Funding, News and Announcements

Request for Proposals
Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey – Hate Crime Data
Pilot Project
Deadline: November 24, 2014

To increase the accessibility of the Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey data, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS), in conjunction with Statistics Canada’s Research Data Centres (RDCs), is conducting a pilot project whereby UCR Hate Crime data for 2010, 2011, and 2012 will be placed in a select number of RDCs. While offering academic researchers greater access to the Hate Crime data, this pilot project will also provide support for the evaluation and refinement of confidentiality vetting rules for the Hate Crime data and an opportunity to improve end-user documentation.

Police-reported hate crime data in Canada are compiled from two sources: The UCR2.2 Survey, and The Uniform Crime Reporting 2.2 Supplemental Survey. The three most recent years of Hate Crime data, 2010, 2011 and 2012, will be available in the RDCs for this pilot project. The three years of data offer researchers a larger sample size with which to examine incident, accused and victim characteristics but do not permit for year-over-year trend analysis, due to coverage issues.

Proposal Guidelines

As the primary objective of this pilot project is to evaluate and refine confidentiality vetting rules for the Hate Crime data, to adequately test these rules, preference will be given to proposed studies on the following bases:

1. Studies involving the production of basic tabular outputs (e.g., frequencies, means, ratios), including supplemental tables (i.e., to produce graphical outputs or support covariance matrices).

2. Studies that focus on one or more of the following:

• Analysis using victim and/or accused characteristics (e.g., sex; age/age group; victim level of injury; accused status (i.e., charged, cleared otherwise)
• Analysis using particular variables – for example: Hate Crime Motivation; Geographic Region; Most Serious Weapon Present; Weapon Causing Injury; Most Serious Violation

There will be two approaches for confidentiality vetting available to RDC researchers -- a scoring method or a rounding program. Ultimately, researchers will be required to select and apply only one of the two available approaches for all their final outputs. However, this pilot aims to obtain critical feedback on both of these approaches. Therefore, it is expected that the study will consist of a mix of participants -- those who will utilise the scoring method, those who will apply the rounding program, and those who will have experimented with both approaches before finally settling on one or the other.

In addition to the above criteria, proposals will also be assessed on the viability of the proposed research. The proposals should follow the requirements outlined at: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/rdc-cdr/faculty-eng.htm. Proposals will be assessed as they are received. It is expected that 5 to 7 proposals will be accepted.

Please be advised

Researchers considering submitting a proposal should also be aware that the Hate Crime data files are to be treated as stand-alone files and thus cannot be linked with the main UCR Incident-based Survey (UCR2) data file nor is it advisable to compare UCR2 data with data from the Hate Crime files.

In addition, it should be noted that only national and regional level tabular outputs are permissible for Hate Crime data in the RDCs. Tabular outputs by province/territory or CMA using Hate Crime data will not be permitted in the RDCs due to the small cell counts produced once the province/territory or CMA variable is crossed with any other variable.

The pilot study will run over an 18-month period. Because this is a pilot, a number of outputs may require vetting by a special CCJS-RDC project committee. Researchers should bear these factors in mind when considering the appropriateness of this pilot and any potential impact on the timely completion of their own work.

Proposals should be submitted by November 24, 2014 to:
Donna Dosman, Chief
Research Data Centre Program
Donna.Dosman@statcan.gc.ca

For more information on the RDC program and the Atlantic Research Data Centre, contact ardc@dal.ca or visit our website at atlanticresearchdatacentre.dal.ca.

For general information on the Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey data see:
http://www23.statcan.gc.ca:81/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=3302&lang=en&db=imdb&adm=8&dis=2

Additional information is available in the Incident-based UCR RDC User Manual and the RDC UCR Hate Crime Supplement. To obtain an electronic versions of either document please contact Andrea Taylor-Butts at: Andrea.Taylor-Butts@statcan.gc.ca.