DOI: 10.3886/icpsr06587.v5
title: Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 1992
title: Version 5

description: This survey is the first broad-based, systematic examination of the nature of civil litigation in state general jurisdiction trial courts. Data collection was carried out by the National Center for State Courts with assistance from the National Association of Criminal Justice Planners and the United States Bureau of the Census. The data collection produced two datasets. Part 1, Tort, Contract, and Real Property Rights Data, is a merged sample of approximately 30,000 tort, contract, and real property rights cases disposed during the 12-month period ending June 30, 1992. Part 2, Civil Jury Cases Data, is a sample of about 6,500 jury trial cases disposed over the same time period. Data collected include information about litigants, case type, disposition type, processing time, case outcome, and award amounts for civil jury cases.
description: The sample for this study was designed and selected by the United States Bureau of the Census. It was a two-stage stratified sample with 45 of the 75 most populous counties selected at the first stage. The top 75 counties account for about 37 percent of the United States population and about half of all civil filings. The 75 counties were divided into four strata based on aggregate civil disposition data for 1990 obtained through telephone interviews with court staffs in the general jurisdiction trial courts. The sample consisted of tort, contract, and real property rights cases disposed between July 1, 1991, and June 30, 1992.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Tort, Contract, and Real Property Rights Data DS2: Civil Jury Cases Data DS3: FPC Factor for Wesvar PC Variance Estimation for Part 1 Data DS4: JKN Factor for Wesvar PC Variance Estimation for Part 1 Data DS5: FPC Factor for Wesvar PC Variance Estimation for Part 2 Data DS6: JKN Factor for Wesvar PC Variance Estimation for Part 2 Data
description: Forty-five jurisdictions chosen to represent the 75 most populous counties in the nation.
description: This data collection contains replicate weight variables appropriate for calculating sampling errors using the Wesvar PC variance estimation program, plus two variables, VARSTRAT and VARUNIT, that were developed as part of the processing for creating the replicate weights. The replicate weights were created by the jackknife method and the user must specify the JKN variance estimation procedure when using Wesvar PC. The JKN variance estimation procedure will not work correctly unless two files of factors are attached to each Wesvar file. Two sets of factor files are included in the study. To work with the Wesvar data file for Part 1 (Tort, Contract, and Real Property Rights Data), users should download da6587.p3 and da6587.p4, change the file names to fpcp1.txt and jknfp1.txt, and attach both files to the Wesvar data file. Similarly, to work with the Wesvar data file for Part 2 (Civil Jury Cases Data), users should download da6587.p5 and da6587.p6, change the file names to fpcp2.txt and jknfp2.txt, and attach both files to the Wesvar data file. In addition, the degrees of freedom should be set at 77 in Wesvar (119 replicate weights, 42 varstrat units) for Part 1 and at 24 (42 replicate weights, 18 varstrat units) for Part 2 in order to calculate the correct confidence intervals.