Lotta Survey

Here is the survey and descriptive material John Lott passed along:

D. Survey on Defensive Gun Use

Below is the survey that was used to identify the rate of defensive gun
use.

Hello, my name is _______, and I am a student at ________ working on a
very brief survey on crime. The survey should take about one minute.
Could I please ask you a few questions?

1) During the last year, were you ever threatened with physical
violence or harmed by another person or were you present when someone else faced such a situation?

(Threats do not have to be spoken threats. Includes physically
menacing. Attacks include an assault, robbery or rape.)

a) Yes
b) No
c) Uncertain
d) Declined to answer

(Just ask people "YES" or "NO." If they answer "NO" or "Decline to
answer," go directly to demographic questions. If people are
"Uncertain" or say ³YES,² proceed with question 2.)

2) How many times did these threats of violence or crimes occur?
_____

3) Which of the following best describe how you responded to the
threat(s)or crime(s)? Pick one from the following list that best described your behavior or the person who you were with for each case faced.

a) behaved passively
b) used your fists
c) ran away
d) screamed or called for help
e) used a gun
f) used a knife
g) used mace
h) used a baseball bat or club
i) other

(Rotate these answers (a) through (h), place a number for 0 to whatever
for each option. Stop going through list if they volunteer answer(s) that account for the number of threats that they faced.)

4) This is only done if they respondent answers "e" (a gun) to question
3

If a gun was used, did you or the other person you were with:

a) brandish it
b) fire a warning shot
c) fire at the attacker
d) injure the attacker
e) kill the attacker

(Again, place a number for 0 to whatever number is appropriate for each
option. Rotate answers.)

5) Were you or the person you were with harmed by the attack(s)?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Refused to answer

(We obviously have the area code for location, write down sex from the
voice if possible, otherwise ask.)

Two demographic questions asked of all participants.

What is your race? black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Other.

What is your age by decade? 20s, 30s, 40s, so on.

Question for surveyor: Is there any reason for you to believe that
the person was not being honest with you?

a) Didn’t believe respondent at all
b) Had some concerns
c) Had no serious concerns

Write up by James Knowles of the discussion of the survey:

We had a small army of interns and AEI staff making phone calls. The
callers for any given night varied according to who was available/willing to make phone calls. I was here every night supervising from my office at AEI. The survey was conducted over eight nights. Calls were made between 7pm and 9pm local time. (deleted material about workers that isn’t relevant)

We used a phonebook program from a company called infoUSA the program
was called Select Phone Pro version 2.4. The program has a random function. First, we calculated how many numbers should be drawn from each state, we decided that we would pull 4,000 numbers (based on how much the
PhonePro program gives us for free). Then we took the populations of each state from the Census and assigned the quantity of numbers that we indended to get from the program. Then, in PhonePro, we picked a state, then sorted the state’s list by area code, then randomly generated a number (using excel’s analysis pack) as a starting point, then the Phone Pro program would export a number every so often from the list until it reached the desired number of listings exported from the state. This may be something that is easier explained in a conversation, my direct line is xxx.