Gender Differences in the Incarcerated Population: A Data-Driven Learning Guide

Principal Investigator(s): Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

Summary: Data-Driven Learning Guides are a collection of instructional exercises that can be used to enhance teaching of core concepts in the social sciences. This learning guide explores differences between male and female prisoners in the United States. Research questions that can be explored using this learning guide include: what are the demographic characteristics of the United States prison population, how prevalent drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness are among prisoners, and what risk... (more info)

• These data are not available from ICPSR. Users should consult the data owners directly (via Gender Differences in the Incarcerated Population) for details on obtaining the data and documentation.

Summary:   Data-Driven Learning Guides are a collection of instructional exercises that can be used to enhance teaching of core concepts in the social sciences. This learning guide explores differences between male and female prisoners in the United States. Research questions that can be explored using this learning guide include: what are the demographic characteristics of the United States prison population, how prevalent drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness are among prisoners, and what risk factors are most likely to contribute to a man’s or a woman’s incarceration. Frequency distributions, crosstabulations, comparison of means, and bar charts are used for the analyses.

Subject Terms:   gender, imprisonment, instructional materials, social sciences, substance abuse

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Data Collection Notes:

Other Data-Driven Learning Guides covering such topics as aging, gender, race, social class, politics, and health are available on ICPSR's Online Learning Center.