Policy Studies

Anne Peterson - Political Science

apeterson@uwb.edu

Cinnamon Hillyard

chillyard@bothell.washington.edu

University of Washington, Bothell Campus

Regression Case Study

This case study, conducted by Professors John Sprague and Carol Kohfeld is built around predictors of death for African American males under the age of forty nine.  Working with the National Institute of Health, they collected data on felony incidents in the city of St. Louis, MO. From 1969-1999, and published their data on the ICPSR website for use by other researchers.  Their analyses compares violent crimes to several demographic variables, and tested many different theories regarding how social environments impact homicide rates for African American youth. 

Students should learn several important concepts about manipulating and analyzing data.  For example:

• Transforming continuous variables so that their distribution follows the normal curve
• Importing data from a zip file into SPSS format
• Going through the steps of performing regression analysis
• Learning to test theories against hypotheses
• Drawing conclusions from results; recommending specific policy actions

Data:

• Includes codebook of variables
• Felony counts for aggravated assaults, robberies, gun homicides for 384 precincts in St. Louis city
• Demographic variables for precincts including those related to employment, housing, age, race, income