The Journal of Quantitative Criminology (Vol. 8,1992)

published a paper on the determinants of area property crime levels in the United Kingdom. Several multiple regression models for property crime prevalence, y, measured as the percentage of residents in a geographical area who were victims of at least one property crime, were examined. The results for one of the models, based on a sample of n = 313 responses collected for the British Crime Survey, are shown in the table below. [Note: All variables except Density are expressed as a percentage of the base area.]

a. Test the hypothesis that the density (x,) of a region is positively linearly related to crime prevalence (y), holding the other independent variables constant.

b. Do you advise conducting t-tests on each of the 18 independent variables in the model to determine which variables are important predictors of crime prevalence? Explain.

c. The model yielded R2 = .411. Use this information to conduct a test of the global utility of the model.

Use a = .05