Cover: Inpatient Hospitalizations for Firearm Injury
Read Online

Inpatient Hospitalizations for Firearm Injury

Estimating State-Level Rates from 2000 to 2016

by Rosanna Smart, Samuel Peterson, Terry L. Schell, Rose Kerber, Andrew R. Morral

Download eBook for Free

FormatFile SizeNotes
PDF file 3.7 MB

Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 10 or higher for the best experience.

Download Support Files

Data

FormatFile SizeNotes
zip file 0.7 MB

The file(s) provided above are ZIP-formatted archives, which most modern systems can natively unpack. If your computer does not unpack the archive when you double-click it, you may need to use a separate decompression program such as UnZip.

One particular challenge for gun policy researchers is the lack of a single resource that provides reliable estimates of state-level firearm injuries over time. The data that do exist are sparse across state-years and cost-prohibitive to access. Deaths caused by firearms are tracked at the state level, but there are questions about whether nonfatal firearm injuries follow similar longitudinal trends as firearm deaths and whether policies affect deaths and injuries in the same manner. As part of the Gun Policy in America initiative, RAND researchers developed a publicly available longitudinal database of state-level estimates of inpatient hospitalizations that occur as a result of firearm injury. This document describes the methods that the researchers used to construct the estimates and provides technical documentation and other information that will facilitate use of the database.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter One

    Introduction

  • Chapter Two

    Existing Data Sources and Limitations

  • Chapter Three

    Estimating State Firearm Hospitalizations over Time

  • Chapter Four

    Imputation Methods to Produce State Panel Estimates

  • Chapter Five

    Results

  • Chapter Six

    Discussion and Conclusions

  • Appendix A

    Posterior Distributions of Model Parameters

  • Appendix B

    Data Cleaning

Research conducted by

The research described in this report was sponsored by Arnold Ventures and conducted by the Justice Policy Program within RAND Social and Economic Well-Being.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation Tool series. RAND tools may include models, databases, calculators, computer code, GIS mapping tools, practitioner guidelines, web applications, and various toolkits. All RAND tools undergo rigorous peer review to ensure both high data standards and appropriate methodology in keeping with RAND's commitment to quality and objectivity.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.