There were two primary goals of the National Youth Victimization Prevention Survey. The first was to derive estimates of various forms of victimization among youths. The second was to obtain childrenís assessments of the victimization prevention programs which many schools have begun offering over the past decade.

Data were collected by telephone survey from 2000 randomly sampled children between the ages of 10 and 16 and their caretakers. Children were interviewed at two time points, the initial survey time and a 15 month follow-up. In addition to collecting basic demographic information, the survey asked children to recall details of victimizations personally experienced, respond to a test of knowledge about sexual victimization, recall the content of prevention programs to which they were exposed, render judgments regarding the usefulness of these programs, report on behavioral, social and psychological troubles (including offense behavior and substance abuse), and express opinions on a range of topics including the level of crime in their schools and in their neighborhoods, and the survey itself.

The data consists of two files, one for each wave of data collection. The wave one file includes 2000 observations and 727 variables. The file contains all of the information obtained from the parent and child interviews administered in wave one as well as the case weights, derived variables and constructed variables. The wave two file includes 1457 observations and 897 variables. The file contains all of the information obtained from the parent and child interviews administered in wave two as well as the case weights, estimate weights, and derived and constructed variables.