Self-Report Study
Definition
A research method in which respondents are asked to disclose offences they have committed, whether or not those offences resulted in arrest or detection. Used to study the distribution of offending across populations.
- Method
- Respondents disclose offences whether or not detected
- Purpose
- Study distribution of offending across a population
- Field
- Criminology
Common questions
Why do self-report studies exist alongside official crime statistics?+
Official statistics only capture offences that were reported and recorded, so self-report studies are used to estimate the far larger volume of offending that never reaches police records, often called the dark figure of crime.
What is the main limitation of relying on self-reported offending data?+
Respondents may under-report serious or stigmatised offences, over-report minor ones, or misremember timing and frequency, so results are typically treated as indicative of patterns rather than precise counts.
Related terms
- CSEW (Crime Survey for England and Wales)
- The principal victimisation survey in England and Wales, conducted by the Office for National Statistics since 1982. Interviews around 35,000 adults annually...
- Dark Figure of Crime
- The gap between the actual volume of crime and the amount recorded in official statistics. Crimes go unrecorded when victims do not...
- NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey)
- The principal victimisation survey in the United States, administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics since 1973. Interviews approximately 240,000 individuals in...
- Telescoping
- A memory error in which respondents misplace events in time, typically drawing incidents from outside the reference period into it (forward telescoping),...
- Victimisation Survey
- A survey that asks a random population sample about crimes experienced in a reference period, regardless of whether those incidents were reported...