Lott responds to the previous posts in e-mail. I’ll post it in its entirety out of fairness and address the issues in later posts:
My responses:
I have already discussed these issues, but it is obvious that I need to
repeat what I have previously sent out.I have previously posted the survey questions used (see below for
another copy). The 36 demographic categories for the 1997 survey were the exact same ones that I used in all the regressions in my book More Guns, Less Crime. The breakdown is by age (six age categories — 10 to 19, 20 to 29,etc.), by sex, and by race (black, white, other). Information on where the person lived is immediately available because we have the person’s area code and address from the telephone CD that we used. As to demographic questions, you will see that we asked two race and age. The student conducting the survey would fill in sex on their own unless there was a question."This adds another significant amount as even a simple database for
2400 respondents would take time to construct–especially with 36
categories."This is simply incorrect. The demographic information is a product of
only four variables. First you merge the census demographic and population information with the survey file. Since the 36 demographic categories are afunction of only three answers to the survey, a simple set of "If, then" statements tell you in which of the 36 categories each respondent falls in.That quickly gives you the share of that states population represented
by people who answered the survey in that demographic group, and you also
figure out that state/demographic group’s share of the national
population."10 minutes a call (this is charitable)"
When you look at the survey you will see that it is very short. Well
over 90 percent of the people would answer no to the first question and then only have the two demographic questions to answer. In this case, the survey would only take about thirty seconds or so. Even for those who answered "yes" only a fraction would have to answer all the other questions.Overall, only about one percent of those surveyed would be asked all
the questions in the survey and even then the entire survey would only take a couple of minutes.The 2002 survey of over one thousand respondents was completed over
just eight nights. Students were often able to survey over 20 people per
hour.As to deducting these costs on my income taxes, my 1997 tax form, which
I have shared with many others, shows that $8,750 was deducted for
research assistants (the heading was under "legal and professional services").We do not keep the supporting documents past the three years required by the IRS and the $8,750 does include the expenses for other projects. On the other hand, I am sure that I did not keep track of all of my expenditures so the $8,750 is a sizeable underestimate of what I spent.
The survey telephone numbers were obtained from a CD directory for the
entire United States. The numbers were selected randomly so that all
states were represented in proportion to their population. (See attached
below for a very similar discussion relating to the 2002 survey.)Between the two surveys 3,439 people have been interviewed. Can more
information be obtained? Sure, but given my personal resources and
that these surveys are such a trivial portion of my overall interests I have spent about as much time as I plan on spending on this issue.Detailed information on the survey will be provided in my book that is
due out the end of March.