Appendix A - National Survey and Survey Items

Summary

NATIONAL SURVEY

The survey data for the analysis are from the National Race and Crime Survey (NRCS), a nationwide random-digit telephone survey administered by the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Pittsburgh. Between October 19, 2000 and March 1, 2001, the SRC interviewed 603 (non-Hispanic) Whites and 579 African Americans. White respondents were selected with a variant of random-digit dialing and an oversample of Black respondents was randomly selected using stratified sampling techniques. The number of completed interviews was 1,182 for an overall response rate of 48.64 percent. The interviews, which averaged approximately thirty minutes, were conducted using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) facilities, enabling the interviewers to randomize respondents into experimental treatment groups in an almost infinite number of configurations. For most respondents (90%), the race of the interviewer was matched to that of the respondent in an effort to minimize social desirability bias from race of interviewer effects (e.g., Davis 1997).

The survey instrument was subject to extensive pretesting, consisting of in-depth, face-to-face “cognitive interviews” with a small number of African-American respondents and telephone interviews with twenty-five White and twenty-five Black respondents.

SAMPLE

The NRCS sample roughly approximates the 2000 Census on key demographic characteristics, such as family income and educational attainment, as can be seen in Table A.1. The NRCS tends to overrepresent females among Blacks and Whites. Sample weights were applied, but the significance of the reported coefficients in the analyses was never altered. Thus, the unweighted sample is used throughout.