Urban Morality Issues Incidents in Ten Cities, 1990-2000: [United States]

This collection consists of data that tracked how ten citygovernments in the United States responded to morality issues in thelast decade of the 20th century. The ten cities varied in theirgeographic properties and were characterized by their locations, e.g.,South City, Metro City, and Coast City. Morality issues were definedas issues concerning actions or behaviors that were regulated by adeeply held belief and/or a religious value. The issues falling withinthis categorization were gay rights, abortion rights, abortion clinicprotests, needle exchange programs for drug users, hate speech, hategroups, gambling policies and regulations, animal rights, andregulations pertaining to the sex industry, which includedpornography, prostitution, and adult entertainment. Incidents orevents in the ten cities related to these moral issues wereidentified. The data were generated by scanning local newspapers toisolate and gather relevant information about the selected cities,interviewing political elites (e.g., mayor, city manager, and councilperson), and reviewing public government records for the selectedcities. Part 1, Ten City Data, contains data on 451 incidents relatedto morality issues in the ten cities. Part 2, Subset of Ten City DataWith City-Specific Variables, is a subset of the cases included inPart 1 and also includes a broader array of city-specific contextualvariables. The variables shared by Part 1 and Part 2 are whether acity had a mayor or a city manager, whether city council electionswere at-large or by district, the percentage or share of the citycouncil elected by a particular district, the strength and prevalenceof the city's homosexual community, the percentage of residents in thecounty who attended religious services, the percentage of residents inthe county who identified themselves as Catholic or as religiousfundamentalists, and whether activists involved with this issue weremore likely to be from the left or right, politically. Additionalshared variables are city population in 1990 and 1998 (in thousands),the percentage of population change between 1980-1990 and 1990-1998,the metro area population in 1990 (in thousands), the percentage ofpopulation change in the metro area from 1980-1990 and from 1990-1996,the percentage of female, Asian, White, Black, and Hispanic residents,the median household income, the percentage of married residents, thepercentage of female-headed households, the 1997 unemployment rate,the percentage of same gender partnerships, the total number ofchurches, the number of churches per capita, the percentage ofhouseholds with children under the age of 19, the percentage of thepopulation aged 18-34, the percentage of residents that were collegeeducated, income per capita, the percentage of foreign-born residents,the percentage of residents living in poverty, and the acceptabilityand prevalence of the city's "unconventional" or "counter"culture. The variables contained only in Part 2, Subset of Ten CityData With City-Specific Variables, are the type of community educationpresent, the type of social culture in the community, the percentageof the work force employed in education or technology related jobs,the percentage of women in the work force, and the total number ofchurches in the county.