DOI: 10.3886/icpsr09923.v1
title: National Assessment Program Survey of Criminal Justice Personnel in the United States, 1986
title: Version 1

description: This survey probed the needs and problems facing local
 criminal justice practitioners. Within each sampled county, survey
 questionnaires were distributed to the police chief of the largest
 city, the sheriff, the jail administrator, the prosecutor, the chief
 trial court judge, the trial court administrator (where applicable),
 and probation and parole agency heads. Although the general topics
 covered in the questionnaires are similar, specific items are not
 repeated across the questionnaires, except for those given to the
 sheriffs and the police chiefs. The sheriffs surveyed were those with
 law enforcement responsibilities, so the questions asked of the police
 chiefs and the sheriffs were identical. The questionnaires were
 tailored to each group of respondents, and dealt with five general
 areas: (1) background characteristics, including staff size, budget
 totals, and facility age, (2) criminal justice system problems, (3)
 prison crowding, (4) personnel issues such as training needs and
 programs, and (5) operations and procedures including management,
 management information, and the specific operations in which the
 respondents were involved. In some cases, sets of question items were
 grouped into question batteries that dealt with specific topic areas
 (e.g., staff recruitment, judicial training, and number of personnel).
 For example, the Staff Recruitment battery items in the Probation and
 Parole Questionnaire asked respondents to use a 4 point scale to
 indicate the seriousness of each of the following problems: low
 salaries, poor image of corrections work, high entrance requirements,
 location of qualified staff, shortage of qualified minority
applicants, and hiring freezes.
description: The Institute for Law and Justice conducted the
 1986 National Assessment Program (NAP) survey to determine the needs
 and problems of local and state criminal justice practitioners. This
 information is used by the National Institute of Justice in planning
 its research and development. The data released in this collection
 constitute the second NAP survey. The first such survey was conducted
 in 1983. The questionnaires dealt with five general areas and were
 tailored to each of several groups of respondents: police chiefs,
 sheriffs, probation and parole agency heads, jail administrators,
 prosecutors, chief trial court judges, and trial court
administrators.
description: This is a study of the problems and needs faced by
 law enforcement agencies. The basic unit of analysis is the agency
 itself. Surveys were completed by the head of a given agency. Agencies
 were selected on the basis of a somewhat stratified sampling
 design. Within each of 375 counties, the agencies in the largest city
were selected for inclusion in the study.
description: The questionnaires covered five broad categories:
 (1) background characteristics including staff size, budget totals,
 and facility age, (2) criminal justice system problems, (3) prison
 crowding, (4) personnel issues such as training needs and programs and
 (5) operations and procedures including management, management
 information, and the specific operations in which the respondents were
 involved. In most cases, variables were measured at the nominal or
 ordinal level. Question items were grouped into batteries which dealt
 with specific topic areas (e.g., staff recruitment, judicial training,
number of personnel).
description: Response Rates: Police chiefs completed 281 surveys for a return
 rate of 76 percent (well above the 64 percent return rate for all
 groups), and sheriffs completed 207 surveys for a return rate of 68
percent.
description: Presence of Common Scales: None
description: From a sample of 375 counties across the United States,
 2,500 respondents were selected for inclusion in the assessment
 study. All 175 counties having a population greater than 250,000 were
 sampled with certainty. The remaining 200 counties were sampled from
 those having populations less than 250,000. Within each sampled
 county, the heads of law enforcement agencies were requested to
 complete questionnaires about their agencies' needs, problems, and
 resources. All of the sheriffs included in the sample had law
 enforcement responsibilities. Care should be taken in interpreting the
 responses: many of the question items pertain to agency needs and
requirements, while others ask for the respondent's own opinions.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Adult Probation and Parole Agency Heads Data
DS2: Trial Court Judges Data
DS3: Police Data
DS4: Sheriffs Data
DS5: Jail Administrators Data
DS6: Prosecutors Data
DS7: Trial Court Administrators Data
description: County and city law enforcement agencies (police forces,
courts, jails, and probation and parole offices) in the 50 states.
description: The data files in this collection contain free format
 data. In all of the files, the data values are separated with blanks
 and missing data is represented by "-1". The machine-readable
 documentation includes questionnaires corresponding to each of the
 data files. In some cases, the documentation does not specify value
 label codes. Users should proceed with due caution under the
 assumption that in the case of binary variables, 1 is equal to "yes"
 and 2 is equal to "no". Response data for open-ended question items
are not included in the dataset.