Read the following article:
Weitzer, Ronald; Tuch, Steven. 2005. “Racially Biased Policing: Determinants of
Citizen Perceptions.” Social Forces
PART 1: DESCRIPTIVES
Consult Table 1 on page 1016 in conjunction with the larger article.
1a) In your own words, briefly describe what is included in this table. What are the primary IV’s and DV’s the authors are interested in? What are the controls?
1b) What percentage of the total sample is A-male? B-resides in the south? and C-lives in a city?
1c) Which racial group earns the least amount of income of the three included, and how do you know? How far below the average income national is this racial group in terms of Weitzer and Tuch’s income scale? How far below the scaled national average would a racial group’s income (or the income of an individual or element) have to be for it to be one standard deviation or more below the average?
1d) In terms of percentages, at what rate do blacks report negative personal experiences with the police compared with whites? At what rate do Hispanics report negative personal experiences with police compared with whites? Write these as you would present them in a professional document or relay them at a professional conference.
PART 2: TABLE BUILDING
Weitzer and Tuch need our help. Because of space constraints in printing, Weitzer and Tuch were unable to publish their crosstabs mentioned in the results on page 1017. Now these need to be produced for an important conference on attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs about racial profiling. Please help Weitzer and Tuch by crafting a properly titled & labeled table (or tables) so that they can relay key findings from these specific data:
“…while large majorities of all three groups disapprove of racial profiling (73% of whites, 77% of Hispanics, 90% of blacks) and believe that it is widespread in the U.S. (70% of whites, 83% of Hispanics, 92% of blacks), only a third of whites believe that profiling is pervasive in their own city (vs. 59% of Hispanics and 80% of blacks).”
PART 3: MULTIVARIATE REGRESSION
Consult the multivariate regression tables on pages 1020-1023
3a) In model 1, the model that measures correlates of degrees of belief that police are “biased against individuals”, what is the relationship (or direction of association) between age and beliefs that police “are biased against individuals” in the total sample? Is this relationship significant? If so, at what level? How would you write about these findings in a professional publication?
3b) From the data in all four models, what is the relationship between age and perceptions of police by race? In other words, for which racial group does age most significantly influence citizen perceptions of police, and what is the direction of association? How do you know? How would you state this finding for a professional conference?
3c) Looking at Model’s 1 & 2 on beliefs that police are “biased against individuals” and “neighborhoods”, respectively, what is the relationship between personal experience with police and perceptions of police bias (both against individuals and neighborhoods) by race? How would you state this finding for a professional conference?
Sample Solution
