National Lawful Use of Guns Survey (NLUGS), [United States], 2020 (ICPSR 38045)

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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection

Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes

Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

The purpose of this study is to better understand the opinions, beliefs, and practices of gun owners throughout the United States. In particular, to understand the types of guns commonly used by law-abiding gun owners and the benefits that gun ownership provides.

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Baseline Survey

A nationally representative internet-based survey of 2,086 gun owners was conducted using the Ipsos KnowledgePanel (KP), which is the largest national internet panel whose members were selected using representative sampling techniques. The panel consisted of 55,000 adult participants who agreed to take weekly internet-based surveys. Sociodemographic was previously collected, including gun ownership, NRA support, political ideology and participation, health behaviors, and media use patterns. There are about 14,000 gun owners in the KP panel of which just over 2,000 were randomly sampled.

The panel was recruited using address-based probability sampling. KP uses the Delivery Sequence File of the United States Postal Service, which contains every delivery address in the United States, to recruit its sample. Thus, all households are eligible for recruitment regardless of their phone status. Households without computers or internet access are provided with both during their participation in KP. The sampling methodology uses stratification to ensure that Hispanic and other hard-to-reach minority groups are oversampled into the panel. KP panel members are typically offered one survey per week to complete and receive nominal cash incentives for completing surveys. All panel participants were anonymous to the investigators and consent was given through a disclosure screen at the front of the internet-based survey. To enhance survey participation, a $10 incentive was offered to those who completed the baseline survey. The research was judged to be exempt from review by the Institutional Review Board at the Boston University Medical Center because the investigators collected no data with personal identifying information, other than a link which is maintained confidentially and securely by Ipsos.

Follow-up Survey

For the follow-up survey, attempts were made to re-contact all 2,086 respondents to the baseline survey. They were sent an email inviting them to take part in the follow-up survey.

Time Method View help for Time Method

Universe View help for Universe

All gun owners (N=2,086) who were surveyed at baseline in the 2019 National Lawful Use of Guns Survey (NLUGS).

Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation

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A random sample of 3,698 KP members who reported owning a gun upon recruitment to KP were sent an email inviting them to participate in the survey. Of these, 2,321 (62.8%) responded by clicking on the link to go the screener page, which contained a consent form explaining the study. Of the 2,321 who were screened, 2,086 (89.9%) completed the survey. Thus, the overall completion rate was 62.8% x 89.9%, or 56.5%.

A total of 1,550 respondents completed the follow-up survey, for a follow-up response rate of 74.3%.

Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date

2023-01-10

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For selection of general population samples from KnowledgePanel, a patented methodology has been developed that ensures all samples behave as EPSEM samples. Briefly, this methodology starts by weighting the pool of active members to the geodemographic benchmarks secured from the latest March supplement of the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) along several dimensions. Using the resulting weights as measures of size, a probability-proportional-to-size (PPS) procedure is used to select study specific samples. It is the application of this PPS methodology with the imposed size measures that produces fully self-weighing samples from KnowledgePanel, for which each sample member can carry a design weight of unity. Moreover, in instances where a study design requires any form of oversampling of certain subgroups, such departures from an EPSEM design are accounted for by adjusting the design weights in reference to the CPS benchmarks for the population of interest.

The geodemographic benchmarks used to weight the active panel members for computation of size measures include:

• Gender (Male/Female)
• Age (18-29, 30-44, 45-59, and 60+)
• Race/Hispanic ethnicity (White/Non-Hispanic, Black/Non-Hispanic, Other/Non-Hispanic, 2+ Races/Non-Hispanic, Hispanic)
• Education (Less than High School, High School, Some College, Bachelor and beyond)
• Census Region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West)
• Household income (under $10k, $10K to $25k, $25K to $50k, $50K to $75k, $75K to $100k, $100K to $150k, and $150K+)
• Home ownership status (Own, Rent/Other)
• Metropolitan Area (Yes, No)

Study-Specific Post-Stratification Weights Once all survey data have been collected and processed, design weights are adjusted to account for any differential nonresponse that may have occurred. Depending on the specific target population for a given study, geodemographic distributions for the corresponding population are obtained from the CPS, the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), or in certain instances from the weighted KnowledgePanel profile data. For this purpose an iterative proportional fitting (raking) procedure is used to produce the final weights. In the final step, calculated weights are examined to identify and, if necessary, trim outliers at the extreme upper and lower tails of the weight distribution. The resulting weights are then scaled to aggregate to the total sample size of all eligible respondents. For the follow-up study, respondents were weighted to represent 18+ gun owners on the same list of weighting variables and categories from Baseline:

• Gender (Male, Female) by Age (18-39, 40-49, ,50-59, 60-69, 70+)
• Race-ethnicity (White/Non-Hispanic, Black/Non-Hispanic, Other/Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, 2+ Races/Non-Hispanic)
• Census Region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West) by Metropolitan Status (Metro, Non-Metro)
• Education (Less than High School, High School/Some College, Bachelor or higher)
• Household Income (under $25K, $25-$49,999, $50K-$74,999, $75K-$99,999, $100K-$149,999, $150K and over)