DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03398.v1
title: Gangs in Rural America, 1996-1998
title: Version 1

description: This study was undertaken to enable cross-community
 analysis of gang trends in all areas of the United States. It was also
 designed to provide a comparative analysis of social, economic, and
 demographic differences among non-metropolitan jurisdictions in which
 gangs were reported to have been persistent problems, those in which
 gangs had been more transitory, and those that reported no gang
 problems. Data were collected from four separate sources and then
 merged into a single dataset using the county Federal Information
 Processing Standards (FIPS) code as the attribute of common
 identification. The data sources included: (1) local police agency
 responses to three waves (1996, 1997, and 1998) of the National Youth
 Gang Survey (NYGS), (2) rural-urban classification and county-level
 measures of primary economic activity from the Economic Research
 Service (ERS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, (3)
 county-level economic and demographic data from the County and City
 Data Book, 1994, and from USA Counties, 1998, produced by the United
 States Department of Commerce, and (4) county-level data on access to
 interstate highways provided by Tom Ricketts and Randy Randolph of the
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Variables include the
 FIPS codes for state, county, county subdivision, and sub-county,
 population in the agency jurisdiction, type of jurisdiction, and
 whether the county was dependent on farming, mining, manufacturing, or
 government. Other variables categorizing counties include retirement
 destination, federal lands, commuting, persistent poverty, and
 transfer payments. The year gang problems began in that jurisdiction,
 number of youth groups, number of active gangs, number of active gang
 members, percent of gang members who migrated, and the number of gangs
 in 1996, 1997, and 1998 are also available. Rounding out the variables
 are unemployment rates, median household income, percent of persons in
 county below poverty level, percent of family households that were
 one-parent households, percent of housing units in the county that
 were vacant, had no telephone, or were renter-occupied, resident
 population of the county in 1990 and 1997, change in unemployment
 rates, land area of county, percent of persons in the county speaking
 Spanish at home, and whether an interstate highway intersected the
county.
description: The spread of youth gangs to non-metropolitan
 counties in the 1990s has been widely cited but difficult to document
 empirically and to interpret theoretically. The only gang data
 collection that utilizes a representative national sample, includes a
 substantial number of rural jurisdictions, and is collected annually
 is the National Youth Gang Survey (NYGS), conducted by the National
 Youth Gang Crime Center. NYGS is given to a near-census of urban or
 metropolitan police agencies and nationally representative samples of
 cities and counties in rural and non-metropolitan areas. These surveys
 show that gang problems are occurring in communities of all sizes and
 locations, although they are still most heavily concentrated in medium
 and large cities. There is currently no other dataset that is
 comparable in coverage or quality. The purpose of this study was to
 enable cross-community analysis of gang trends in all areas of the
 United States and to allow for between-community comparisons of when
 and where youth gang problems seem to develop. The study also permits
 a comparative analysis of social, economic, and demographic
 differences among non-metropolitan jurisdictions in which gangs were
 reported to have been persistent problems, those in which gangs had
been more transitory, and those that reported no gang problems.
description: Data were collected from four separate sources and
 merged into a single dataset using the county Federal Information
 Processing Standards (FIPS) code as the attribute of common
 identification. The data sources include: (1) local police agency
 responses to three waves (1996, 1997, and 1998) of the National Youth
 Gang Survey (NYGS), (2) rural-urban classification and county-level
 measures of primary economic activity from the Economic Research
 Service (ERS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, (3)
 county-level economic and demographic data from the County and City
 Data Book, 1994, and from USA Counties, 1998, produced by the United
 States Department of Commerce, and (4) county-level data on access to
 interstate highways provided by Tom Ricketts and Randy Randolph of the
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Researchers constructed
 the dataset in seven steps. First, the base data file was extracted
 from the 1996 National Youth Gang Survey, a copy of which was obtained
 from the National Youth Gang Center. The researchers then extracted
 the organizational and locational attributes of the respondent agency
 and its policing jurisdiction, as well as selected variables
 representing a subset of the gang-related questions on the
 survey. Not all gang-related responses were included in this
 extraction, only those judged relevant to the research project that
 seemed plausibly and reliably measured by police respondent
 reports. Two modifications were made to the data extracted from the
 1996 NYGS data file. The first involved a slight recode of the item
 indicating the presence of gangs in the agency's jurisdiction in 1996
 to clearly distinguish between missing data and meaningful negative
 answers. Based on patterns of responses to other items in the survey
 (e.g., estimated number of gangs, estimated year in which gangs first
 appeared), non-responses were separated and coded distinctly from
 negative responses. Logical tests (using cross-tabulations with
 logically related items) were applied to ensure consistency and
 coherence of the recodes. The other modification involved manually
 adding county FIPS codes to the data records for municipal police
 agencies. County FIPS codes for a few agencies in Alaska and Hawaii
 could not be identified. These were excluded from the data file (since
 they involved small remote jurisdictions with substantial missing data
 on other items). Secondly, the edited 1996 NYGS data extract was
 merged with the rural taxonomy codes (commonly called the Beale codes)
 of the Economic Research Service of the United States Department of
 Agriculture. These codes indicate the metropolitan location of each
 county on a ten-category urban-to-rural continuum, reflecting the size
 of the urban population in the county and its proximity to large
 metropolitan centers. The appropriate Beale codes were matched with
 each police agency by using the county FIPS codes as a common
 identifying variable, and by using the ERS data file as a "lookup
 table." Thirdly, gang-related items from the 1997 NYGS were extracted
 and merged with the results of steps 1 and 2. To accomplish this,
 data records for county agencies and municipal agencies were divided
 into separate files, which were merged in separate operations using
 different key identifier variables. County-level agencies were merged
 by using the county FIPS codes, while municipal agencies were merged
 by using the place FIPS code that uniquely identified each
 municipality. Gang-related items extracted from the 1997 NYGS were
 essentially duplicates of the items used from the 1996 survey, plus an
 additional item about perceived gang trends during the previous
 year. These same procedures were repeated from the 1998 NYGS to
 combine its parallel gang-related items with those in the previously
 merged 1996-1997 data file. After items from all three waves of the
 NYGS had been merged, the data records for county and municipal
 agencies were recombined into a single overall data file. Next,
 several longitudinal gang-related variables were computed from the
 merged gang files to measure multi-wave trends and stability
 indexes. They combined parallel items from two or more of the NYGS
 files reported for the same police agencies. Subsequently,
 county-level data were extracted from two different data sources --
 County and City Data Book, 1994, and USA Counties, 1998 -- both
 compiled and distributed by the United States Department of Commerce
 using data collected by the United States Census Bureau. Relevant
 county-level population, economic, and housing data were identified
 within each dataset. The identified variables were extracted and
 merged (using the county FIPS code) into a single data file containing
 data on the selected variables on all counties in the United States.
 Penultimately, after the separate gang surveys had been combined, the
 county-level census-based data were added to the merged three-wave
 gang data file by using the county FIPS code recorded for each agency
 (reflecting the county in which the agency was located). These
 census-based data provide quantitative measures of the social and
 economic community context for each agency. As a final step,
 county-level data on interstate highways were obtained from Tom
 Ricketts and Randy Randolph of the University of North Carolina at
 Chapel Hill. Data indicating the presence (or absence) of an
 interstate highway in each county of the United States were provided
 along with the county FIPS code and merged into the researchers' data
file.
description: Variables include the FIPS codes for state, county,
 county subdivision, and sub-county, population in the agency
 jurisdiction, type of jurisdiction, and whether the county was
 dependent on farming, mining, manufacturing, or government. Other
 variables categorizing counties include retirement destination,
 federal lands, commuting, persistent poverty, and transfer
 payments. The year gang problems began in that jurisdiction, number of
 youth groups, number of active gangs, number of active gang members,
 percent of gang members who migrated, and the number of gangs in 1996,
 1997, and 1998 are also available. Rounding out the variables are
 unemployment rates, median household incomes, percent of persons in
 county below poverty level, percent of family households that were
 one-parent households, percent of housing units in the county that
 were vacant, had no telephone, or were renter-occupied, resident
 population of the county in 1990 and 1997, change in unemployment
 rates, land area of county, percent of persons in the county speaking
 Spanish at home, and whether an interstate highway intersected the
county.
description: Response Rates: inap.
description: Presence of Common Scales: inap.
description: inap.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Gangs in Rural America, 1996-1998
description: All police agencies included in the National Youth Gang
 Survey (NYGS) sample that provided usable responses to the NYGS
survey.
description: The user guide, codebook, and data collection
 instruments are provided by ICPSR as Portable Document Format (PDF)
 files. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated
 and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe
 Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat
Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.