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Description & Citation--Study No. 6502

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:6502
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06502
 
Title:AIDS-Related Written Court Decisions in Federal and State Courts, 1984-1989: [United States]
 
Principal Investigator(s):Michael C. Musheno
 
Funding Agency:National Science Foundation, Law and Social Science Program
 
Grant Number:SES-8908456
 
Bibliographic Citation:Musheno, Michael C. AIDS-RELATED WRITTEN COURT DECISIONS IN FEDERAL AND STATE COURTS, 1984-1989: [UNITED STATES] [Computer file]. ICPSR version. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University [producer], 1991. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1995. doi:10.3886/ICPSR06502
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This data collection was designed to identify the party characteristics, case attributes, and idea structures of written court decisions related to Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Written court decisions related to AIDS in state and federal courts were located via the LEXUS and WESTLAW data systems. For a case to be eligible, it had to address an issue involving AIDS or involve a party who was believed to be infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), and a legal decision had to provide sufficient written material to analyze. Coding was completed by three individuals with legal training based on a team-developed codebook. Except in those areas where a preliminary test showed 90-percent reliability, variables were coded based on a consensus rule. Variables include court jurisdiction, whether the case was civil or criminal, case issue area, gender of plaintiff, relationship between parties, demand and primary purpose of the demand by the defendant and the plaintiff, what the court explicitly relied upon for its decision, whether the plaintiff or defendant had AIDS, AIDS-Related Complex (ARC), or was HIV-infected, and whether the plaintiff or defendant was gay, an IV drug user, a prisoner or an accused criminal, a member of a stigmatized group, or a racial or an ethnic minority. The unit of analysis is the written court decision.
 
Subject Term(s):AIDS, case processing, court cases, courts, decision making
 
Geographic Coverage:United States
 
Time Period:1984 - 1989
 
Date(s) of Collection:1989 - 1990
 
Universe:Written court decisions related to AIDS in the United States during the period 1984-1989.
 
Data Type:administrative records data
 
Data Collection Notes:Undocumented codes were found in this data collection. Missing data are represented by blanks.
 

Methodology

Data Source:LEXUS and WESTLAW data systems
 
Extent of Processing:DDEF.ICPSR/ REFORM.DOC/ UNDOCCHK.ICPSR
 

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:1995-06-06
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 2005-11-04.
 
  2005-11-04 - On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: Data File
  • DS2: SAS Data Definition Statements
 

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