Impacts of Specific Incivilities on Responses to Crime and Local Commitment, 1979-1994: [Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Seattle] (ICPSR 2520)
Version Date: Apr 23, 2008 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Ralph B. Taylor, Temple University, Department of Criminal Justice
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02520.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
This data collection was designed to test the "incivilities thesis": that incivilities such as extant neighborhood physical conditions of disrepair or abandonment and troubling street behaviors contribute to residents' concerns for personal safety and their desire to leave their neighborhood. The collection examines between-individual versus between-neighborhood and between-city differences with respect to fear of crime and neighborhood commitment and also explores whether some perceived incivilities are more relevant to these outcomes than others. The data represent a secondary analysis of five ICPSR collections: (1) CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH AND LOW CRIME NEIGHBORHOODS IN ATLANTA, 1980 (ICPSR 7951), (2) CRIME CHANGES IN BALTIMORE, 1970-1994 (ICPSR 2352), (3) CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AND COMMUNITY CRIME PREVENTION, 1979: CHICAGO METROPOLITAN AREA SURVEY (ICPSR 8086), (4) CRIME, FEAR, AND CONTROL IN NEIGHBORHOOD COMMERCIAL CENTERS: MINNEAPOLIS AND ST. PAUL, 1970-1982 (ICPSR 8167), and (5) TESTING THEORIES OF CRIMINALITY AND VICTIMIZATION IN SEATTLE, 1960-1990 (ICPSR 9741). Part 1, Survey Data, is an individual-level file that contains measures of residents' fear of victimization, avoidance of dangerous places, self-protection, neighborhood satisfaction, perceived incivilities (presence of litter, abandoned buildings, vandalism, and teens congregating), and demographic variables such as sex, age, and education. Part 2, Neighborhood Data, contains crime data and demographic variables from Part 1 aggregated to the neighborhood level, including percentage of the neighborhood that was African-American, gender percentages, average age and educational attainment of residents, average household size and length of residence, and information on home ownership.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
This data collection is a secondary analysis of five other studies to test the "incivilities thesis": that incivilities such as extant neighborhood physical conditions of disrepair or abandonment and troubling street behaviors contribute to residents' concerns for personal safety and their desire to leave their neighborhood. It was designed to answer two key questions: (1) How much variation in the fear of crime and in neighborhood commitment arises from differences between cities or between neighborhoods versus differences between neighbors? (2) Are some specific perceived incivilities more relevant to fear of crime and neighborhood commitment than others?
Study Design View help for Study Design
Studies were chosen for this reanalysis based on the following conditions: (1) the areas had not been studied in DISORDER AND COMMUNITY DECLINE IN 40 NEIGHBORHOODS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1977-1983 (ICPSR 8944), with the exception of Atlanta, (2) the surveys were conducted within one city or metropolitan area and clustered residents by neighborhood, (3) the surveys included a substantial number of people in each neighborhood, and (4) the surveys included at least some of the same perceived incivilities. Three key incivilities that were present across all five surveys were presence of abandoned buildings, teens congregating, and vandalism. Litter was a variable in all surveys save the Chicago study. These four incivilities were chosen for inclusion in this collection.
Sample View help for Sample
The following describes the sampling methods used in the individual studies that comprise this data collection: For the Atlanta data, a stratified random sample of Atlanta households was drawn. In Baltimore, 30 neighborhoods were selected using stratified resampling based on crime data from an earlier random sample of 66. The original Chicago study employed a random sample of respondents from the Chicago metropolitan area, including suburbs. This reanalysis used only the urban respondents and only the neighborhoods with at least five respondents per neighborhood. The Minneapolis-St. Paul sample was based on three criteria: percent minority change from 1970 to 1980, an observational measure of disorder in each commercial center, and person crime rates for the entire commercial and residential area. These areas were micro-neighborhoods centered around small commercial centers. The Seattle data were based on a multistage clustered sampling of 600 selected city blocks and immediate neighbors on these blocks in 100 census tracts.
Universe View help for Universe
Surveys of neighborhoods and residents in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Seattle.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Source View help for Data Source
ICPSR 7951, 2352, 8086, 8167, and 9741
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
Part 1, Survey Data, contains measures of residents' fear of victimization, avoidance of dangerous places, self-protection, neighborhood satisfaction, perceived incivilities (presence of abandoned buildings, litter, vandalism, and teens congregating), and demographic variables such as residents' sex, age, and education. Part 2, Neighborhood Data, contains crime data and demographic variables from Part 1 aggregated to the neighborhood level, including percentage of the neighborhood that was African-American, gender percentages, average age and educational attainment of residents, average household size and length of residence, and information on home ownership.
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
The survey response rate for the reanalyzed studies was 77.3 percent in Atlanta, 66.5 percent in Chicago, 54 percent in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and 74.1 percent in Seattle. The response rate for Baltimore was 76 percent.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
1998-10-08
Version History View help for Version History
- Taylor, Ralph B. IMPACTS OF SPECIFIC INCIVILITIES ON RESPONSES TO CRIME AND LOCAL COMMITMENT, 1979-1994: [ATLANTA, BALTIMORE, CHICAGO, MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, AND SEATTLE]. ICPSR02520-v1. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University [producer], 1996. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1998. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02520.v1
2006-03-30 File CB2520.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.
1998-10-08 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:
- Standardized missing values.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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.
This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.