The purpose of this article is to present the definitions of 21 geographic information system (GIS) functions used in crime mapping and to propose how these functions may be applied more generally to social science research. Most social data are spatial, but this fact has been largely ignored in sociological and social science research. More extensive use of both spatial statistics and spatial analysis in sociology seems likely, and hopefully this article will stimulate social scientist readers to explore using GIS in their research.
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