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In this article, we make a return on the conditions of invention and institutionalization of the American Victimization Survey. We return to the work of actors who initiated this innovation, and the political and social context of their endeavour. This research identifies a functional change in the survey referring to the classic opposition between comprehensive research and applied research. Our goal is to analyze the format of American Victimization survey, in a diachronic perspective, from actors who define its uses. The U.S. survey of victimization, as originally designed, takes place in an ideal of control through adaptation. The aim is to understand social change by quantifying social trends and therefore adopt a futuristic view. We observe a critical moment in 1977 that appears like a gradual shift where we move from the need for an understanding-oriented survey to a survey, whose focal is reduced to the risk factors analysis. Finally, the analysis makes obvious how policy lodges itself in a “survey knowledge”.