| Abstract: | The authors hypothesized that relations between temperature and assaults are stronger during evening hours than during other hours of the day and tested this hypothesis by obtaining 3-hr measures of assaults, temperature, and other weather variables for a 2-year interval. The hypothesis was confirmed by autoregression analyses that controlled for secular trends, seasonal differences, other weather variables, holidays, and other calendar events. In addition, as predicted by the negative affect escape model, assaults declined after reaching a peak at moderately high temperatures. The inverted U-shaped relation survived tests that controlled for secular trends, seasonality, autocorrelation, outliers, and heteroscedasticity. In addition, consistent with routine activity theory, moderator-variable regression analyses indicated that relations were strongest during evening hours and on weekends. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved) |
