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Description & Citation--Study No. 8936 | |
Bibliographic Description | |
| ICPSR Study No.: | 8936 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Nature and Patterns of Homicide in Eight American Cities, 1978 |
| Principal Investigator(s): | Margaret A. Zahn |
| Marc Riedel | |
| Funding Agency: | United States Department of Justice. National Institute of Justice. |
| Grant Number: | 79-NI-AX-0092 |
| Bibliographic Citation: | Zahn, Margaret A., and Marc Riedel. NATURE AND PATTERNS OF HOMICIDE IN EIGHT AMERICAN CITIES, 1978 [Computer file]. Compiled by Center for the Study of Crime, Delinquency, and Corrections, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1994. |
Scope of Study | |
| Summary: | This dataset contains detailed information on homicides in eight United States cities: Philadelphia, Newark, Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, Dallas, Oakland, and ''Ashton'' (a representative large western city). Detailed characteristics for each homicide victim include time and date of homicide, age, gender, race, place of birth, marital status, living arrangement, occupation, socioeconomic status (SES), employment status, method of assault, location where homicide occurred, relationship of victim to offender, circumstances surrounding death, precipitation or resistance of victim, physical evidence collected, victim's drug history, victim's prior criminal record, and number of offenders identified. Data on up to two offenders and three witnesses are also available and include the criminal history, justice system disposition, and age, sex, and race of each offender. Information on the age, sex, and race of each witness also was collected, as were data on witness type (police informant, child, eyewitness, etc.). Finally, information from the medical examiner's records including results of narcotics and blood alcohol tests of the victim are provided. |
| Subject Term(s): | demographic characteristics, drug use, evidence, homicide, offenders, substance abuse, victims |
| Geographic Coverage: | California, Chicago, Dallas, Illinois, Memphis, Missouri, New Jersey, Newark, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Tennessee, Texas, United States |
| Time Period: | 1978 |
| Date(s) of Collection: | 1979 - 1980 |
| Universe: | Cases in the United States defined by each city's police department and medical examiner as homicide. |
| Data Type: | event/transaction data |
Methodology | |
| Sample: | A purposive sample of eight cities was selected based on geographic region, population size, and whether their 11-year homicide trend lines followed or diverged from respective regional trend lines. Dallas, St. Louis, and ''Ashton'' diverged from regional patterns, while the other cities in the sample--Philadelphia, Newark, Chicago, Memphis, and Oakland--followed them. Within each city all homicide cases were coded, except in Chicago, where a 50-percent systematic random sample of homicide cases was drawn. |
| Data Source: | official records of the medical examiner and police department in each city |
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 LRECL, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest. |
| Original ICPSR Release: | 1988-10-25 |
| 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. | |
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