Bureau of Justice Statistics Workshop on Quantitative Analysis of Crime and Criminal Justice Data
For 24 years, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has sponsored a four week intensive seminar on Quantitative Analysis of Crime and Criminal Justice Data. In past years, the seminar has featured an overview of many of the data collections compiled by BJS and the use of these data in an individualized research project. The growth of many data collections programs at BJS has been impressive, but has caused practical difficulties for the organization and content of the seminar. Trying to learn about all data sets compiled by BJS, or even only about the most important ones, results in incomplete consideration of important analytic topics. Therefore, the BJS summer program adopted a more focused, issue-oriented approach beginning in the year 2000 and continuing in future years.
Recent reductions in crime and the growth of imprisonment are substantive issues addressed by a number of BJS data sets. Also evident in these data sets are methodological issues concerning new measures of criminal offending, reliable and valid instrumentation design, accuracy of event reporting, administrative record data sampling, missing data imputation, and standard error calculation for multi-stage sampling designs. Seminar sessions focus on these substantive and methodological issues through the use of didactic lectures, discussions with guest speakers, computerized problem solving exercises, and the development and execution of a research report using the available data.
Social scientists and researchers from colleges and universities, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies are eligible to participate in this workshop. Enrollment will be limited to no more than 10 participants, selected on the basis of their interests in the topical areas, prior methodological training, and potential for research contributions to the topical area. The Bureau of Justice Statistics will provide stipend support to offset transportation and per diem expenses for enrolled participants. The workshop is offered as part of the ICPSR Summer Training Program in Quantitative Methods. Participants may apply for a limited number of other courses in the program at no further expense.
Specific program and application dates and application materials can be obtained from the ICPSR Web site.
