SAGE Journal Articles

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Journal Article 1: Loftin, C., McDowell, D., Curtis, K., & Feltzer, M. D. (2015). The accuracy of supplementary homicide report rates for large U.S. cities. Homicide Studies, 19(1), 6–27.  

Abstract: We investigated the precision of Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) homicide rate estimates for large U.S. cities during the 5 years, 1998–2002. The homicide rates based on the National Vital Statistics System provided a parallel measure and the basis for estimating the reliability and average error. When cities with incomplete SHR data were removed from the sample, the estimated reliability was high (.99), and the standard error of measurement was low (1.2 homicides per 100,000 residents). Reliability remained high for subsets of cities and for most subsets of victims. For some groups, however, such as African Americans and persons age 0 to 14, the reliability was much lower.

 

Journal Article 2: Pattavina, A., Carkin, D. M., & Tracy, P. E. (2017). Assessing the representativeness of NIBRS arrest data. Crime & Delinquency, 63(12), 1626–1652.

Abstract: This article examines the coverage of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) arrest data as of 2016. We use NIBRS and Uniform Crime Report (UCR), Summary Reporting System on persons arrested. We examine the correspondence of arrests measures between the UCR and NIBRS for overall arrests, and arrests by sex, race, and age. We found that NIBRS arrest data are a close match to UCR data overall and the differences across demographic measures are very slight.