NCJ Number
183922
Date Published
2000
Length
278 pages
Annotation
This textbook for criminal justice students provides an approach for understanding social science research and its application to the criminal justice field.
Abstract
After the first chapter discusses what research is, why it is conducted, and how, the next chapter discusses the ethics relevant to conducting research. Chapter 3, Getting Started, explores what sources to use and the issue of developing the research question, which often is the driving force behind social science research. Chapter 4 introduces the terminology associated with conducting research, such as theory, hypothesis, population, sample, and variables. Chapter 5, Qualitative Research, explains how this type of research fits into both criminology and criminal justice; and Chapter 6, Quantitative Research, extends the discussion by exploring the other important type of research conducted in both criminology and criminal justice. The various research designs available for criminal justice and criminological research are discussed in Chapter 7, including historical, descriptive, inferential, developmental, case and field, correlational, and causal-comparative. Chapter 8, Questionnaire Construction, discusses the intricacies of designing a questionnaire, including issues of measurement, reliability, and validity. Remaining chapters address sampling, data collection, data processing and analysis, inferential statistics, and writing the research. Each chapter begins with a hypothetical situation to show how research methods, requirements, and processes can be used in practical applications. A subject index