Explaining Differences in Comparative Criminological Research: An Empirical Exhibition1

Abstract

This manuscript examines the correspondence between unofficial and official measures of cross‐national crime for two violent and two non‐violent offenses. More specifically, we report on the convergence of two official measures of cross‐national crime, derived from the European Sourcebook and Interpol, and one unofficial measure of cross‐national crime, provided by the International Crime (Victim) Survey, in terms of their depiction of sexual assault, robbery, domestic burglary, and motor vehicle theft. We evidence strong correlations between the official measures of crime with an expanded sample, but the official data and victimization data were not consistently associated with one another regardless of sample size. This intriguing pattern may be explained by sample size and sample composition. A small number of countries exerted a considerable influence on our findings when we used an expanded sample of countries. We conclude that future researchers using cross‐ national data must attend to the contextual features of the specific countries that they include in their research.