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Description & Citation--Study No. 2885

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:2885
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02885
 
Title:Educating the Public About Police Through Public Service Announcements in Lima, Ohio, 1995-1997
 
Principal Investigator(s):Mitchell B. Chamlin, University of Cincinnati
 
  Christopher R. Stormann, University of Cincinnati
 
Funding Agency:United States Department of Justice. National Institute of Justice.
 
Grant Number:95-IJ-CX-0055
 
Bibliographic Citation:Chamlin, Mitchell B., and Christopher R. Stormann. EDUCATING THE PUBLIC ABOUT POLICE THROUGH PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS IN LIMA, OHIO, 1995-1997 [Computer file]. ICPSR version. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati [producer], 1998. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2000. doi:10.3886/ICPSR02885
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This study was designed to analyze the impact of four televised public service announcements (PSAs) aired for three months in Lima, Ohio. The researchers sought to answer three specific research questions: (1) Were the PSAs effective in transferring knowledge to citizens about the police? (2) Did the PSAs have an impact on resident satisfaction with the police? and (3) Did the PSAs have an impact on the behavior of citizens interacting with the police? To assess public attitudes about the Lima police and to determine whether the substance of the PSAs was being communicated to the residents of Lima, three waves of telephone interviews were conducted (Part 1). The first telephone interviews were conducted in April 1996 with approximately 500 randomly selected Lima residents. These were baseline interviews that took place before the PSAs aired. The survey instrument used in the first interview assessed resident satisfaction with the police and the services they provided. After completion of the Wave 1 interviews, the PSAs were aired on television for three months (June 5-August 28, 1996). After August 28, the PSAs were removed from general circulation. A second wave of telephone interviews was conducted in September 1996 with a different group of randomly selected Lima residents. The same survey instrument used during the first interviews was administered during the second wave, with additional questions added relating to whether the respondent saw any of the PSAs. A third group of randomly selected Lima residents was contacted via the telephone in January 1997 for the final wave of interviews. The final interviews utilized the identical survey instrument used during Wave 2. The focus of this follow-up survey was on citizen retention, over time, of the information communicated in the PSAs. Official data collected from computerized records maintained by the Lima Police Department were also collected to monitor changes in citizen behavior (Part 2). The records data span 127 weeks, from January 1, 1995, to June 7, 1997, which includes 74 weeks of pre-PSA data and 53 weeks of data for the period during the initial airing of the first PSA and thereafter. Variables in Part 1 include whether respondents were interested in learning about what to do if stopped by the police, what actions they had displayed when stopped by the police, if they would defend another person being treated unfairly by the police, how responsible they felt (as a citizen) in preventing crimes, the likelihood of calling the police if they were aware of a crime, perception of crime and fear of crime, and whether there had been an increase or decrease in the level of crime in their neighborhoods. Respondents were also asked about the amount of television they watched, whether they saw any of the public service announcements and if so to rate them, whether the PSAs provided information not already known, whether any of the PSA topics had come up in conversations with family or friends, and whether the respondent would like to see more PSAs in the future. Finally, respondents were asked whether the police were doing as much as they could to make the neighborhood safe, how responsive the police were to nonemergency matters, and to rate their overall satisfaction with the Lima Police Department and its various services. Demographic variables for Part 1 include the race, gender, age, marital status, level of education, employment status, and income level of each respondent. Variables in Part 2 cover police use-of-force or resisting arrest incidents that took place during the study period, whether the PSA aired during the week in which a use-of-force or resisting arrest incident took place, the number of supplemental police use-of-force reports that were made, and the number of resisting arrest charges made.
 
Subject Term(s):crime prevention, fear of crime, police citizen interactions, police performance, public interest, public opinion, public safety, public service advertising
 
Geographic Coverage:Lima, Ohio, United States
 
Time Period:1995 - 1997
 
Unit of Observation:Part 1: Households. Part 2: Weeks.
 
Universe:Part 1: All households in Lima, Ohio. Part 2: Counts of resisting arrest charges and police use-of-force incidents.
 
Data Type:survey data, and administrative records data
 
Data Collection Notes:The user guide, codebook, and data collection instruments are provided by ICPSR as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.
 

Methodology

Sample:First, a sample frame was selected using a CD-ROM-based residential directory listing the households within the city limits of Lima. The sampling frame was drawn by first isolating parameters in the directory that contained an exhaustive list of all possible Lima city households. Correspondence with the local telephone company servicing Lima identified eight telephone prefixes common to all households within the city limits. These prefixes also captured a smaller portion of households outside the city of Lima. The sampling frame at this point contained approximately 14,050 households, with approximately 50 percent non-Lima households. Each of the 14,050 entries contained a longitude and latitude (X,Y coordinates) for each household address. To remove the non-Lima city residents from the sample, the extant entries were downloaded into geographic information software, and loaded against a 1994 TIGER Census boundary file. Any X,Y coordinates falling outside the Census city boundary file were excluded from the sampling frame. The final usable sampling frame consisted of 8,830 entries. Each entry equated to one household within the city of Lima. From the 8,830 entries, three simple random samples without replacement were drawn, a different sample to be used in each of the three waves of telephone interviewing. In order to be an eligible survey participant, a respondent had to be 18 years of age or older, reside in the city of Lima, and be the initial contact at the listed address. Numbers that were a business, no longer in service, unanswered after three repeated attempts at different time periods (i.e., afternoon, evenings, week days, and weekends), or refused to participate were removed from the sample. For Part 2, data taken from computerized official records maintained by the Lima Police Department were gathered to assess and monitor changes in citizen behavior during the airing of the PSAs. Weekly counts of resisting arrest charges and supplemental reports of police use-of-force were examined for a 127-week span, from January 1, 1995, to June 7, 1997, which includes 74 weeks of data for the period prior to the airing of the PSAs (through June 5, 1996) and 53 weeks of data for the period during the initial airing of the first PSA and thereafter.
 
Data Source:telephone interviews and official police records
 
Mode of Data Collection:Data for Part 1 were collected via telephone interviews conducted with residents of Lima, Ohio. Data for Part 2 were collected from official records maintained by the Lima, Ohio, Police Department.
 
Response Rates:For Part 1, the three waves of interviews (approximately 500 per wave) yielded a response rate of 64 percent. Part 2: Not applicable.
 
Presence of Common Scales:Several Likert scales were used.
 
Extent of Processing:Missing data codes were standardized by the principal investigator and ICPSR. ICPSR checked for undocumented codes, produced a codebook, generated SAS and SPSS data definition statements, converted the hardcopy documentation to a PDF file, and reformatted the data and documentation.
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:2000-12-04
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 2006-03-30.
 
  2006-03-30 - File CB2885.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.
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: Public Service Announcements Data
  • DS2: Use of Force Data
 

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