported a primary assignment other than
prekindergarten, kindergarten, general elementary, or
special education; (5) 7th and 8th grades only, and
reported a primary assignment of special education
and was designated as a secondary teacher on the list
of teachers provided by the school; or (6) 6th grade
or lower and 7th grade or higher, or 7th and 8th
grades only, and was not categorized above as either
elementary or secondary.
- Suburban
- A territory outside a principal city (defined
as a city that contains the primary population and
economic center of a metropolitan statistical area,
which, in turn, is defined as one or more contiguous
counties that have a "core" area with a large population
nucleus and adjacent communities that are
highly integrated economically or socially with the
core) and inside an urbanized area (defined as densely
settled "cores" with populations of 50,000 or more of
Census-defined blocks with adjacent densely settled
surrounding areas).
- Town
- A territory inside an urban cluster (defined
as densely settled "cores" with populations between
25,000 and 50,000 of Census-defined blocks with
adjacent densely settled surrounding areas).
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Youth Risk Behavior Survey
- Illegal drugs
- Examples of illegal drugs were marijuana,
cocaine, inhalants, steroids, or prescription
drugs without a doctor's permission, heroin, and
methamphetamines.
- On school property
- On school property is included
in the question wording, but was not defined for
respondents.
- Rural school
- A school located outside a Metropolitan
Statistical Area (MSA).
- Suburban school
- A school located inside an MSA,
but outside the "central city."
- Urban school
- A school located inside an MSA and
inside the "central city."
- Weapon
- Examples of weapons appearing in the
questionnaire include guns, knives, and clubs.
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