Chapter 1 - Intro to Research Methods Flashcards
What groups fear crime the most and why?
men and the youth; they are the most heavily victimized
How often do victims of crime know/recognize their offenders?
Very often
What kills more Americans each year than street muggers?
Unsafe work conditions
What did Hirschi and Stark find in “Hellfire and Delinquency”
a weak relationship between church attendance and nondelinquency
Why does Brown and Curtis say that practitioners within criminal justice have met repeated failure?
They only relied on their common sense
What does Wilkins say that statistical experience can be based on?
Samples of the population on which we thought was unbiased
What is knowledge?
What people create symbolically to represent reality
Less than 100 years ago, why were “feebleminded” people locked up?
For the protection of society; believed that feeblemindedness causes crime
What did French sociologist Auguste Comte describe the progression of knowledge as?
Being one from predominantly theological or supernatural explanations of reality to metaphysical or philosophical ones and finally to scientific approaches
What did science combine rational explanation with?
empiricism, experimentation
What did the scientific orientation emphasize?
Observation, measurement, replication, and verification
What is replication?
The repetition of experiments or studies utilizing the same methodology
What is verification?
A confirmation of the accuracy of findings or attainment of greater certitude in conclusions through additional observations
What three suggestions does Bayley suggest for improving criminal justice research?
- Research requires interdisciplinary efforts as well as the tackling of field-oriented, practical problems
- researchers should stop giving speeches to practitioners about the value of research and attack their practical concerns with a realistic appraisal of error proneness of any research endeavor
- stop with methodological narcissism
What is methodological narcissism?
the view that there is only one way of doing research by using the “best method”
What was found in the Martinson Report?
Rehab programs didn’t reduce recidivism or rehab clients
What advice did Hirschi and Selvin give to those doing research or those criticizing the research of others?
Those concerned with good research should be objective and vigilant as well as sympathetic
What does objectivity entail?
Value neutrality or a dispassionate approach to the subject matter that holds constant personal bias
What does vigilance in research involve?
Accuracy and efforts to eliminate error
What does theory in criminal justice represent?
An attempt to develop plausible explanations of reality
What does theory define?
The parameters for how we think about our objects of study, and provides us with the lenses through which we filter out subject matter in order to make sense of complex phenomena
What does Thomas Kuhn define a paradigm as?
Some implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection, evaluation, and criticism
What is serendipity?
An unanticipated and surprising discovery
What do Wilson and George say about unrepaired broken windows?
They can signal to people that no one cares about a building and lead to more serious vandalism, untended property, disorderly persons etc. which creates fear in citizens and attracts predators
What do Blakenship and Brown claim that criminological literature typically refers to?
competing theories as paradigms
As mentioned in lecture, what kinds of errors do we make in our personal human inquiry?
- inaccurate observations
- resistance to change
- selective observations
- illogical reasoning
- ideology and politics
As mentioned in lecture, what are other social sciences that use same/similar research methods to CCJS?
anthropology
economics
psychology
sociology
social work
Mentioned in lecture, what are the five features of the scientific method?
- empirical
- verifiable
- cumulative
- self-correcting
- ethical and ideological neutrality (value free)
As mentioned in lecture, what type of questions are asked by social scientists?
measurement questions
descriptive questions
exploratory questions
casual questions
evaluative questions
As mentioned in lecture, what types of researchers are there?
- professors/academics
- government employees
- practitioners (non-academic)
- journalists
- students
As mentioned in lecture, what are the two logical systems linking theory and research (and their definitions)?
- deductive logic - the derivation of expectations or hypotheses from theories
- inductive logic - the development of generalizations from specific observations
As mentioned in lecture, what is the positivist approach to research?
approach of the natural sciences from Auguste Comte
As mentioned in lecture, what is the interpretive approach to research?
understanding everyday lived experience from Max Weber
As mentioned in lecture, what is the critical approach to research?
Generating liberating knowledge for a better world from Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, etc.
As mentioned in lecture, what is cross-sectional research?
Snapshot of a collection of people at one time
As mentioned in lecture, what is longitudinal research and what are its multiple parts?
Def: Time as a variable;
1. time-series - observe different people
2. panel - observe the exact same people at 2 or more times
3. cohort - observe people who shared an experience at 2 or more times
4. case study - observe a small set of people intensely across time
As mentioned in lecture, what are the purposes of research?
- exploration
- description
- explanation
- evaluation/application
As mentioned in lecture, what are the general steps in empirical research?
- problem formulation
- research design
- data collection methods
- analysis and presentation of findings
- conclusions, interpretations, and limitations of the study
What did Edwin Sutherland’s concept of white-collar crime help establish about crime?
Crime was no longer viewed as an activity solely of the underclass
What is methodology (methods)?
Collection of accurate facts or data; attempt to address the issue of “what is”
What two things does “good” criminal justice require?
Theory and method
What is pure (basic) research?
acquisition of knowledge that contributes to the scientific development of a discipline
What is applied research?
Research concerned with solving or addressing immediate policy problems
What are practitioners most interested in criminal justice?
applied research, studies, and findings that speak directly to policy issues
What are academics most concerned with in criminal justice?
pure research
What were Light and Newman’s findings in the study of state correctional agency practitioners?
While the practitioners strongly supported social research, they reported using it very little in comparison with other types of information and knowledge
What was done in the late 1970s in an attempt to stop the government from funding “irrelevant” research projects?
Senator Proxmire would give his infamous Golden Fleece Award to studies he found deserving
What did the research Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods do?
It analyzed 8,000 residents of 343 Chicago neighborhoods from birth to 32 yrs to examine their development in an effort to determine how family and neighborhood factors influence criminal behavior
What is crime analysis?
systematic, analytic processes aimed at providing practical information related to crime patterns
What are examples of applied research?
Crime profiling, crime analysis, crime mapping, and statement analysis, etc.
What does crime analysis allow the analyst to determine?
Who’s doing what to whom by its focus on crimes against persons and property
What are the functions of crime analysis include?
-identification of crime patterns
-crime forecasting
-target profile analysis
-provision of investigative leads
-provision of support data to community policing and crime prevention programs
-assistance in case clearance
-support for departmental planning activities
-analysis of operational data for departmental planning
what is intelligence analysis?
aids the determination of who’s doing what with whom by its focus on the relationships between persons and organizations involved in illegal and usually conspiratorial activities
what is operations analysis?
it enables the analyst to ascertain how the agency is using its internal resources by its focus on the examination of personnel deployment and workload distribution patterns
what is investigative analysis?
an exceedingly specialized type of analysis that is frequently used in the investigation of unusual or serial homicide cases
What did a 1988 study by the National Science Foundation find about criminal justice research funding compared to other research?
Criminal justice is significantly funded the least.
What is evaluation research?
Supplies scientifically valid info with which to guide public policy
What did the 1967 report of the President’s Commission of Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice call for?
It called for creating a research program in criminal justice at the federal level
What two basic philosophical traditions do research methods in the social sciences follow?
- The first legacy - historical intuitive or observational approach; qualitative
- The second legacy - positivism; suggests that the same approach applicable to studying and explaining physical reality can be used in the social sciences; quantitative
What is historicism?
The view of all social events as a distinct chronicle of unique happenings; extreme qualitative
What is scientism?
The view that if one can’t quantitatively measure a phenomenon, it’s not worth studying; extreme positivism
What is research shock?
A sense of disorientation experienced by a person when suddenly confronted with an unfamiliar style of presentation and research language
What is a researchese?
Language of research
What are concepts?
Abstract tags put on reality and are the beginning point in all scientific endaeavors
How can concepts be converted into variables?
through operationalization
What is operationalization?
it defines concepts by describing how they will be measured
What are variables?
concepts that have been operationalized or can vary or take on different values of a quantitative nature
What is a dependent variable?
the variable that is attempting to predict and by convention is denoted by the letter y (the outcome variable)
What is an independent variable?
the variable that causes, determines, or precedes in time the dependent variable and is usually denoted by the letter x (the predictor variable)
What is a hypothesis?
A specific statement regarding the relationship between (usually two) variables and is derived from more general theories
What is the research process?
Theory (Deduction) –> Hypothesis (Operationalization) –> Research design (Measurement) –> Data Gathering (Analysis) –> Findings (Induction) {cycle repeats}
What is deduction?
Involves moving from a level of theory to a specific hypothesis
What is induction?
entails inferring about a whole group based on knowing about a case/a few cases
What criminal justice theory draws on Marxist, interactions, and critical theory and advocates a methodology that differs from the dominant empirical positivism?
feminist theory
What groups of people did Dorworth and Henry find were underrepresented in photos as authorities?
black people and women
What is the fastest-growing component of the internet?
The World Wide Web
