Citation

O'Brien RM. J. Crim. Justice 1986; 14(5): 441-448.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1986, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0047-2352(86)90111-X

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The NCS city surveys are a unique and important data set and criminologists' only practical alternative to UCR based crime rate estimates for a large number of American cities. There are, however, some statistical problems involved in using this particular data set that are quite different from those usually faced by researchers investigating crime rates across cities. These result from the relative rareness of many of the crimes investigated and the small number of cities included in these surveys. These problems include the unreliability of rate estimates for cities and the potential for both lack of statistical power and the overfitting of equations designed to explain differences in crime rates among cities. Each of these problems is explicated, and strategies for analyzing these data are suggested.