Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 1992 (ICPSR 6587)

Version Date: Nov 2, 2011

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Principal Investigator(s):
United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06587.v5

Version V5

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Summary

This survey is the first broad-based, systematic examination of the nature of civil litigation in state general jurisdiction trial courts. Data collection was carried out by the National Center for State Courts with assistance from the National Association of Criminal Justice Planners and the United States Bureau of the Census. The data collection produced two datasets. Part 1, Tort, Contract, and Real Property Rights Data, is a merged sample of approximately 30,000 tort, contract, and real property rights cases disposed during the 12-month period ending June 30, 1992. Part 2, Civil Jury Cases Data, is a sample of about 6,500 jury trial cases disposed over the same time period. Data collected include information about litigants, case type, disposition type, processing time, case outcome, and award amounts for civil jury cases.

Citation

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 1992. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2011-11-02. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06587.v5

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Restrictions

Access to these BJS-sponsored data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a NACJD Restricted Data Use Agreement available from the ResearchDataGov website, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Restricted Data Use Agreements available on the NACJD website are provided for reference only. Please visit the ResearchDataGov website to download the appropriate Restricted Data Use Agreement and submit your request. Once approved, data may be accessed from a requester secure site via ICPSR's secure download procedures.

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

1991-07-01 -- 1992-06-30

Date of Collection

1992-10 -- 1994-09

Data Collection Notes

  1. This data collection contains replicate weight variables appropriate for calculating sampling errors using the Wesvar PC variance estimation program, plus two variables, VARSTRAT and VARUNIT, that were developed as part of the processing for creating the replicate weights. The replicate weights were created by the jackknife method and the user must specify the JKN variance estimation procedure when using Wesvar PC. The JKN variance estimation procedure will not work correctly unless two files of factors are attached to each Wesvar file. Two sets of factor files are included in the study. To work with the Wesvar data file for Part 1 (Tort, Contract, and Real Property Rights Data), users should download da6587.p3 and da6587.p4, change the file names to fpcp1.txt and jknfp1.txt, and attach both files to the Wesvar data file. Similarly, to work with the Wesvar data file for Part 2 (Civil Jury Cases Data), users should download da6587.p5 and da6587.p6, change the file names to fpcp2.txt and jknfp2.txt, and attach both files to the Wesvar data file. In addition, the degrees of freedom should be set at 77 in Wesvar (119 replicate weights, 42 varstrat units) for Part 1 and at 24 (42 replicate weights, 18 varstrat units) for Part 2 in order to calculate the correct confidence intervals.

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Sample

The sample for this study was designed and selected by the United States Bureau of the Census. It was a two-stage stratified sample with 45 of the 75 most populous counties selected at the first stage. The top 75 counties account for about 37 percent of the United States population and about half of all civil filings. The 75 counties were divided into four strata based on aggregate civil disposition data for 1990 obtained through telephone interviews with court staffs in the general jurisdiction trial courts. The sample consisted of tort, contract, and real property rights cases disposed between July 1, 1991, and June 30, 1992.

Universe

Forty-five jurisdictions chosen to represent the 75 most populous counties in the nation.

Data Source

standard coding forms completed by court staff

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

1996-10-01

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 1992. ICPSR06587-v5. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2011-11-02. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06587.v5

2011-11-02 All parts are being moved to restricted access and will be available only using the restricted access procedures.

2006-03-30 File CB6587.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

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.

2004-06-01 The data have been updated by the principal investigator to include replicate weights and a few other variables. The codebook and SAS and SPSS data definition statements have been revised to reflect these changes.

2001-03-26 The data had been updated by the principal investigator to include replicate weights. The codebook and SAS and SPSS data definition statements had been revised to reflect these changes.

2001-03-26 The data have been updated by the principal investigator to include replicate weights. The codebook and SAS and SPSS data definition statements have been revised to reflect these changes.

1997-07-29 The codebook had been revised to correct errors documenting both data files. Column location (and width) of variable WGHT "TOTAL WEIGHT" was incorrectly shown as 10.4 for Part 1, Tort, Contract, and Real Property Data. It was accurately shown in the data definition statements as 9.4. Variables listed after WGHT were inaccurately reported one column off in the codebook. Similarly, column location (and width) of variable WGHT "TOTAL WEIGHT" was incorrectly shown as 10.2 for Part 2, Civil Jury Data. It was accurately shown in the data definition statements as 9.2. Variables listed after WGHT were inaccurately reported one column off in the codebook.

1996-10-01 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Performed consistency checks.
  • Standardized missing values.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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Notes

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

  • One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.