2017 SCS OMB Supporting Statement A_FINAL

Supporting Statement – 2017 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey

A. Justification

1. Necessity of the Information Collection

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) request clearance to conduct the 2017 School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The BJS is authorized to collect statistics on victimization under Title 42, United States Code, Section 3732 of the Justice Systems Improvement Act of 1979 (Attachment 1). Title 1 of the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) mandates that the NCES collect, report, analyze, and disseminate statistical data regarding education in the United States. The NCVS and all related contacts and protocols for the 2017 collection year were separately approved by OMB (OMB NO: 1121-0111), and this request is specifically for a supplemental data collection instrument that will be added to the approved NCVS core from January through June of 2017 (Attachment 2). The primary purpose of the SCS is to obtain information about school-related victimizations. This information helps policymakers, academic researchers, practitioners at the federal, state, and local levels, and special interest groups, who are concerned with crime in schools, make informed decisions about policies and programs.

NCVS data on school crime have shown that school crimes are under-reported to the police and victims between the ages of 12 and 18 are not as likely as older victims to report victimizations to the police. In addition, police-based statistics are not organized in a manner to properly identify crimes that occurred at school or during school hours. Therefore, police statistics on school crime are not adequate to address the issue of the nature and prevalence of school victimization. Accurate information regarding the prevalence and incidence of crime at school must be collected through a survey like the SCS in order to study the relationships between victimization at school and the school environment, and to monitor changes in student experiences with victimization.

The SCS was first administered as a supplement to the NCVS in 1989. It was repeated in 1995 and 1999 and has since been administered biennially. Like the prior surveys, the 2017 SCS will provide critical information about the overall safety environment in schools to understand the context in which school-related victimizations occur on a national level. The supplement includes questions related to students' experiences with, and perceptions of, crime and safety at school. The questions focus on preventive measures used by schools; students' participation in after school activities; students' perception of school rules and enforcement of these rules; the presence of weapons, drugs, alcohol, and gangs in school; student bullying; hate-related incidents; and attitudinal questions relating to the fear of victimization at school. Questions pertaining to school bullying are also a key component of the SCS, since school bullying represents a unique type of victimization among youth and that could impact education outcomes and physical and mental health.^1,2,3

As in prior years, data from the 2017 SCS will be linked to NCVS survey instrument responses to allow for a more complete understanding of student’s experiences both in and out of school. In a 2014 report, the CDC advocated for the need for this type of information, particularly in regards to vulnerable groups and bullying victimization.⁴ The CDC report recommended that “those concerned about youths’ safety not limit their data collection efforts to bullying alone, but rather gather information on the broad threats to youths’ safety.”⁵ The SCS uniquely addresses this recommendation through the ability to the link SCS data to core NCVS data. This integration of the two surveys allows for a more complete understanding of individual students’ circumstances and the relationships between victimization in and out of school.

Revisions to the 2015 and 2017 SCS Bullying Measures

The 2014, CDC report also proposed using a uniform school bullying definition for all future research in this area. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define bullying as –

…any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated. Bullying may inflict harm or distress on the targeted youth including physical, psychological, social, or educational harm.⁶

In response, NCES and BJS initiated a revision of the SCS that was implemented in 2015. The two agencies convened a Technical Review Panel (TRP) to assess the survey and to recommend changes that could meet the CDC’s definitional requirements for more uniform collection of data on bullying. For the 2015 SCS, the three agencies which partner to develop, administer and analyze the SCS – BJS, Census, and NCES – worked together to review all aspects of the survey instrument. The goals of the review were to 1) decrease burden on respondents, 2) assess how the SCS was being utilized by stakeholders, and 3) align the data collected by the SCS with the CDC/Department of Education (ED)-endorsed definition of bullying published in 2014. As a result of the review, the 2015 SCS was substantially modified from previous versions of the instrument to include an embedded split-half design to test two versions of a series of questions on bullying victimization (see Exhibit 1; Attachment 3).

Exhibit 1: Bullying questions used in split-half administration of the 2015 School Crime Supplement

Question number	Text	Question number	Text
Version 1 (original 2013 form plus two follow-up questions)		Version 2 (single new question)
22	Now I have some questions about what students do at school that makes you feel bad or are hurtful to you. We often refer to this as being bullied. You may include events you told me about already. During this school year, has any student bullied you? That is, has another student.... Made fun of you, called you names, or insulted you in a hurtful way? Spread rumors about you or tried to make others dislike you? Threatened you with harm? Pushed you, shoved you, tripped you, or spit on you? Tried to make you do things you did not want to do; for example, give them money or other things? Excluded you from activities on purpose? Destroyed your property on purpose?	Alt 22	Now I have some questions about bullying at school. Bullying happens when one or more students tease, threaten, spread rumors about, hit, shove, or hurt another student. It is not bullying when students of about the same strength or power argue or fight or tease each other in a friendly way. Bullies are usually stronger, or have more friends or money, or some other power over the student being bullied. Usually, bullying happens over and over, or the student being bullied thinks it might happen over and over. By this definition, have you been bullied at school by another student this school year?
Additional questions in Version 1 on repetition and power imbalance		Additional questions in Version 2 on modes of bullying
23a.	When you were bullied this school year, did it happen over and over, or were you afraid it would happen over and over?	Alt 22a.	Was any of the bullying verbal—that is, did it involve making fun of you, calling you names, or spreading rumors about you?
23b.	When you were bullied this school year, were you ever bullied by someone who had more power or strength than you? This could be because the person was bigger than you, was more popular, had more money, or had more power than you in another way?	Alt 22b.	Was any of the bullying physical—that is, did it involve hitting, shoving, tripping, or physically hurting you in some way, or the threat of hurting you in some way?
		Alt 22c.	Was any of the bullying social—that is, did it involve ignoring you or excluding you from activities on purpose in order to hurt you?

The CDC uniform definition of bullying includes two components not previously captured in the SCS: repetition and a power differential. The 2015 SCS questionnaire was designed with two versions of the questions used to measure the rate of bullying based on the uniform definition. Version 1 maintained the original SCS question on bullying (consistent with 2013 SCS question to help preserve the time trend) and added two new follow-up questions to capture the two new components. In version 2, respondents were asked a single new question on bullying that included the two additional components. Initial analyses of the two versions of bullying questions used in the 2015 SCS produced differing rates of bullying.⁷

Based on findings from the 2015 split-half experiment, the 2017 SCS uses version 1 of the bullying questions. This allows for the preservation of historical trends on bullying, while also collecting data on the subset of reported bullying that incorporated the elements of repetition and power imbalance. The 2017 administration represents the first time that these new items will be asked of the full sample of respondents. However, these bullying items were modified slightly prior to inclusion on the instrument.

In an effort to better understand the different components of bullying included in the CDC definition, the NCES, BJS, and Census agreed that more cognitive testing was needed in order to determine how the concepts of “repetition” and “power imbalance” were interpreted by the target population (students ages 12-18 in grades 6-12).

Cognitive testing was conducted from May through July of 2016 to assess respondents’ comprehension of the new questionnaire items, including question intent and the meaning of specific words and phrases in the item. Data from cognitive interviews were used to identify potentially problematic questions that were not understood as intended and to evaluate consistency of answers within the questionnaire and in comparison to the expected range of answers. Based on the results of the cognitive testing, the additional questions on repetition and power imbalance were refined for the 2017 SCS (Attachment 4). Exhibit 2 presents a summary of changes made to the 2017 SCS questionnaire.

Exhibit 2: Summary of changes made to the 2017 SCS questionnaire

1. Single version administration (split-half was used only for 2015 SCS)

2. Modification of wording on frequency question (Q23a)

3. Addition of follow-up question on frequency to assess number of bullying behaviors experienced in one day (Q23b)

4. Modification of wording on 1 question (Q24) about bullying repetition

5. Addition of 2 questions to determine number of perpetrators (Q25) and if the perpetrators acted alone or together as a team (Q26)

6. Addition of 4 items on power imbalance in bullying

The final list of new items for the 2017 SCS are shown in Exhibit 3. All items included in the 2017 SCS are listed in attachment 5 along with a justification for each.

Exhibit 3: Items added or modified on the 2017 SCS questionnaire

G_BULLY_DAY_PLUS 23a. During this school year, how many days were you bullied? (READ ANSWER CATEGORIES)	214SCS 1  One day – Go to G_BULLY_TIMES 2  Two days SKIP to G_BULLY_ 3  Three to ten days HAPPEN_AGAIN 4  More than ten days
G_BULLY_TIMES 23b. In that one day, how many times would you say other students did those things that made you feel bad or were hurtful to you? (READ ANSWER CATEGORIES 1-4)	215SCS 1  Once 2  Two to ten times 3  Eleven to fifty times 4  More than fifty times 5  Too many times to count 6  Don’t know
G_BULLY_HAPPEN_AGAIN 24. Did you think the bullying would happen again?	216SCS 1  Yes 2  No
G_BULLY_MULTI_PERS 25. Thinking about the [time/times] you were bullied this school year, did more than one person do [this/these things] to you?	217SCS 1  Yes 2  No - SKIP to: G_BULLY_STRONGER
G_BULLY_HOW_ACT 26. Did these people act alone, together as a team, or both?	218SCS 1  Alone 2  Together 3  Both 4  Don’t know
27. Now I have some additional questions about the time [another student/ other students] {behavior1}, {behavior2}, and {behaviorx…}. Thinking about the [person/ people] who did [this/these things] to you this school year, G_BULLY_STRONGER [Was this person/ Were any of these people/ Was anyone in the group] physically bigger or stronger than you? G_BULLY_POPULAR [Was this person/ Were any of these people/ Was anyone in the group] more popular than you? G_BULLY_MONEY [Did this person/ Did any of these people/ Did anyone in the group] have more money than you? G_BULLY_INFLUENCE [Did this person/ Did any of these people/ Did anyone in the group] have the ability to influence what other students think of you? G_BULLY_OTHER_POWER [Did this person/ Did any of these people/ Did anyone in the group] have more power than you in another way?	Yes No 219SCS 1  2  220SCS 1  2  221SCS 1  2  222SCS 1  2  223SCS 1  2 

The U.S. Census Bureau has conducted the SCS as part of the NCVS administration 11 times since 1989. The 2017 SCS, as the proposed 12^th administration, will continue the significant body of information on trends in school-related victimization that is provided by NCES to the public. The 2017 SCS questionnaire will also help refine the collection of data to address the recommendations in the CDC report begun in 2015 and to maintain nationally representative information on bullying among certain subgroups of students. The SCS is the only data collection on school victimization which is nationally representative of the youth population ages 12 through 18.

2. Needs and Uses

Title 1 of the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) mandates that NCES collect, report, analyze, and disseminate statistical data regarding education in the United States. These data include the nature of criminal incidents at school and other indices of school safety. Specifically, information is required on the incidence, frequency, seriousness, and nature of violence affecting students, school personnel, and other individuals participating in school activities. Furthermore, other indices of school safety are to be detailed, including information regarding the relationship between victims and perpetrators and demographic characteristics of the victims. To study the relationship between victimization at school and the school environment, and to monitor changes in student experiences with victimization, accurate information regarding its characteristics and incidence must be collected. These data yield information used generally, and by several specific groups interested in school crime such as school administrators, resource officers, and educators.

General Uses. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences’ (IES) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and jointly designed with Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the SCS collects the data to address the mandates of both agencies. Since its first collection in 1989, and in 1995, 1999 and biennially thereafter, the SCS has been NCES' primary data source on student victimization. In addition to collecting characteristics related to various types of student victimization at school, the SCS also asks students about: perceptions of school safety; alcohol and drug availability; fighting, bullying, and hate-related behaviors; fear and avoidance behaviors; gun and weapon carrying; and gangs at school.

To meet its obligation to Congress under the ESRA, NCES works with its diverse customer groups and relies on their feedback to determine how to meet their information demands for timely, comprehensive, and useful information that maintains high statistical standards. NCES engaged and encouraged school practitioners, researchers, and data users of the SCS by convening a TRP in August 2013 to review the SCS and its content. For the 2015 SCS, revisions were made to reduce the number of questions on the instrument, align the SCS with ED’s commitment to more fully address the needs of vulnerable student groups, and update questions on the SCS questionnaire concerning bullying victimization to incorporate the recommendations in the 2014 CDC report on uniform definitions of bullying. The 2017 SCS data collection will further refine the information collected to address the uniform definition of bullying, while maintaining the trend in bullying data which stakeholders have come to rely on.

Exhibit 4 displays the types of estimates that can be drawn from the 2017 SCS.

Exhibit 4: Types of estimates that can be drawn from the 2017 SCS

Estimates1	Relevant questions
Percentages of students ages 12–18 who reported presence of selected security measures at school	Q10
Percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being bullied at school during the school year by type of bullying and by selected student and school characteristics	Q22-27
Number and percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being bullied at school and whether an adult was notified, and selected student characteristics	Q22-27, 29
Percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported bullying problems at school and the effect it had on them, by selected student and school characteristics	Q22-27, 30
Percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being targets of hate-related bullying, hearing hate-related words and seeing hate-related graffiti at school during the school year, by selected student and school characteristics	Q31, 32, 33, 34
Percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being afraid of attack or harm during the school year, by location and urbanicity	Q35, 36
Percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported that gangs were present at school during the school year	Q41
Percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being bullied at school, by student reports of negative school conditions such as the presence of gangs and availability of drugs and alcohol at school	Q19, 22-27, 41
Percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being bullied at school, by presence of indicators of school attachment, performance, and future orientation	Q9, 14, 22-27, 42, 43, 44
Percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being bullied at school, by student reports of personal fear, avoidance behaviors, fighting, and weapon carrying at school, and type of bullying	Q21a, 22-27, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40

¹ Some data that refer to student characteristics like sex, race, and household income are covered in the NCVS survey and not in the SCS. School characteristics for the schools of attendance reported by respondents are taken from NCES’ Common Core of Data (CCD) and Private School Universe Survey (PSS).

Use by Federal Stakeholders

NCES and BJS use the SCS data to meet the reporting mandates of the agencies. Together they issue a joint annual report, Indicators of School Crime and Safety. The latest report is available at http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5599. Eight of the 23 indicators in this report include SCS data. Indicator 2, “Incidence of Victimization at School and Away from School,” is the primary mechanism for releasing annual estimates from the NCVS for violence and theft against students ages 12 to 18.

NCES also uses these data to complement other publications, such as The Condition of Education, a congressionally mandated annual report that summarizes developments and trends in education using the latest available data. Some of the other federal stakeholders and the ways in which they use SCS data are as follows:

Congress uses these data to evaluate the prevalence and extent of school crime to help support Federal, State and local agencies in reducing student victimization, develop new or improved initiatives or laws aimed at ensuring the safety of America's students and monitor the effectiveness of school policies and programs.

The Department of Education reviews the data to meet its obligation to Congress under the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) to understand the current trends in school crime and disorder and its possible effects on student education and school systems. Within the Department, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) and the Office of Safe and Healthy Students (OSHS) use the data to: communicate and understand the current trends in school crime and to allocate resources to assist states and local agencies to meet the needs of school officials, administrators, teachers, and parents to assess conditions within their own schools/jurisdictions relative to those at the national level, as well as determine needs and budget requirements.

Use by Non-Federal Stakeholders

Non-federal users include state and local officials who, in conjunction with researchers and planners, need to analyze the current trends in victimization and school safety. For example:

State and local governments use the data to assess conditions within their own jurisdictions relative to those at the national level and to determine needs and budget requirements for local school districts.

Researchers and practitioners often reanalyze the data to estimate the prevalence and impact of student victimization, and correlate school crime to design prevention programs.

The media disseminates findings from the survey to inform the public about all of the issues related to school crime and safety.

In addition to principal, district, or state-level data sources, students' reports of victimization and perceptions of crime, violence, and school climate are important factors in providing a comprehensive picture of school crime and safety. Currently, the SCS is the only recurring national data source that provides nationally representative student-level data detailing victimization and other school characteristics related to crime and disorder.

If the data in the SCS were not collected, data users would have no source of nationally representative student-level data on victimization and school characteristics related to victimization that includes incidents both reported and not reported to police. Stakeholders would not have sufficient data to make comparative assessments that document the changing demands on schools, community mental health agencies, and law enforcement. These entities will not have the necessary data to obtain resources for personnel and services to ensure school safety (e.g. security, personnel, and programmatic efforts) and other demands for tax dollars.

Attachment 6 displays selected nonfederal publications that report secondary analyses of SCS data.

3. Use of Information Technology

The SCS will be conducted in a fully automated interviewing environment using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) methods whereby field representatives (FRs) use a laptop computer to read questions and record answers. Interviews may be conducted by telephone or personal visit. The use of CAPI technologies reduces data collection costs as well as respondent and interviewer burden. Furthermore, automated instruments afford the opportunity to implement inter-data item integrity constraints which minimize the amount of data inconsistency. More consistent data, in turn, reduces the need for extensive post-data collection editing and imputation processes which will significantly reduce the time needed to release the data for public consumption. The use of technology results in more accurate data products that are delivered in a more timely fashion giving data users access to information while it is still relevant.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

Two contemporary surveys collect information about school-related crime and safety from the students’ perspective. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and Monitoring the Future (MTF) are nationally-based collections that target various populations and substantive areas. However, neither of these studies provides a comprehensive picture of school crime from the students’ perspective from both the public and private sectors.

Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) collects information on risky behaviors and offending, but there is minimal overlap of YRBS content with that of the SCS. The YRBS is a school-based survey and interviews students in grades 9 through 12. Most of the questions ask about all experiences, not just those confined to school. The SCS is a household-based sample and interviews children ages 12 to 18 who have attended school during the previous six months (grades 6 through 12). All of the questions are about experiences at school. Three areas of overlap include: did the student carry a weapon on school property, was the student in a fight on school property, and did the student skip (or not attend) school because of safety concerns. In 2011, two questions on bullying and cyber-bullying were added to the YRBS. Unlike the SCS, the questions do not go into detail about the type of bullying behavior, number of incidents, or results (notification of adults, avoidance, etc.). Additionally, because this is a self-administered survey, the responses are not directly comparable to the SCS.

Monitoring the Future (MTF). The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) publishes survey results from Monitoring the Future (MTF). This survey, like the YRBS, is a self-administered form. It is also a school-based survey population. The population surveyed does not completely overlap with the SCS as the survey is not administered to students below grade 8 and uses different forms for grades 8, 10, and 12; it includes college students; and is not restricted by age. More importantly, the sampling procedures are representative of schools, not the general population. Monitoring the Future does not look at bullying or cyber-bullying, and only overlaps in the areas of drug and alcohol use and availability. Like the YRBS, MTF does not restrict responses to experiences on school property. Thus, the SCS does not duplicate existing data collections.

5. Efforts to Minimize Burden

The SCS is part of the NCVS which is a household-based sample. The supplement will be conducted in households scheduled to be interviewed in January through June 2017. Based on the 2015 SCS data collection, we expect that the 2017 SCS will take no longer than 15 minutes to administer. Approximately 9,295 persons in NCVS households who were 12 through 18 years old were eligible to participate in the 2015 SCS. We estimate that approximately 14,815 respondents between the ages of 12 and 18 will be eligible for the supplement in 2017. This is an increase of about 59% compared to the total number of persons 12 to 18 years of age that were eligible for the 2015 SCS. This increase is attributable to the increase in sample size for the NCVS from 2015 to 2017.

In 2017, like 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015, all SCS interviewers will collect data using CAPI technology. Using CAPI technologies reduces respondent and interviewer burden because the automated instruments present the next ‘on-path’ question. This prevents the need for the interviewer to delay the interview to assess and proceed with the correct skip pattern. This also creates fewer delays throughout the interview which results in shorter interviews and a commensurate reduction in respondent and interviewer burden.

During the 2015 cycle of review and revisions, a number of questions and sub-questions were deleted, edited or combined in order to improve information or minimize non-response. For the 2017 administration, an additional 7 items have been added.

6. Consequences of Less Frequent Collection

To produce a regular series of data on school crime victimization requires regular data collection. In 1999, the SCS became a biennial survey for several reasons: 1) the student perspective is important in understanding school crime, and 2) the data about the students’ must be analyzed over time to identify trends.

7. Special Circumstances

Collection is consistent with the guidelines in 5 C.F.R. 1320.9.

8. Adherence to 5 CFR 1320.8(d) and Outside Consultations

The research under this clearance is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6. Comments on this data collection effort were solicited in the Federal Register, Vol. 81, No. 126, page 42727 on June 30, 2016 and Vol. 81, No. 172, page 61252 on September 6, 2016. No public comments were received in response to the information provided.

The U.S. Census Bureau, the BJS, and the NCES cooperated to develop the questionnaire and procedures used to collect this supplemental information. Principal consultants from the BJS were Drs. Michael Planty, Lynn Langton, Jennifer Truman, and Rachel Morgan. Principal persons from NCES were Ms. Rachel Hansen and Ms. Maura Spiegelman. Those persons consulted from the Census Bureau included Ms. Meagan Meuchel, Ms. Jill Harbison, Mr. Timothy Gilbert, Mr. Edward Madrid, Ms. Mary Davis, and Ms. Mandi Martinez.

BJS and NCES consulted with two bullying research experts, Dr. Catherine Bradshaw (Johns Hopkins University) and Dr. Michele Ybarra (Center for Innovative Public Health Research) prior to the cognitive testing and questionnaire development for the 2017 SCS.

9. Paying Respondents

Payment or gifts to respondents is not provided in return for participation in the survey.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality

All NCVS information about individuals or households is confidential by law--Title 42, United States Code, Sections 3789g and 3735 (formerly Section 3771) and Title 13, United States Code, Section 9. Only Census Bureau employees sworn to preserve this confidentiality may see the survey responses. Even BJS, as the sponsor of the NCVS, is not authorized to see or handle the data in its raw form. All unique and identifying information is scrambled or suppressed before it is provided to BJS and NCES to analyze. Data are maintained in secure environments and in restricted access locations within the Census Bureau. All data provided to NCES and BJS must meet the confidentiality requirements set forth by the Disclosure Review Board at the Census Bureau.

In a letter signed by the Director of the Census Bureau, sent to all participants in the survey, respondents are informed of this law and assured that it requires the Census Bureau to keep all information provided by the respondent confidential. The letter also informs respondents that this is a voluntary survey. Furthermore, in addition to the legal authority and voluntary nature of the survey, the letter informs respondents of the public reporting burden for this collection of information, the principal purposes for collecting the information, and the various uses for the data after it is collected which satisfies the requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974.

11. Justification for Sensitive Questions

Sensitive questions include those related to victimization, bullying victimization, drug availability at school, gang presence at school, and students’ access to weapons since these are of great interest for school administrators and personnel responsible for maintaining school safety. These have been included in past SCS administrations. Additional questions about whether bullying is related to personal characteristics such as sexual orientation or religious beliefs are carefully constructed to ask about perceptions of victims, rather than about actual personal characteristics. This information is necessary to meet ED’s commitment to provide information on school victimization among protected and vulnerable student groups.

12. Estimate of Respondent Burden

This burden estimate assumes that the total NCVS sample from January through June 2017 will be approximately 108,415 households yielding approximately 14,815 persons age 12-18 in NCVS interviewed households.

Based on the 2015 SCS data collection, we expect that about 60% or 8,889 of the 14,815 NCVS persons ages 12-18 will complete an SCS interview. Of the 8,889 SCS respondents, 86% or 7,645 will complete the long SCS interview (entire SCS questionnaire) which will take an estimated 0.25 hours (15 minutes) to complete. The remaining 14% or 1,244 SCS respondents will complete the short interview (i.e. will be screened out for not being in school), which will take an estimated 0.05 hours (3 minutes) to complete. The total respondent burden is approximately 1,973 hours (see Table 1 for calculation). The decrease in the respondent burden from 2,444 hours to 1,973 hours is attributed to the time needed to complete an SCS interview and to declining NCVS and SCS response rates. The decrease in respondent burden is also due to a more accurate estimate of the time needed to complete the 2017 SCS by using time stamp data from the 2015 collection instead of the estimated time used to calculate the 2015 SCS burden estimates.

Table 1: 2017 SCS estimated burden hours

	Number of SCS Persons	Time per interview (hours)	Burden hours (AxB)
Total Expected SCS Persons	14,815
Expected SCS Interviews	8,889
Expected SCS Short Interviews	1,244	.05	62
Expected SCS Long Interviews	7,645	.25	1,911
Expected SCS Noninterviews	5,926
2017 SCS Burden Hours Estimate			1,973
2015 SCS Burden Hour Estimate on File			2,444
Change in Respondent Burden Hours from 2015 to 2017			-471

13. Estimate of Respondent’s Cost Burden

There are no costs to respondents other than that of their time to respond.

14. Costs to Federal Government

There are no capital or start-up costs associated with this data collection.

The total estimated annual cost to the Federal Government for the SCS is approximately $1,283,759. The NCES will bear all costs of data collection for the supplement incurred by the U.S. Census Bureau. Table 2 details estimated costs for BJS and NCES and Table 3 details the estimated costs to the U.S. Census Bureau for the 2017 SCS.

Table 2: Estimated BJS and NCES costs for the 2017 SCS

		Estimated Cost
Staff Salaries
	GS12 – Statistician, BJS (15%)	$13,173
	GS15 – Supervisory Statistician, BJS (3%)	$4,355
	GS12 – Statistician, NCES (30%)	$26,346
	GS13 – Statistician, NCES (45%)	$46,995
	Subtotal salaries	$90,869
	Fringe benefits (28% of salaries)	$25,443
	Subtotal: Salary and fringe	$116,313
	Other administrative costs of salary and fringe (15%)	$17,447
	Subtotal: Project management costs	$133,759
NCES support contractors		$300,000
Total estimated costs		$433,759

The U.S. Census Bureau will act as the data collection agent for the 2017 SCS. Census will develop, test, and finalize the 2017 SCS survey instrument, develop all data collection support and training materials, train interviewers and support staff, and collect, process, and disseminate the 2017 SCS data.

Table 3: Estimated U.S. Census Bureau costs for the 2017 SCS

Division		Estimated Cost
	CSM (Cognitive Testing)	$89,061
	DSMD (Sample Design and Estimation)	$95,393
	ADSD (Instrument Development)	$28,391
	DSD (Data Processing)	$133,671
	FLD (Data Collection)	$256,521
	ADDP (Survey Operations and Project Management)	$246,963
Total estimated costs		$850,000

15. Reasons for Changes in Burden

The decrease in the respondent burden from 2,444 hours to 1,973 hours is attributed to the time needed to complete an SCS interview and to declining NCVS and SCS response rates. The decrease in respondent burden is also due to a more accurate estimate of the time needed to complete the 2017 SCS by using time stamp data from the 2015 collection instead of the estimated time used to calculate the 2015 SCS burden estimates. The number of persons in the household who are 12 through 18 years old that will be eligible for the supplement will increase by about 59% from 9,295 respondents in 2015 to about 14,815 respondents in 2017. This increase is attributable to the increase in sample size for the NCVS from 2015 to 2017.

16. Project Schedule and Publication Plans

2013 SCS

The following publications have been released using data from the 2013 SCS:

Web Tables – Student Reports of Bullying and Cyber-Bullying: Results from the 2013 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCES 2015-056) http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2015/2015056.pdf.

Data Point: Trends in Bullying at School Among Students Ages 12 to 18 (NCES 2016-004) http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016004.pdf.

Data Point: Trends in Hate-Related Words at School Among Students Ages 12 to 18 (NCES 2016-166) http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016166.pdf.

Data Point: Reports of Bullying and Other Unfavorable Conditions at School (NCES 2016-169) http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016169.pdf.

Statistics in Brief: Student Victimization in U.S. Schools: Results from the 2013 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCES 2016-145; forthcoming pending NCES review).

Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2015 (May 2016) can be found at http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5599. Eight of the 23 indicators in the report are based on SCS data. These include –

• Indicator 3: Prevalence of Victimization at School

• Indicator 8: Students’ Reports of Gangs at School

• Indicator 10: Students’ Reports of Being Called Hate-Related Words and Seeing Hate-Related Graffiti

• Indicator 11: Bullying at School and Cyber-Bullying Anywhere

• Indicator 14: Students Carrying Weapons on School Property and Anywhere and Students’ Access to Firearms

• Indicator 17: Students’ Perceptions of Personal Safety at School and Away From School

• Indicator 18: Students’ Reports of Avoiding School Activities or Specific Places in School

• Indicator 21: Students’ Reports of Safety and Security Measures Observed at School

2015 SCS

ICPSR expects to release the 2015 SCS data file and documentation on their website in late 2016.

Recurring reports from the 2015 SCS collection will be released approximately six months after the data are approved for release. Two additional reports are planned: 1) a methodology report detailing the development, administration and results of the 2015 SCS split-half methodology, and 2) a substantive report on the analysis of the 2015 SCS data related to differences in the estimates of bullying with and without the additional CDC elements.

2017 SCS

Through October of 2016, Census will develop and test the CAPI instrument to ensure that it functions as designed and that all survey skip patterns have been properly programmed. This testing will be done in consultation with BJS and NCES. By early December of 2016, Census will develop and distribute all training materials to their FRs. Interviewing for the 2017 SCS will be conducted from January through June of 2017 by the Census Bureau FRs. Processing of the survey data will take place on an ongoing basis between February 2017 and October 2017. The computer processing, editing, imputation, and weighting of the data will be completed by the end of November of 2017. The Census Bureau will prepare and deliver a 2017 NCVS/SCS micro-data user file and accompanying file documentation including a nonresponse bias report to BJS by December of 2017.

The BJS and the NCES will be responsible for release of the data to the public, the statistical analysis of the data, and the production of resultant web-based publications and tabulations. These microdata are made available as a public-use file (PUF) after it has been approved by the Census Bureau’s Disclosure Review Board (DRB). The datafile itself is released via the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/) and includes a codebook, setup program in SAS language, text file of the raw data, as well as the datafile in SPSS, SAS, and STATA data formats. As an example, the 2013 SCS data release documentation and datasets can be found at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/studies/34980.

Recurring reports from the 2017 collection, will be released approximately six months after the data are approved for release. These will include the Web Tables Report on student reports of bullying, and the Statistics in Brief report on student reports of criminal victimization.

17. Display of Expiration Date

N/A.

18. Exceptions to the Certificate Statement

N/A. There are no exceptions to the Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions. Collection is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.9.

1 Young-Jones, A., Fursa, S., Byrket, J., & Sly, J.S. (2015). Bullying affects more than feelings: the long-term implications of victimization on academic motivation in higher education. Social Psychology of Education, 18(1): 185-200.

2 Thomas, H.J., Chan, G.C.K, Scott, J.G., Connor, J.P., Kelly, A.B., & Williams, J. (2016). Association of different forms of bullying victimisation with adolescents’ psychological distress and reduced emotional wellbeing. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 50 (4): 371-379.

3 Hertz, M.F., Jones, S.E., Barrios, L., David-Ferdon, C., & Holt, M. (2015). Association between bullying victimization and health risk behaviors among high school students in the United States. Journal of School Health, 85(12): 833-842.

4 Gladden, R.M., Vivolo-Kantor, A.M., Hamburger, M.E., & Lumpkin, C.D. Bullying Surveillance Among Youths: Uniform Definitions for Public Health and Recommended Data Elements, Version 1.0. Atlanta, GA; National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Education; 2014. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying-definitions-final-a.pdf.

5 Ibid, p1.

⁶ Gladden, R.M., Vivolo-Kantor, A.M., Hamburger, M.E., & Lumpkin, C.D. Bullying Surveillance Among Youths: Uniform Definitions for Public Health and Recommended Data Elements, Version 1.0. Atlanta, GA; National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Education; 2014. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying-definitions-final-a.pdf.

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7 NCES report forthcoming on the 2015 SCS split-half methodology.

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