Methods of research in criminology and criminal justicePDF电子书下载

1 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AS A WAY TO MINIMIZE HUMAN ERROR 1

Theory and Research 3

Head, Body, and Crime: An Example of Long-Lasting Damage to Knowledge Resulting from Human Errors 9

Research Methodology as a Process 11

Essential Features of Research Methodology Comparison/Alternative Plausible Hypotheses 13

Basic and Applied Research 17

References 19

2 ETHICS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESEARCH 21

Ethical Relativism 23

The Nuremberg Code 25

Anonymity and Deception 27

APA Standards 28

Research Posing Ethical Issues Behavior in a Simulated Prison/Tearoom Trade 31

References 35

3 RESEARCH IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE: ISSUES AND PREPARATION 37

Research Issues "Bellow Like a Bull"/The Last Word/More Court Matters/Feedback from Probation Officers/ Police and Weapons/Causes of Crime/ Further Research Topics 39

Preparation for Research Site Exploration and Related Details/Review of the Literature 51

References 58

4 ON ALTERNATIVE PLAUSIBLE HYPOTHESES 60

Internal and External Validity 62

Subjects as Sources of Error "Center of Attention" Effects/Biological and Psychological Alterations/Selection 63

Pitfalls in Measurement Methods Reactivity/Pretesting Effect/Response Set/Changes in Measuring Instruments/Interviewer Effect 76

Situational Factors as Sources of Error 82

Experiments as Sources of Error 83

Problem in Crime Statistics Uniform Crime Reports/Unreported Crime—"The Dark Figure" 84

References 88

5 TECHNIQUES FOR AVOIDING ERRORS 90

Nonreactive Measures Erosion Measures/Accretion Measures/Physical Evidence/Archival Data/General Forms of Nonreactive Measure 91

Control Groups Ethical Considerations in Using Control Groups/Equating Treatment and Control Groups/Placebos as Controls 102

Dealing with Flaws in Crime Statistics 110

Victimization Surveys General Considerations/National Crime Survey (NCS) 111

References 116

6 STANDARD APPROACHES TO RESEARCH 118

Ways of Classifying Research Classification by Purpose/Statistical Classification/Temporal Classification/Classification by Control over Variables 119

Control and the Advancement of Knowledge 121

Systematic Observation Naturalistic Observation/Surveys: Questionnaires and Interviews/Physical Traces and Archival Records/Sociometry 124

Experimentation The "True" Experiment/The Nonlaboratory Experiment 140

References 148

7 PROGRAM EVALUATION 150

What Is Program Evaluation? 151

An Example: Evaluating "Scared Straight" The Program/The Finckenauer Reports 153

Evaluator as Advocate 157

Issues of Generalizability 159

Assessing Process and Assessing Impact Process Assessment/Impact Assessment 160

Issues of Economics 167

Conclusions 169

References 170

8 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS: CENTRAL TENDENCY AND VARIABILITY 171

Measures of Central Tendency Mean/Proportion/Median/Mode 173

Indicators of Variability Variance/Standard Deviation/Mean Absolute Deviation from the Median/Range 179

Standard Scores 183

9 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS: CORRELATION 188

The Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient 190

The Meaning of Correlation Scatter Diagrams/Correlation in Everyday Phenomena/Examples of Use of Correlation Coefficients 196

Other Measures of Correlation Curvilinear Relationships/Dichotomous Data/Ranked Data 202

Correlation and Causation 214

References 215

10 PROBABILITY AND PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS 216

Probability Sample Space/Equal Likelihood/Mutually Exclusive Events/Properties of Probability/Probabilities in the General Case 216

ProbabiLity Distributions Binomial Distribution/Normal Distribution 227

11 STATISTICAL INFERENCE 239

Sampling Simple Random Sampfing/Stratified Sampling/Cluster Sampling 239

Statistical Inference The Logic of Statistical Inference/Estimation/Testing Statistical Hypotheses 248

INDEX 261