I am very, very happy to announce that Princeton University is planning on posting up, for anyone to use, the underlying data behind the New Jersey State Police gang survey reports from 2001, 2004 and 2007.
Now this is pretty big news if you’re interested in this sort of thing because, as far as I know, the underlying data behind most (if not all) of these gang surveys has not been released to the general public before. Now, for the first time, people can look at the individual responses of the data and compare the responses over the years or subject the data to whatever sort of statistical analysis they want.
I should also mention that the 2001 survey never resulted in a public report and the findings of that survey was only discussed in relation to the 2004 findings.
Currently, only the 2001 data is posted but the rest should be up at some point in the (hopefully not too distant) future. It may be found here even though it is incorrectly labeled “National Youth Gang Survey” it is, in fact, the 2001 New Jersey State Police Street Gang Survey data. Hopefully the label will be changed in the near future as well.
The site it is hosted on is quite interesting as well, allowing “resources and assistance in finding, using, and analyzing social science data”. It’s been awhile (too long) since I took statistics in school but you can do some nice things with the data using their statistical software.
A bit of information about the data: The 2001 survey looked at approximately 100 cities within New Jersey. 2004 expanded to over 400 municipalities and the 2007 survey got responses regarding all but one (with Elizabeth winning the ‘Team Player No Prize’)
So, I’m hoping this data will prompt researchers, students and the general public to use this data, analyze it or mash it up with other data sets and come up with different ways of looking at it. If you happen to be one of those intrepid individuals (or know someone who is), please let me know what you find!