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Description & Citation--Study No. 6172

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:6172
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06172
 
Title:Reexamining the Minneapolis Repeat Complaint Address Policing (RECAP) Experiment, 1986-1987
 
Principal Investigator(s):Michael E. Buerger, Crime Control Institute
 
Funding Agency:United States Department of Justice. National Institute of Justice.
 
Grant Number:91-IJ-CX-0029
 
Bibliographic Citation:Buerger, Michael E. REEXAMINING THE MINNEAPOLIS REPEAT COMPLAINT ADDRESS POLICING (RECAP) EXPERIMENT, 1986-1987 [Computer file]. Minneapolis, MN: Michael E. Buerger, Crime Control Institute [producer], 1993. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1994.
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This study reexamines REPEAT COMPLAINT ADDRESS POLICING: TWO FIELD EXPERIMENTS IN MINNEAPOLIS, 1985-1987 (ICPSR 9788). The original Repeat Complaint Address Policing (RECAP) experiment was a field study of the strategy of problem-oriented policing, which used control and treatment groups consisting of specific addresses in the city of Minneapolis. The impact of problem-oriented policing was measured by comparing the number of 911 calls received for each address during a baseline period to the number received during a period when experimental treatments were in effect. Several features of the original data distort the one-to-one correspondence between a 911 call and an event, such as the occurrence of multiple versions of the same call in the databases. The current study identifies and attempts to correct these occurrences by applying multiple levels of data cleaning procedures to the original data to establish a better one-to-one call-to-event correspondence.
 
Subject Term(s):police departments, police response, emergency services, police protection
 
Geographic Coverage:Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
 
Time Period:1986 - 1987
 
Date(s) of Collection:1990 - 1993
 
Unit of Observation:Geographic addresses in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
 
Universe:The sample was drawn from a universe consisting of the 2,000 most frequently referenced addresses in calls to the Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center (911) during 1986-1987.
 
Data Type:event/transaction data
 

Methodology

Purpose of the Study:This study reexamines REPEAT COMPLAINT ADDRESS POLICING: TWO FIELD EXPERIMENTS IN MINNEAPOLIS, 1985-1987 (ICPSR 9788), conducted by the Minneapolis Police Department and Lawrence W. Sherman of the Crime Control Institute. Several features of the original data distort the one-to-one correspondence between a 911 call and an event, such as the occurrence of multiple versions of the same call in the databases. The current study identifies and attempts to correct these occurrences by applying multiple levels of data cleaning procedures to establish a better one-to-one call-to-event correspondence. Using this data collection, researchers should be able to determine if the conclusions of the original study should be modified after the distortions in the original data have been addressed.
 
Study Design:The original RECAP study was designed as a randomized controlled field experiment to study the strategy of problem-oriented policing. It used individual geographic addresses in the city of Minneapolis as the unit of analysis and compiled a database from archived 911 computer tapes created by the Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center (MECC). Addresses were then ranked according to the frequency with which they appeared in the database. Five hundred addresses were chosen for the experiment and were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups, each consisting of 125 commercial and 125 residential addresses. The current study identifies three types of distortion in the original databases: True Mirrors, Contemporaneous Calls, and Migrating Calls. True Mirrors are multiple versions of a single call that are created by the idiosyncrasies of the MECC computer system. Contemporaneous Calls are multiple calls to MECC regarding a single event. Migrating Calls are calls that are associated with one address, but then are reassigned to another address, while the original address remains in the database. The data in this study are recreations of the original RECAP databases, which were then modified. (The actual databases of the original study were not available, and consequently it was necessary to reconstruct them.) The sixteen data files are organized such that each file corresponds to either an "A", "B", "C", or "D" level of data cleaning. Each file contains either commercial or residential addresses from either the baseline or experimental years. The "A" level data is a close approximation of the databases used in the original RECAP study. The "B" level data is a subset of the "A" level data created by deleting True Mirrors. The "C" level data are a subset of the "B" level data without concurrent calls regarding a single event. The "D" level data contain only dispatched calls to an address.
 
Sample:The original RECAP study employed the following sampling methods: (1) Calls to 911 during the period 1986-1987 were identified. (2) Addresses to which these calls referred were ranked in order of frequency. (3) The 2,000 most active addresses were listed. (4) From that list, 500 addresses were randomly selected and assigned to either a control or an experimental group. Each group consisted of 125 commercial and 125 residential addresses. The current study contains some variations in the counts due to the data cleaning procedures that were used.
 
Data Source:Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center 911 computer tapes.
 
Mode of Data Collection:The data were collected from archived computer tapes of 911 calls to the Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center during 1986-1987.
 
Description of Variables:The sixteen data files use the same variables. Each record contains information regarding a specific 911 call. Data were collected on the volume of calls to an address, the date and time of the 911 call, the nature of the call (i.e., domestic disturbance, traffic accident), and the disposition of the call.
 
Response Rates:Not applicable.
 
Presence of Common Scales:Not applicable.
 
Extent of Processing:The data contain some nonnumeric codes and blanks. ICPSR standardized missing data codes and performed checks for undocumented codes.
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:1994-05-20
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 1994-05-20.
 
  2006-01-12 - All files were removed from dataset 19 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
 
  2006-01-12 - All files were removed from dataset 18 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
 
  2006-01-12 - All files were removed from dataset 17 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: "A" Level, Commercial Addresses, Baseline Year
  • DS2: "A" Level, Commercial Addresses, Experimental Year
  • DS3: "A" Level, Residential Addresses, Baseline Year
  • DS4: "A" Level, Residential Addresses, Experimental Year
  • DS5: "B" Level, Commercial Addresses, Baseline Year
  • DS6: "B" Level, Commercial Addresses, Experimental Year
  • DS7: "B" Level, Residential Addresses, Baseline Year
  • DS8: "B" Level, Residential Addresses, Experimental Year
  • DS9: "C" Level, Commercial Addresses, Baseline Year
  • DS10: "C" Level, Commercial Addresses, Experimental Year
  • DS11: "C" Level, Residential Addresses, Baseline Year
  • DS12: "C" Level, Residential Addresses, Experimental Year
  • DS13: "D" Level, Commercial Addresses, Baseline Year
  • DS14: "D" Level, Commercial Addresses, Experimental Year
  • DS15: "D" Level, Residential Addresses, Baseline Year
  • DS16: "D" Level, Residential Addresses, Experimental Year
  • DS17: User Guide and Codebook for All Parts
  • DS18: SPSS Data Definition Statements for All Parts
  • DS19: SAS Data Definition Statements for All Parts
 

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