Police-Public Contact Survey, 2011 (ICPSR 34276)

Published: Mar 18, 2014

Cite this Study |

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

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34276.v1

Version V1

Alternate Title

PPCS 2011

Summary

The Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS) provides detailed information on the nature and characteristics of face-to-face contacts between police and the public, including the reason for and outcome of the contact. The PPCS interviews a nationally representative sample of U.S. residents age 16 or older as a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey. To date, the PPCS has been conducted six times by BJS:

The first survey - described in the BJS publication Police Use of Force: Collection of National Data (NCJ 165040) - documented levels of contacts with police during 1996.

The second survey - described in Contacts between Police and the Public: Findings from the 1999 National Survey (NCJ 184957) - recorded police-citizen contacts in 1999. These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 1999: [UNITED STATES] (ICPSR 3151).

The third survey - described in Contacts between Police and the Public: Findings from the 2002 National Survey (NCJ 207845) - covered interactions between police and the public in 2002. These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2002: [UNITED STATES] (ICPSR 4273).

The fourth survey - described in the BJS publication Contacts between Police and the Public, 2005 (NCJ 215243) - covered interactions between police and the public in 2005. These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2005: [UNITED STATES] (ICPSR 020020).

The fifth survey - described in the BJS publication Contacts between Police and the Public, 2008 (NCJ 234599) - covered interactions between police and the public in 2008. These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2008 (ICPSR 32022).

The sixth survey (split sample design due to instrument changes) - new instrument findings described in two publications: Police Behavior During Traffic and Street Stops, 2011 (NCJ 242937) and Requests for Police Assistance, 2011 (NCJ 242938) - covered interactions between police and publice and public perceptions of police in 2011. These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2011 (ICPSR 34276).

Citation

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Police-Public Contact Survey, 2011. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2014-03-18. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34276.v1

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Funding

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

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

country

Restrictions

This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited.

Time Period(s)

2011

Date of Collection

2011-07-01 -- 2011-12-31

Study Design

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is an annual survey that collects data on crime against persons aged 12 years or older from a nationally representative, stratified, multistage cluster sample of United States households. Since 1999, the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS) has been administered every 3 years as a supplemental survey to all persons aged 16 years or older within households sampled for the NCVS. The United States Census Bureau fielded the 2011 PPCS questionnaire, processed the survey data, and provided estimation specifications. The 2011 PPCS was pretested in the spring of 2011 and conducted between July 1, 2011, and December 31, 2011. Respondents were asked about their contacts with police during the past 12 months. For instance, persons interviewed in July 2011 were asked about contacts that occurred between August 2010 and July 2011. Those interviewed in August 2010 were asked about contacts between September 2009 and August 2010. In 2011 the PPCS interviewed 49,246 of the 62,280 eligible individuals in the NCVS sample. A total of 13,034 nonrespondents were excluded from the 2011 PPCS as non-interviews or as proxy interviews. Non-interviews (10,907) included respondents not available for the interview, those who refused to participate, and non-English speaking respondents. (Unlike the NCVS interviews, PPCS interviews are conducted only in English.) The remaining 2,127 were proxy interviews representing household members who were unable to participate for physical, mental, or other reasons. After adjustment for nonresponse, the sample cases in 2011 were weighted to produce a national population estimate of 241,404,142 persons aged 16 years or older.

Sample

Stratified multistage cluster sample.

Time Method

Cross-sectional

Universe

Respondents aged 16 years and older to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) during the last six months of 2011. The universe of the NCVS is all persons in the United States aged 12 years and older.

Unit(s) of Observation

individual

Data Type(s)

survey data

Mode of Data Collection

computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)

face-to-face interview

telephone interview

Original Release Date

2014-03-18

Version Date

2014-03-18

Version History

2014-03-18 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.

Weight

To obtain national estimates, the weight variable must be used.

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.

NACJD logo

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.