DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02371.v1
title: Impact of Neighborhood Structure, Crime, and Physical Deterioration on Residents and Business Personnel in Minneapolis-St.Paul, 1970-1982
title: Version 1

description: This study is a secondary analysis of CRIME, FEAR, AND CONTROL IN NEIGHBORHOOD COMMERCIAL CENTERS: MINNEAPOLIS AND ST. PAUL, 1970-1982 (ICPSR 8167), which was designed to explore the relationship between small commercial centers and their surrounding neighborhoods. Some variables from the original study were recoded and new variables were created in order to examine the impact of community structure, crime, physical deterioration, and other signs of incivility on residents' and merchants' cognitive and emotional responses to disorder. This revised collection sought to measure separately the contextual and individual determinants of commitment to locale, informal social control, responses to crime, and fear of crime. Contextual determinants included housing, business, and neighborhood characteristics, as well as crime data on robbery, burglary, assault, rape, personal theft, and shoplifting and measures of pedestrian activity in the commercial centers. Individual variables were constructed from interviews with business leaders and surveys of residents to measure victimization, fear of crime, and attitudes toward businesses and neighborhoods. Part 1, Area Data, contains housing, neighborhood, and resident characteristics. Variables include the age and value of homes, types of businesses, amount of litter and graffiti, traffic patterns, demographics of residents such as race and marital status from the 1970 and 1980 Censuses, and crime data. Many of the variables are Z-scores. Part 2, Pedestrian Activity Data, describes pedestrians in the small commercial centers and their activities on the day of observation. Variables include primary activity, business establishment visited, and demographics such as age, sex, and race of the pedestrians. Part 3, Business Interview Data, includes employment, business, neighborhood, and attitudinal information. Variables include type of business, length of employment, number of employees, location, hours, operating costs, quality of neighborhood, transportation, crime, labor supply, views about police, experiences with victimization, fear of strangers, and security measures. Part 4, Resident Survey Data, includes measures of commitment to the neighborhood, fear of crime, attitudes toward local businesses, perceived neighborhood incivilities, and police contact. There are also demographic variables, such as sex, ethnicity, age, employment, education, and income.
description: This study is a secondary analysis of CRIME, FEAR, AND CONTROL IN NEIGHBORHOOD COMMERCIAL CENTERS: MINNEAPOLIS AND ST. PAUL, 1970-1982 (ICPSR 8167), which was which was designed to explore the relationship between small commercial centers and their surrounding neighborhoods. This revised study had three purposes: (1) to examine the independent impacts of assessed and perceived signs of incivility on responses to crime, (2) to separate between-place from between-person differences, and (3) to examine responses to disorder reported by local merchants. The focus of the reanalysis was the contextual and individual determinants of commitment to the neighborhood, informal social control, responses to crime, and fear of crime.
description: The study was designed to measure assessed and perceived signs of incivility on responses to crime. The assessments came from on-site ratings of the physical characteristics and pedestrian activity of the small commercial centers by trained researchers, with some characteristics coming from 1970 and 1980 census data. Perceptions were measured through interviews with business personnel and surveys of neighborhood residents. In the secondary analysis, some of the original variables were recoded and new variables were created. The data were reconstructed to facilitate hierarchical linear modeling.
description: Part 1, Area Data, contains housing, neighborhood, and resident characteristics. Variables include the age and value of homes, types of businesses, amount of litter and graffiti, traffic patterns, demographics of residents such as race and marital status from the 1970 and 1980 Censuses, and crime data. Many of the variables are Z-scores. Part 2, Pedestrian Activity Data, describes pedestrians in the small commercial centers and their activities on the day of observation. Variables include primary activity, business establishment visited, and demographics such as age, sex, and race of the pedestrians. Part 3, Business Interview Data, includes employment, business, neighborhood, and attitudinal information. Variables include type of business, length of employment, number of employees, location, hours, operating costs, quality of neighborhood, transportation, crime, labor supply, views about police, experiences with victimization, fear of strangers, and security measures. Part 4, Resident Survey Data, includes measures of commitment to the neighborhood, fear of crime, attitudes toward local businesses, perceived neighborhood incivilities, and police contact. There are also demographic variables, such as sex, ethnicity, age, employment, education, and income.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Standardized missing values.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Presence of Common Scales: Several Likert-type scales were used.
description: Response Rates: The refusal rate for the business interviews was 23 percent. The response rate for the resident telephone survey was 54 percent.
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: Area Data 
 DS2: Pedestrian Activity Data 
 DS3: Business Interview Data 
 DS4: Resident Survey Data
description: All commercial and residential areas in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.
description: Business and resident data were collected from a stratified sample of small commercial centers and their adjacent neighborhoods. Stratification was based on: (1) percent minority change in the neighborhood between 1970 and 1980, (2) personal crime rates in the commercial center and adjoining neighborhood, and (3) level of physical deterioration observed in the commercial centers through on-site assessments. Business owners or managers were interviewed from 50 percent of the sampled businesses in each small commercial center. Businesses were randomly selected, except for bars and restaurants, where an attempt was made to interview someone in each of these establishments. Resident survey respondents were randomly selected from the pool of adult residents in the surrounding neighborhood, with the restriction of one survey per household.