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35 Canadian J. Criminology 31 (1993)
Re-Analyses of J.P. Rushton's Crime Data

handle is hein.journals/cjccj35 and id is 35 raw text is: Re-analyses of J.P Rushton's crime data Zack Z. Cernovsky (1) Department of Psychology University of Western Ontario London, Ontario and Larry C. Litman Forensic Services St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital St. Thomas, Ontario Rkeemment, Rushton affirmait qu 'il existe des diff~rences importantes dans les taux de criminalitg entre les groupes raciaux. Ses mthodes d'analyse statistique (l'analyse de variance), cependant, ne fait pas ressortir la grandeur de ces difflrences. Les auteurs ont rO-analys les donnes de Rushton et dmontrent qu 'il n 'y a pas de rapports fermes entre les facteurs (le coifficient de corr~lation moyen itait .24, ce qui laisse supposer que moins de 6% de la variance est commune). Les tendances gtaientfaibles et contradictoires (70.8% des co~fficients sont oufaibles ou sans importance). Les donnges de Rushton semblent indiquer qu 'en se basant sur le facteur racial comme prdicteur de criminalitM il en r~sulterait un taux tr~s lev (99.9%o) defaux-positifs. Rushton recently reported significant racial differences in crime rates. His statistical method (the analysis of variance), however, does not assess the size of these significant trends. A re-analysis of his data shows the absence of strong relationships (the average correlation coefficient was .24, suggesting that less than 6% of the variance is shared). The trends were mostly weak and inconsistent (70.8% of the underlying coefficients are classified as low or nonsignificant). Rushton's own data suggest that relying on race as a predictor of crime in individual cases would result in an absurdly high rate (99.90o) offalse positives. Introduction In a recent article in this Journal, Rushton (1990) presented his statistical analyses to document his view that crime frequencies follow his model of racial differences in behaviour. Rushton reports that he collected his data (see Table 1) from international criminal police archives, calculated a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and concluded that the races differ significantly in crime production. Canadian Journal of Criminology 31 to 36 Revue canadienne de criminologie January/janvier 1993

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