cjrc-sponsored research

  • Project:
  • Developing Imputation Methods for Crime Data

  • Investigator:
  • Michael D. Maltz (Sociology & CJRC)
  • Elizabeth Stasny (Statistics)

  • Sponsor:
  • American Statistical Association (funded: 2005-2006)

  • Abstract:
  • This project is predicated on the existence of cleaned crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, which was accomplished in an earlier project. The cleaned data contain gaps during which agencies neglected to provide crime data to the FBI, some of one or two months, some much larger. The goal of this project was to develop and test imputation methods for longitudinal UCR data and to develop variance estimates for the imputed data.

  • Products:
  • Report:
  • “Developing Imputation Methods for Crime Data,” Report to the American Statistical Association (ASA), Committee on Law and Justice Statistics, September 2006. Available from the ASA and from the authors. The report includes the code (written in R) that performs imputations to fill in the missing data.

  • Presentation:
  • Roberts, Clint, Elizabeth A. Stasny, and Michael D. Maltz. 2007. “Imputing Missing Data in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.” Presented at the 2007 Joint Statistical Meetings, Salt Lake City, Utah. (A version of this paper authored by Clint Roberts won an award in the 2007 Student Paper Competition of the American Statistical Association’s Social Statistics, Government Statistics, and Survey Research Methods Sections.)