In 2023, Texas had the highest number of forcible rape cases in the United States, with 15,097 reported rapes. Delaware had the lowest number of reported forcible rape cases at 194. Number vs. rate It is perhaps unsurprising that Texas and California reported the highest number of rapes, as these states have the highest population of states in the U.S. When looking at the rape rate, or the number of rapes per 100,000 of the population, a very different picture is painted: Alaska was the state with the highest rape rate in the country in 2023, with California ranking as 30th in the nation. The prevalence of rape Rape and sexual assault are notorious for being underreported crimes, which means that the prevalence of sex crimes is likely much higher than what is reported. Additionally, more than a third of women worry about being sexually assaulted, and most sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knew.

This dataset includes all valid felony, misdemeanor, and violation crimes reported to the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for all complete quarters so far this year (2016). For additional details, please see the attached data dictionary in the ‘About’ section.

The purpose of this study was to use data from the National Crime Survey (NCS) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to explore whether the likelihood of police notification by rape victims had increased between 1973-2000. To avoid the ambiguities that could arise in analyses across the two survey periods, the researchers analyzed the NCS (1973-1991) and NCVS data (1992-2000) separately. They focused on incidents that involved a female victim and one or more male offenders. The sample for 1973-1991 included 1,609 rapes and the corresponding sample for 1992-2000 contained 636 rapes. In their analyses, the researchers controlled for changes in forms of interviewing used in the NCS and NCVS. Logistic regression was used to estimate effects on the measures of police notification. The analyses incorporated the currently best available methods of accounting for design effects in the NCS and NCVS. Police notification served as the dependent variable in the study and was measured in two ways. First, the analysis included a polytomous dependent variable that contrasted victim reported incidents and third-party reported incidents, respectively, with nonreported incidents. Second, a binary dependent variable, police notified, also was included. The primary independent variables in the analysis were the year of occurrence of the incident reported by the victim and the relationship between the victim and the offender. The regression models estimated included several control variables, including measures of respondents' socioeconomic status, as well as other victim, offender, and incident characteristics that may be related both to the nature of rape and to the likelihood that victims notify the police.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), previously called the National Crime Survey (NCS), has been collecting data on personal and household victimization through an ongoing survey of a nationally-representative sample of residential addresses since 1973. The NCVS was designed with four primary objectives: (1) to develop detailed information about the victims and consequences of crime, (2) to estimate the number and types of crimes not reported to the police, (3) to provide uniform measures of selected types of crimes, and (4) to permit comparisons over time and types of areas. Beginning in 1992, the survey categorizes crimes as "personal" or "property." Personal crimes include rape and sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and purse-snatching/pocket-picking, while property crimes include burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism. Each respondent is asked a series of screen questions designed to determine whether she or he was victimized during the six-month period preceding the first day of the month of the interview. A "household respondent" is also asked to report on crimes against the household as a whole (e.g., burglary, motor vehicle theft). The data include type of crime, month, time, and location of the crime, relationship between victim and offender, characteristics of the offender, self-protective actions taken by the victim during the incident and results of those actions, consequences of the victimization, type of property lost, whether the crime was reported to police and reasons for reporting or not reporting, and offender use of weapons, drugs, and alcohol. Basic demographic information such as age, race, gender, and income is also collected, to enable analysis of crime by various subpopulations. This dataset represents the concatenated version of the NCVS on a collection year basis for 1992-2023. A collection year contains records from interviews conducted in the 12 months of the given year. Under the collection year format, victimizations are counted in the year the interview is conducted, regardless of the year when the crime incident occurred.For additional information on the dataset, please see the documentation for the data from the most current year of the NCVS, ICPSR Study 38962.

This study had four key goals. The first goal was to identify how many women in the United States and in college settings have ever been raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetime and within the past year. The next goal was to identify key case characteristics of drug-facilitated and forcible rapes. The third goal was to examine factors that affect the willingness of women to report rape to law enforcement or seek help from their support network. The last goal was to make comparisons between the different types of rape. Part 1 (General Population) data consisted of a national telephone household sample of 3,001 United States women, whereas Part 2 (College Population) data consisted of 2,000 college women selected from a reasonably representative national list of women attending four year colleges and universities. Both data parts contain the same 399 variables. Interviews were completed between January 23 and June 26, 2006. Respondents were asked questions regarding risk perception, fear of violence, and accommodation behavior. The women were also asked their opinions and attitudes about reporting rape to the authorities and disclosing rape to family members, peers, or other individuals. This includes questions about barriers to reporting and experiences that women have had being the recipient of a disclosure from a friend, relative, or other individual. The respondents were asked a series of questions about rape, including different types of forcible, drug- or alcohol-facilitated, and incapacitated rape. For women who endorsed one or more rape experiences, a wide range of rape characteristics were assessed including characteristics around the nature of the event, perpetrator-victim relationship, occurrence of injury, involvement of drugs or alcohol, receipt of medical care, and whether the rape was reported to the authorities. The respondents were also asked a series of questions regarding substance use, including prescription and illegal drugs and alcohol. Additionally, a series of questions related to post-traumatic stress disorder and depression were asked. Finally, the women were asked to provide basic demographic information such as age, race, ethnicity, and income.

Context

Introduction: The dataset used for this experiment is real and authentic. The dataset is acquired from UCI machine learning repository website [13]. The title of the dataset is ‘Crime and Communities’. It is prepared using real data from socio-economic data from 1990 US Census, law enforcement data from the 1990 US LEMAS survey, and crimedata from the 1995 FBI UCR [13]. This dataset contains a total number of 147 attributes and 2216 instances.

The per capita crimes variables were calculated using population values included in the 1995 FBI data (which differ from the 1990 Census values).

Content

The variables included in the dataset involve the community, such as the percent of the population considered urban, and the median family income, and involving law enforcement, such as per capita number of police officers, and percent of officers assigned to drug units. The crime attributes (N=18) that could be predicted are the 8 crimes considered 'Index Crimes' by the FBI)(Murders, Rape, Robbery, .... ), per capita (actually per 100,000 population) versions of each, and Per Capita Violent Crimes and Per Capita Nonviolent Crimes)

predictive variables : 125 non-predictive variables : 4 potential goal/response variables : 18

Acknowledgements

http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Communities%20and%20Crime%20Unnormalized

U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census Of Population And Housing 1990 United States: Summary Tape File 1a & 3a (Computer Files),

U.S. Department Of Commerce, Bureau Of The Census Producer, Washington, DC and Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research Ann Arbor, Michigan. (1992)

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Law Enforcement Management And Administrative Statistics (Computer File) U.S. Department Of Commerce, Bureau Of The Census Producer, Washington, DC and Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research Ann Arbor, Michigan. (1992)

U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States (Computer File) (1995)

Inspiration

Your data will be in front of the world's largest data science community. What questions do you want to see answered?

Data available in the dataset may not act as a complete source of information for identifying factors that contribute to more violent and non-violent crimes as many relevant factors may still be missing.

However, I would like to try and answer the following questions answered.

1. Analyze if number of vacant and occupied houses and the period of time the houses were vacant had contributed to any significant change in violent and non-violent crime rates in communities

2. How has unemployment changed crime rate(violent and non-violent) in the communities?

3. Were people from a particular age group more vulnerable to crime?

4. Does ethnicity play a role in crime rate?

5. Has education played a role in bringing down the crime rate?

The purpose of this study was to provide an in-depth look at rapes and attempted rapes in the United States. Part 1 of the collection offers data on rape victims and contains variables regarding the characteristics of the crime, such as the setting, the relationship between the victim and offender, the likelihood of injury, and the reasons why rape is not reported to police. Part 2 contains data on a control group of females who were victims of no crime or of crimes other than rape. The information contained is similar to that found in Part 1.

Source:

Creator: Michael Redmond (redmond '@' lasalle.edu); Computer Science; La Salle University; Philadelphia, PA, 19141, USA -- culled from 1990 US Census, 1995 US FBI Uniform Crime Report, 1990 US Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics Survey, available from ICPSR at U of Michigan. -- Donor: Michael Redmond (redmond '@' lasalle.edu); Computer Science; La Salle University; Philadelphia, PA, 19141, USA -- Date: July 2009

Data Set Information:

Many variables are included so that algorithms that select or learn weights for attributes could be tested. However, clearly unrelated attributes were not included; attributes were picked if there was any plausible connection to crime (N=122), plus the attribute to be predicted (Per Capita Violent Crimes). The variables included in the dataset involve the community, such as the percent of the population considered urban, and the median family income, and involving law enforcement, such as per capita number of police officers, and percent of officers assigned to drug units.

The per capita violent crimes variable was calculated using population and the sum of crime variables considered violent crimes in the United States: murder, rape, robbery, and assault. There was apparently some controversy in some states concerning the counting of rapes. These resulted in missing values for rape, which resulted in incorrect values for per capita violent crime. These cities are not included in the dataset. Many of these omitted communities were from the midwestern USA.

Data is described below based on original values. All numeric data was normalized into the decimal range 0.00-1.00 using an Unsupervised, equal-interval binning method. Attributes retain their distribution and skew (hence for example the population attribute has a mean value of 0.06 because most communities are small). E.g. An attribute described as 'mean people per household' is actually the normalized (0-1) version of that value.

The normalization preserves rough ratios of values WITHIN an attribute (e.g. double the value for double the population within the available precision - except for extreme values (all values more than 3 SD above the mean are normalized to 1.00; all values more than 3 SD below the mean are normalized to 0.00)).

However, the normalization does not preserve relationships between values BETWEEN attributes (e.g. it would not be meaningful to compare the value for whitePerCap with the value for blackPerCap for a community)

A limitation was that the LEMAS survey was of the police departments with at least 100 officers, plus a random sample of smaller departments. For our purposes, communities not found in both census and crime datasets were omitted. Many communities are missing LEMAS data.

Attribute Information:

'(125 predictive, 4 non-predictive, 18 potential goal) ', ' communityname: Community name - not predictive - for information only (string) ', ' state: US state (by 2 letter postal abbreviation)(nominal) ', ' countyCode: numeric code for county - not predictive, and many missing values (numeric) ', ' communityCode: numeric code for community - not predictive and many missing values (numeric) ', ' fold: fold number for non-random 10 fold cross validation, potentially useful for debugging, paired tests - not predictive (numeric - integer) ', ' population: population for community: (numeric - expected to be integer) ', ' householdsize: mean people per household (numeric - decimal) ', ' racepctblack: percentage of population that is african american (numeric - decimal) ', ' racePctWhite: percentage of population that is caucasian (numeric - decimal) ', ' racePctAsian: percentage of population that is of asian heritage (numeric - decimal) ', ' racePctHisp: percentage of population that is of hispanic heritage (numeric - decimal) ', ' agePct12t21: percentage of population that is 12-21 in age (numeric - decimal) ', ' agePct12t29: percentage of population that is 12-29 in age (numeric - decimal) ', ' agePct16t24: percentage of population that is 16-24 in age (numeric - decimal) ', ' agePct65up: percentage of population that is 65 and over in age (numeric - decimal) ', ' numbUrban: number of people living in areas classified as urban (numeric - expected to be integer) ', ' pctUrban: percentage of people living in areas classified as urban (numeric - decimal) ', ' medIncome: median household income (numeric - may be integer) ', ' pctWWage: percentage of households with wage or salary income in 1989 (numeric - decimal) ', ' pctWFarmSelf: percentage of households with farm or self employment income in 1989 (numeric - decimal) ', ' pctWInvInc: percentage of households with investment / rent income in 1989 (numeric - decimal) ', ' pctWSocSec: percentage of households with social security income in 1989 (numeric - decimal) ', ' pctWPubAsst: pe...

This dataset reflects reported incidents of crime (with the exception of murders where data exists for each victim) that occurred in the City of Chicago from 2001 to present, minus the most recent seven days. Data is extracted from the Chicago Police Department's CLEAR (Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting) system. In order to protect the privacy of crime victims, addresses are shown at the block level only and specific locations are not identified. Should you have questions about this dataset, you may contact the Research & Development Division of the Chicago Police Department at 312.745.6071 or RandD@chicagopolice.org. Disclaimer: These crimes may be based upon preliminary information supplied to the Police Department by the reporting parties that have not been verified. The preliminary crime classifications may be changed at a later date based upon additional investigation and there is always the possibility of mechanical or human error. Therefore, the Chicago Police Department does not guarantee (either expressed or implied) the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or correct sequencing of the information and the information should not be used for comparison purposes over time. The Chicago Police Department will not be responsible for any error or omission, or for the use of, or the results obtained from the use of this information. All data visualizations on maps should be considered approximate and attempts to derive specific addresses are strictly prohibited. The Chicago Police Department is not responsible for the content of any off-site pages that are referenced by or that reference this web page other than an official City of Chicago or Chicago Police Department web page. The user specifically acknowledges that the Chicago Police Department is not responsible for any defamatory, offensive, misleading, or illegal conduct of other users, links, or third parties and that the risk of injury from the foregoing rests entirely with the user. The unauthorized use of the words "Chicago Police Department," "Chicago Police," or any colorable imitation of these words or the unauthorized use of the Chicago Police Department logo is unlawful. This web page does not, in any way, authorize such use. Data is updated daily Tuesday through Sunday. The dataset contains more than 65,000 records/rows of data and cannot be viewed in full in Microsoft Excel. Therefore, when downloading the file, select CSV from the Export menu. Open the file in an ASCII text editor, such as Wordpad, to view and search. To access a list of Chicago Police Department - Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting (IUCR) codes, go to http://data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/Chicago-Police-Department-Illinois-Uniform-Crime-R/c7ck-438e

This table contains data on the rate of violent crime (crimes per 1,000 population) for California, its regions, counties, cities and towns. Crime and population data are from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Uniform Crime Reports. Rates above the city/town level include data from city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies. The table is part of a series of indicators in the Healthy Communities Data and Indicators Project of the Office of Health Equity. Ten percent of all deaths in young California adults aged 15-44 years are related to assault and homicide. In 2010, California law enforcement agencies reported 1,809 murders, 8,331 rapes, and over 95,000 aggravated assaults. African Americans in California are 11 times more likely to die of assault and homicide than Whites. More information about the data table and a data dictionary can be found in the About/Attachments section.

Despite the fact that most states enacted rape reform legislation by the mid-1980s, empirical research on the effect of these laws was conducted in only four states and for a limited time span following the reform. The purpose of this study was to provide both increased breadth and depth of information about the effect of the rape law changes and the legal issues that surround them. Statistical data on all rape cases between 1970 and 1985 in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, were collected from court records. Monthly time-series analyses were used to assess the impact of the reforms on rape reporting, indictments, convictions, incarcerations, and sentences. The study also sought to determine if particular changes, or particular combinations of changes, affected the case processing and disposition of sexual assault cases and whether the effect of the reforms varied with the comprehensiveness of the changes. In each jurisdiction, data were collected on all forcible rape cases for which an indictment or information was filed. In addition to forcible rape, other felony sexual assaults that did not involve children were included. The names and definitions of these crimes varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. To compare the pattern of rape reports with general crime trends, reports of robbery and felony assaults during the same general time period were also obtained from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) from the Federal Bureau of Investigation when available. For the adjudicated case data (Parts 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11), variables include month and year of offense, indictment, disposition, four most serious offenses charged, total number of charges indicted, four most serious conviction charges, total number of conviction charges, type of disposition, type of sentence, and maximum jail or prison sentence. The time series data (Parts 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12) provide year and month of indictment, total indictments for rape only and for all sex offenses, total convictions and incarcerations for all rape cases in the month, for those on the original rape charge, for all sex offenses in the month, and for those on the original sex offense charge, percents for each indictment, conviction, and incarceration category, the average maximum sentence for each incarceration category, and total police reports of forcible rape in the month. Interviews were also conducted in each site with judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, and this information is presented in Part 13. These interviewees were asked to rate the importance of various types of evidence in sexual assault cases and to respond to a series of six hypothetical cases in which evidence of the victim's past sexual history was at issue. Respondents were also presented with a hypothetical case for which some factors were varied to create 12 different scenarios, and they were asked to make a set of judgments about each. Interview data also include respondent's title, sex, race, age, number of years in office, and whether the respondent was in office before and/or after the reform.

The dataset contains annual count data for the number of family-related domestic incident reports, family-related felony assaults, domestic violence related felony assaults, family-related rapes and domestic violence related rapes. The Mayor's Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV) develops policies and programs, provides training and prevention education, conducts research and evaluations, performs community outreach, and operates the New York City Family Justice Centers. The office collaborates with City agencies and community stakeholders to ensure access to inclusive services for survivors of domestic and gender-based violence (GBV) services. GBV can include intimate partner and family violence, elder abuse, sexual assault, stalking, and human trafficking. ENDGBV operates the New York City Family Justice Centers. These co‐located multidisciplinary domestic violence service centers provide vital social service, civil legal and criminal justice assistance for survivors of intimate partner violence and their children under one roof. The Brooklyn Family Justice Center opened in July 2005; the Queens Family Justice Center opened in July 2008; the Bronx Family Justice Center opened in April 2010; Manhattan Family Justice Center opened in December 2013 and Staten Island Family Justice Center opened in June 2015. ENDGBV also has a Policy and Training Institute that provides trainings on intimate partner violence to other City agencies. The New York City Healthy Relationship Academy, with is part of the Policy and Training Institute, provides peer lead workshops on healthy relationships and teen dating violence to individuals between the age of 13 and 24, their parents and staff of agencies that work with youth in that age range. The dataset is collected to produce an annual report on the number of family-related and domestic violence related incidents that occur at the community board district level in New York City. The New York City Police Department provides ENDGBV with count data on: family-related domestic incident reports, family-related felony assaults, domestic violence felony assaults, family-violence related rapes and domestic violence related rapes.

Serious violent crimes consist of Part 1 offenses as defined by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Uniform Reporting Statistics. These include murders, nonnegligent homicides, rapes (legacy and revised), robberies, and aggravated assaults. LAPD data were used for City of Los Angeles, LASD data were used for unincorporated areas and cities that contract with LASD for law enforcement services, and CA Attorney General data were used for all other cities with local police departments. This indicator is based on location of residence. Single-year data are only available for Los Angeles County overall, Service Planning Areas, Supervisorial Districts, City of Los Angeles overall, and City of Los Angeles Council Districts.Neighborhood violence and crime can have a harmful impact on all members of a community. Living in communities with high rates of violence and crime not only exposes residents to a greater personal risk of injury or death, but it can also render individuals more susceptible to many adverse health outcomes. People who are regularly exposed to violence and crime are more likely to suffer from chronic stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. They are also less likely to be able to use their parks and neighborhoods for recreation and physical activity.For more information about the Community Health Profiles Data Initiative, please see the initiative homepage.

This study was an evidence-based review of sexual assault preventive intervention (SAPI) programs. A total of 67 publications including articles, government reports, and book chapters (excluding dissertations) representing 59 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the data abstraction process. In order to be included in the review, the resource had to be an English-language publication, published between 1990 and June 2003, of a SAPI evaluation of a primary or secondary preventive intervention program that targeted people who were adolescent-age or older, and which included outcome measures and a pre-test/post-test or between-group differences design. The findings for the article reviews are presented in evidence tables, for the general population in Part 1 and the evidence tables for individuals with disabilities in Part 2.

This dataset contains the tweet ids of 1,360,764 tweets, including tweets between April 1, 2020 and June 30, 2020. This collection is a subset of the Schlesinger Library #metoo Digital Media Collection.These tweets were collected weekly from the Twitter API through Social Feed Manager using the POST statuses/filter method of the Twitter Stream API.Please note that there will be no updates to this dataset.The following list of terms includes the hashtags used to collect data for this dataset: #metoo, #timesup, #metoostem, #sciencetoo, #metoophd, #shittymediamen, #churchtoo, #ustoo, #metooMVMT, #ARmetoo, #TimesUpAR, #metooSociology, #metooSexScience, #timesupAcademia, and #metooMedicine.Be aware that previous quarters (up to the first quarter of 2020) only include one hashtag: #metoo.Because of the size of the files, the list of identifiers are split into 2 files containing up to 1,000,000 ids each.Per Twitter's Developer Policy, tweet ids may be publicly shared for academic purposes; tweets may not. Therefore, this dataset only contains tweet ids. In order to retrieve tweets that are still available (not deleted by users) tools like Hydrator are available.There are similar subsets related to the Schlesinger Library #metoo Digital Media Collection available by quarter, as well as a full dataset with a larger corpus of hashtags.

These data provide information on the number of arrests reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program each year by police agencies in the United States. These arrest reports provide data on 43 offenses including violent crime, drug use, gambling, and larceny. The data received by ICPSR were structured as a hierarchical file containing (per reporting police agency) an agency header record, 1 to 12 monthly header records, and 1 to 43 detail offense records containing the counts of arrests by age, sex, and race for a particular offense. ICPSR restructured the original data to a rectangular format.

This data collection tabulates the number of persons convicted of felonies in state courts and describes the sentences these individuals received. Data were collected from state courts and state prosecutors in 100 counties of the United States. Sociodemographic information includes age, race, and sex of felon. Types of offenses committed include homicide, rape, and robbery. Adjudication variables referring to the process between arrest and sentencing are also a part of this dataset. Data can be analyzed on a national level or by the individual counties. A two-stage stratified cluster sampling design was employed. At the first stage all counties in the nation were divided into six strata. At the second stage, a systematic sample of felons sentenced for murder/nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, felony larceny/motor vehicle theft, drug trafficking, and other offenses was selected from each county's official records. Datasets: DS1: National Judicial Reporting Program, 1986 Sentenced felons in the United States.

The dataset contains annual count data for the number of intimate partner related domestic incident reports, intimate partner-related felony assaults, domestic violence related felony assaults, intimate partner-related rapes and domestic violence related rapes. The Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence (OCDV) formulates policies and programs, coordinates the citywide delivery of domestic violence services and works with diverse communities and community leaders to increase awareness of domestic violence. OCDV collaborates closely with government and nonprofit agencies that assist domestic violence survivors and operates the New York City Family Justice Centers. These co‐located multidisciplinary domestic violence service centers provide vital social service, civil legal and criminal justice assistance for survivors of intimate partner violence and their children under one roof. OCDV also has a Policy and Training Institute that provides trainings on intimate partner violence to other City agencies. The New York City Healthy Relationship Academy, with is part of the Policy and Training Institute, provides peer lead workshops on healthy relationships and teen dating violence to individuals between the age of 13 and 24, their parents and staff of agencies that work with youth in that age range. The dataset is collected to produce an annual report on the number of family-related and domestic violence related incidents that occur at the community board district level in New York City. The New York City Police Department provides OCDV with count data on: Intimate partner related domestic incident reports, intimate partner related felony assaults, domestic violence felony assaults, intimate partner related rapes and domestic violence related rapes.

To further the understanding of violence against women, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), jointly sponsored the National Violence Against Women (NVAW) Survey. To provide a context in which to place women's experiences, the NVAW Survey sampled both women and men. Completed interviews were obtained from 8,000 women and 8,005 men who were 18 years of age or older residing in households throughout the United States. The female version of the survey was fielded from November 1995 to May 1996. The male version of the survey was fielded during February to May 1996. Spanish versions of both the male and female surveys were fielded from April to May 1996. Respondents to the NVAW Survey were queried about (1) their general fear of violence and the ways in which they managed their fears, (2) emotional abuse they had experienced by marital and cohabitating partners, (3) physical assault they had experienced as children by adult caretakers, (4) physical assault they had experienced as adults by any type of perpetrator, (5) forcible rape or stalking they had experienced by any type of perpetrator, and (6) incidents of threatened violence they had experienced by any type of perpetrator. Respondents disclosing victimization were asked detailed questions about the characteristics and consequences of victimization as they experienced it, including injuries sustained and use of medical services. Incidents were recorded that had occurred at any time during the respondent's lifetime and also those that occurred within the 12 months prior to the interview. Data were gathered on both male-to-female and female-to-male intimate partner victimization as well as abuse by same-sex partners. Due to the sensitive nature of the survey, female respondents were interviewed by female interviewers. In order to test for possible bias caused by the gender of the interviewers when speaking to men, a split sample was used so that half of the male respondents had female interviewers and the other half had male interviewers. The questionnaires contained 14 sections, each covering a different topic, as follows. Section A: Respondents' fears of different types of violence, and behaviors they had adopted to accommodate those fears. Section B: Respondent demographics and household characteristics. Section C: The number of current and past marital and opposite-sex and same-sex cohabitating relationships of the respondent. Section D: Characteristics of the respondent's current relationship and the demographics and other characteristics of their spouse and/or partner. Section E: Power, control, and emotional abuse by each spouse or partner. Sections F through I: Screening for incidents of rape, physical assault, stalking, and threat victimization, respectively. Sections J through M: Detailed information on each incident of rape, physical assault, stalking, and threat victimization, respectively, reported by the respondent for each type of perpetrator identified in the victimization screening section. Section N: Violence in the respondent's current relationship, including steps taken because of violence in the relationship and whether the violent behavior had stopped. The section concluded with items to assess if the respondent had symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Other variables in the data include interviewer gender, respondent gender, number of adult women and adult men in the household, number of different telephones in the household, and region code.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the problem of sexual assault among African American women in Maryland, assess their use of available resources in response to sexual assault, and explore their use of alternative sources of care. Researchers interviewed 223 female victims of sexual assault (Part 1 and Part 2) between January 2004 and July 2005 and conducted 21 focus groups (Part 3) with sexual assault resource service providers between 2003 and 2006. Criteria for inclusion in the interview component (Part 1 and Part 2) of the study included: African American or Caucasian female, aged 18 and over, resident of Maryland, and victim of sexual assault. There were four streams of recruitment for the interview portion of the study: Victims receiving services at one of 18 rape crisis centers located throughout the state of Maryland; Community outreach sessions conducted by rape crisis center community educators; Through community service providers, including those working in domestic violence centers, forensic nurse examiners (SAFE programs), probation and parole offices, reproductive health centers, county health departments, community services agencies, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and local colleges; and Through three detention centers housing female inmates. For Part 3 (Focus Group Qualitative Data), rape crisis center representatives and other community service provider representatives received a letter informing them that a focus group was going to be conducted at the end of their study training session and asked them for their participation. Part 1 (Victim Quantitative Data) includes items in the following categories: Personal Demographics, Details of the Sexual Assault, Medical Care, Law Enforcement, Prosecution/Court Process, Sexual Assault Center Services, Other Counseling Services, and Recommendations for Improvement. Part 2 (Victim Qualitative Data) includes responses to selected questions from Part 1. The data are organized by question, not by respondent. Part 3 (Focus Group Qualitative Data) includes questions on the needs of African American women who have been sexually assaulted, whether their needs are different from those of women of other racial/ethnic backgrounds, unique barriers to reporting sexual assault to police for African American women and their treatment by the criminal justice system, unique issues concerning the use of available resources by African American women, such as post-rape medical care and counseling services, and recommendations on how the state of Maryland could improve services for African American women who are the victims of sexual assault.