the practice of research in crim and cj, 4e

8/19/2019 The Practice of Research in Crim and CJ, 4e

1/559

in CRIMINOLOGYand CRIMINAL

JUSTICE

The PRACTICEofRESEARCH

FOURTH EDITION


2/559

In loving memory of two pioneer women who instilled in me

the importance of education and lifelong learning:

To my great-aunt, Martha Geiken Lund, 1912–2002and

To my grandmother, Anna Geiken Bachman, 1907–1989

—R. B.

To Elizabeth and Julia

—R. K. S.


3/559

in CRIMINOLOGYand CRIMINAL

JUSTICE

The PRACTICE

Ronet Bachman

Russell K. Schutt

of RESEARCH

FOURTH EDITION

University of Delaware

University of Massachusetts, Boston


4/559

Copyright© 2011 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information:

SAGE Publications, Inc. SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

2455 Teller Road B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area

Thousand Oaks, California 91320 Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044

E-mail: [email protected] India

SAGE Publications Ltd. SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte. Ltd.

1 Oliver’s Yard 33 Pekin Street #02-01

55 City Road Far East Square

London EC1Y 1SP Singapore 048763

United Kingdom

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bachman, Ronet.

The practice of research in criminology and criminal justice/Ronet Bachman, Russell K. Schutt.—4th ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4129-7875-0 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-4129-7876-7 (paper w/SPSS CD)

1. Criminology—Research. 2. Criminal justice, Administration of—Research. I. Schutt, Russell K.

II. Title.

HV6024.5.B33 2011

364.072—dc22 2010002999

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

10 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acquisitions Editor: Jerry Westby

Associate Editor: Leah Mori

Editorial Assistant: Nicole Irving

Production Editor: Karen Wiley

Copy Editor: Melinda Masson

Typesetter: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Proofreader: Jenifer Kooiman

Indexer: Diggs Publication Services

Cover Designer: Candice Harman

Marketing Manager: Carmel Withers


5/559

Glossary G.1References R.1Index I.1About the Authors AU.1

Appendix D: How to Use a Statistical Package: IBM ® SPSS® Statistics – Available OnlineAppendix E: How to Use a Data Spreadsheet: Excel – Available OnlineAppendix F: How to Use a Qualitative Software Package – Available Online

On Student Study Site: http://www.sagepub.com/prccj4e

Brief Contents

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxii

1. Science, Society, and Criminological Research 1

2. The Process and Problems of Criminological Research 21

3. Research Ethics and Philosophies 52

4. Conceptualization and Measurement 82

5. Sampling 109

6. Causation and Research Design 146

7. Experimental Designs 174

8. Survey Research 203

9. Qualitative Methods and Analysis: Observing,

Participating, and Listening 252

10. Analyzing Content: Historical, Secondary,

and Content Analysis and Crime Mapping 305

11. Evaluation and Policy Analysis 340

12. Quantitative Data Analysis 380

13. Reporting Research Results 424

Appendix A: Finding Information A.1Appendix B: Questions to Ask About a Research Article B.1Appendix C: How to Read a Research Article C.1


6/559

Detailed Contents

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxii

1 Science, Society, and Criminological Research 1Reasoning About the Social World 2

Questions and Answers 3Everyday Errors in Reasoning 3

Overgeneralization 4

Selective or Inaccurate Observation 4

Illogical Reasoning 5Resistance to Change 6

The Social Science Approach 8Motives for Criminological Research 8

Social Criminological Research in Practice 9Description: How Prevalent Is Youth Violence? 10

Exploration: How Do Schools Respond to Gun Violence? 11

Explanation: What Factors Are Related to Youth Delinquency and Violence? 12

Evaluation: Do Violence Prevention Programs in Schools Work? 13

Strengths and Limitations of Social Research 13Types of Research Methods 15

Quantitative and Qualitative Methods 16

Conclusion 17K EY T ER MS 1 8H IG H LI GH TS 1 8

E XE RC IS ES 1 8D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E A RC H P R O PO S AL 1 9

W E B E XE R CI SE S 1 9E T HI CS E XE R CI SE S 1 9

S P S S O R E X CE L E X E RC I SE S 2 0

2 The Process and Problems of Criminological Research 21Criminological Research Questions 22

Identifying Criminological Research Questions 23

Refining Criminological Research Questions 24Evaluating Criminological Research Questions 24

Feasibility 24

Social Importance 25

Scientific Relevance 25


7/559

Social Research Foundations 26

Finding Information 26Reviewing Research 27

A Single-Article Review: Formal and Informal Deterrents to Domestic Violence 28

An Integrated Literature Review: When Does Arrest Matter? 29

The Role of Criminological Theory 32Social Research Strategies 35

Explanatory Research 36Deductive Research 36

Inductive Research 38

Domestic Violence and the Research Circle 39

Phase 1: Deductive Research 39


Phase 3: Inductive Research 41


Exploratory Research 43A Qualitative Exploration of the Response

to Domestic Violence 43Descriptive Research 44

Social Research Goals 44

Measurement Validity 45Generalizability 45

Causal Validity 46Authenticity 47

Conclusion 47K EY T ER MS 4 8

H IG H LI GH TS 4 8E XE RC IS ES 4 9

D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E AR C H P R O PO S AL 4 9

W E B E X ER C IS E S 5 0E T HI CS E XE R CI SE S 5 1S P SS OR EX CE L E X ER C IS E S 5 1

3 Research Ethics and Philosophies 52Historical Background 55Ethical Principles 58

Achieving Valid Results 58Honesty and Openness 59

Protecting Research Participants 60Avoid Harming Research Participants 62

Obtain Informed Consent 63Avoid Deception in Research, Except in Limited Circumstances 68

Maintain Privacy and Confidentiality 68

The Uses of Research 70

Social Research Philosophies 71Positivism and Postpositivism 72


8/559

Positivist Research Guidelines 72

A Positivist Research Goal: Advancing Knowledge 73

Interpretivism and Constructivism 74

Interpretivist/Constructivist Research Guidelines 76

An Interpretivist Research Goal: Creating Change 76

An Integrated Philosophy 77Conclusions 78

K EY T ER MS 7 9H IG H LI GH TS 7 9

E XE RC IS ES 8 0D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E A RC H P R O PO S AL 8 0

W E B E XE R CI SE S 8 1S P S S O R E X CE L E X E RC I SE S 8 1

4 Conceptualization and Measurement 82Concepts 83

Conceptualization in Practice 84Defining Youth Gangs 84

Defining Substance Abuse 84

Defining Community Policing 86

Defining Poverty 87

Defining Strain 87

Concepts and Variables 88

Measurement Operations 88Using Available Data 89

Constructing Questions 90Making Observations 91

Collecting Unobtrusive Measures 92

Combining Measurement Operations 92Evaluation of Measures 93

Measurement Validity 93Face Validity 94

Content Validity 95

Criterion Validity 95

Construct Validity 95

Reliability 96

Test-Retest Reliability 97

Interitem Reliability (Internal Consistency) 97

Alternate-Forms Reliability 97

Interobserver Reliability 98

Ways to Improve Reliability and Validity 98Levels of Measurement 100

Nominal Level of Measurement 100Ordinal Level of Measurement 101


9/559

Interval Level of Measurement 103

Ratio Level of Measurement 103The Case of Dichotomies 104

Comparison of Levels of Measurement 104Conclusion 105

K EY T ER MS 1 06H IG H LI GH TS 1 0 6

E X ER C IS E S 1 0 7D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E AR C H P R O PO S AL 1 0 7

W E B E X ER C IS E S 1 0 8E T H IC S E X E RC I SE S 1 0 8

S P S S O R E X CE L E X E RC I SE S 1 0 8

5 Sampling 109Sample Planning 110

Define Sample Components and the Population 110

Evaluate Generalizability 112Assess Population Diversity 115Consider a Census 117

Sampling Methods 117Probability Sampling Methods 119

Simple Random Sampling 120

Systematic Random Sampling 123

Stratified Random Sampling 123

Multistage Cluster Sampling 125

Nonprobability Sampling Methods 127Availability Sampling 127

Quota Sampling 128

Purposive or Judgment Sampling 129Snowball Sampling 131

Lessons About Sample Quality 132

Sampling Distributions 133

Estimating Sampling Error 134Units of Analysis and Errors in Causal Reasoning 138

Individual and Group Units of Analysis 138The Ecological Fallacy and Reductionism 139


H IG H LI GH TS 1 4 2E XE RC IS ES 1 43

D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E AR C H P R O PO S AL 1 4 4W E B E X ER C IS E S 1 4 4

E T H IC S E X E RC I SE S 1 4 5S P S S O R E X CE L E X E RC I SE S 1 4 5


10/559

6 Causation and Research Design 146Causal Explanation 147

Nomothetic Causal Explanation 147

Idiographic Causal Explanation 149Research Designs and Criteria for Causal Explanations 150

Case Study: Media Violence and Violent Behavior 151Association 151

Time Order 152Nonspuriousness 152

Mechanism 153Context 154

Research Designs and Causality 155True Experiments 155

Causality and True Experimental Designs 155

Field Experiments: Determining the Effect of Incarceration on Employment 156

Nonexperimental Designs 157Cross-Sectional Designs 158

Case Study Using Life Calendars: Do Offenders Specialize in Different Crimes? 160Longitudinal Designs 160

Repeated Cross-Sectional Designs 161

Fixed-Sample Panel Designs 162

Case Study: Offending Over the Life Course 163

Event-Based Designs 164

Causality in Nonexperimental Designs 165


H IG H LI GH TS 1 70E XE R CI SE S 1 70

D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E A RC H P R O PO S AL 1 7 1W E B E XE R CI SE S 1 71


7 Experimental Designs 174True Experiments 175

Experimental and Comparison Groups 175Pretest and Posttest Measures 176

Random Assignment 176Case Study: Prison Classification and Inmate Behavior 180

Case Study: The Effects of Counsel at Bail Hearings 181Quasi-Experiments 182

Nonequivalent Control Group Designs 183

Case Study: The Effectiveness of Drug Courts 183Before-and-After Designs 184

Case Study: The Effects of the Youth Criminal Justice Act 184Ex Post Facto Control Group Designs 186


11/559

Case Study: Does an Arrest Increase Delinquency? 186

Validity in Experiments 187Causal (Internal) Validity 188

Selection Bias 188

Endogenous Change 189

External Events 190

Contamination 190

Treatment Misidentification 191

Generalizability 192

Sample Generalizability 192

Factorial Surveys 193

External Validity 195

Interaction of Testing and Treatment 195Ethical Issues in Experimental Research 196

Deception 196

Selective Distribution of Benefits 197Conclusion 198

K EY T ER MS 1 98H IG H LI GH TS 1 9 9E X ER C IS E S 2 0 0

D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E AR C H P R O PO S AL 2 0 0W E B E X ER C IS E S 2 0 1


8 Survey Research 203Survey Research in the Social Sciences 204

Attractive Features of Survey Research 205

Versatility 205Efficiency 205

Generalizability 206

The Omnibus Survey 206Questionnaire Development and Assessment 207

Maintain Consistent Focus 207

Build on Existing Instruments 208Case Study: Measuring Violent Victimizations 208

Writing Questions 208Write Clear and Meaningful Questions 210

Avoid Confusing Phrasing 213Avoid Vagueness 213

Avoid Negatives and Double Negatives 213Avoid Double-Barreled Questions 214

Avoid Making Either Disagreement or

Agreement Disagreeable 215

Additional Guidelines for Fixed-Response Questions 215Response Choices Should Be Mutually Exclusive 216

Make the Response Categories Exhaustive 216


12/559

Utilize Likert-Type Response Categories 217

Minimize Fence-Sitting and Floating 217

Utilize Filter Questions 218

Combining Questions in Indexes 218Demographic Questions 224

Don’t Forget to Pretest! 226Organization of the Questionnaire 227

Survey Designs 231Mailed, Self-Administered Surveys 232

Group-Administered Surveys 233Surveys by Telephone 234

Reaching Sampling Units 234

Maximizing Response to Phone Surveys 235

In-Person Interviews 238Balancing Rapport and Control 238

Maximizing Response to Interviews 239

Web Surveys 240

Mixed-Mode Surveys 241A Comparison of Survey Designs 242

Ethical Issues in Survey Research 245

Protection of Respondents 245Confidentiality 245



D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E A RC H P R O PO S AL 2 4 9W E B E XE R CI SE S 2 50

E T H IC S E X E RC I SE S 2 5 1


9Qualitative Methods and Analysis: Observing,Participating, and Listening 252

Fundamentals of Qualitative Methods 253

Origins of Qualitative Research 256

Case Study: Life in a Gang 256

Participant Observation 257Choosing a Role 258

Complete Observation 258

Participation and Observation 260

Covert Participation 261Entering the Field 263

Developing and Maintaining Relationships 264Sampling People and Events 265

Taking Notes 267Managing the Personal Dimensions 270


13/559

Systematic Observation 271

Case Study: Studying Public Disorder and Crime 271Intensive Interviewing 275

Establishing and Maintaining a Partnership 276Asking Questions and Recording Answers 277

Combining Participant Observation and Intensive Interviewing 278Focus Groups 279

Combining Focus Groups With Official Records:An Analysis of Police Searches 280

Analysis of Qualitative Data 281Documentation 283

Conceptualization, Coding, and Categorizing 283Examining Relationships and Displaying Data 285

Authenticating Conclusions 286Reflexivity 287

Alternatives in Qualitative Data Analysis 288

Ethnography 288

Ethnomethodology 289Qualitative Comparative Analysis 290Narrative Analysis 291

Conversation Analysis 292Case-Oriented Understanding 292

Grounded Theory 293Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis 294

Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research 297Conclusion 300


E X ER C IS E S 3 0 1

D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E AR C H P R O PO S AL 3 0 2W E B E X ER C IS E S 3 0 3E T H IC S E X E RC I SE S 3 0 3


10Analyzing Content: Historical, Secondary,and Content Analysis and Crime Mapping 305

Analyzing Secondary Data 306Case Study: Gender and Offending 307

Historical Events Research 308Case Study: The Martinsville Seven 310

Comparative Methods 311Case Study: Studying Homicide Across Nations 311

Content Analysis 314Identifying a Population of Documents or Other Textual Sources 314

Case Study: Media Representations of Crime 315Crime Mapping 318


14/559

Case Study: Social Disorganization and the Chicago School 320

Case Study: Gang Homicides in St. Louis 320Case Study: Using Google Earth to Track Sexual Offending Recidivism 322

Methodological Issues When Using Secondary Data 325Measuring Across Contexts 326

Sampling Across Time and Place 327Identifying Causes 328

Combining Research Designs 329Comparing Research Designs 329

Triangulating Research Designs 331Triangulation in Action: American Indian Homicide 331

Case Study: Adding Qualitative Data to Official Juvenile Records 333Ethical Issues When Analyzing Available Data and Content 335Conclusion 336

K EY T ER MS 3 36


D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E A RC H P R O PO S AL 3 3 7W E B E X ER C IS E S 3 38E T H IC S E X E RC I SE S 3 3 9


11 Evaluation and Policy Analysis 340A Brief History of Evaluation Research 341

Evaluation Basics 343

Evaluation Alternatives 345The Evaluation of Need, or Needs Assessment 347

Evaluability Assessment 347

Process Evaluation (Program Monitoring) 348Case Study: Evaluating the D.A.R.E. Program 349

The Evaluation of Impact or Outcomes 350The Evaluation of Efficiency 353

Case Study: Cost-Benefit Analysis of Therapeutic Communities 354Design Decisions 355

Black Box Evaluation or Program Theory 355Researcher or Stakeholder Orientation 356

Simple or Complex Outcomes 358Evaluation in Action 359

Case Study: Problem-Oriented Policing in ViolentCrime Areas—A Randomized Controlled Experiment 359

Strengths of Randomized Experimental Design in Impact Evaluations 362Quasi-Experimental Designs in Evaluation Research 362

Case Study: Boot Camps 363Case Study: Mandatory Sentencing Laws 365

Nonexperimental Designs 366Case Study: Vocational Education for Serious Juvenile Offenders—A One-Shot Design 366


15/559

Qualitative and Quantitative Methods 367

Increasing Demand for Evidence-Based Policy 369Meta-Analyses 370

Case Study: The Effectiveness of Anti-Bullying Programs 371

Basic Science or Applied Research 373

Ethics in Evaluation 374Conclusion 376


E X ER C IS E S 3 7 7D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E AR C H P R O PO S AL 3 7 8

W E B E X ER C IS E S 3 7 8E T H IC S E X E RC I SE S 3 7 9


12 Quantitative Data Analysis 380Introducing Statistics 381Case Study: The Causes of Delinquency 382Preparing Data for Analysis 384

Displaying Univariate Distributions 386Graphs 387

Frequency Distributions 391Ungrouped Data 392

Grouped Data 393

Summarizing Univariate Distributions 397

Measures of Central Tendency 397Mode 397

Median 398

Mean 402Median or Mean? 403

Measures of Variation 405Range 406

Interquartile Range 406

Variance 407

Standard Deviation 408

Cross-Tabulating Variables 408

Describing Association 410Controlling for a Third Variable 413

Intervening Variables 414

Extraneous Variables 415

Specification 418Analyzing Data Ethically: How Not to Lie About Relationships 419


H IG H LI GH TS 4 2 1E X ER C IS E S 4 2 1


16/559

D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E A RC H P R O PO S AL 4 2 2

W E B E XE R CI SE S 4 22E T H IC S E X E RC I SE S 4 2 3


13 Reporting Research Results 424Research Report Goals 425

Advance Scientific Knowledge 425

Shape Social Policy 426Organize Social Action—Participatory Action Research 426

Case Study: Seeking Higher Education for Inmates 427Dialogue With Research Subjects 427

On Writing Research 428Research Report Types 429

Student Papers and Theses 429Group Projects 430

The Thesis Committee 430Journal Articles 430Applied Reports 432

An Advisory Committee 432

Data Displays 433

Ethics and Reporting 436Communicating With the Public 437

Plagiarism 438Conclusion 439

K EY T ER MS 4 40H IG H LI GH TS 4 40

E XE R CI SE S 4 41

D E V EL O P IN G A RE S E A RC H P R O PO S AL 4 4 1W E B E XE R CI SE S 4 42E T H IC S E X E RC I SE S 4 4 2


Appendix A: Finding Information A.1

Appendix B: Questions to Ask About a Research Article B.1Appendix C: How to Read a Research Article C.1

Glossary G.1References R.1

Index I.1About the Authors AU.1

Appendix D: How to Use a Statistical Package: IBM ® SPSS® Statistics – Available Online

Appendix E: How to Use a Data Spreadsheet: Excel – Available OnlineAppendix F: How to Use a Qualitative Software Package – Available Online

On Student Study Site: http://www.sagepub.com/prccj4e


17/559

xvii

Preface

One of the most important aspects of teaching a research methods course is conveying to students thevital role that research plays in our discipline. After years of teaching courses in research methods, we

have found that the best avenue of achieving this goal has been to link the teaching of key topics to con-

temporary research in the discipline. By combining discussions of research techniques with practical

research examples from the field, students learn not only how to conduct research but also why it is

important to do so. In the fourth edition of The Practice of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice ,

we have drawn on comments by students in the classroom, insightful reviews by those who teach

research methods, and our own continuing learning experience as scholars and teachers; we think the

resulting innovations will add a great deal to your learning experience.

The purpose of this book is to introduce you to the scientific methods of research in criminology and

criminal justice and show how they are actually used. Each chapter combines instructions in research

methods with investigations of key research questions in our field: How do we measure offending and

victimization? What are the causes of violent crime? What is the best police response to intimate part-

ner violence? How do gang members perceive their world? Are boot camps effective in reducing recidi-

vism? What is the impact of having a criminal record on finding a job? Do community police officers

perceive their roles as different from regular patrol officers?

You will learn not only the skills necessary for conducting research but also the skills necessary to

evaluate research done by others. You will learn to ask many questions as you consider whether

research-based conclusions are appropriate and valid. What did the researchers set out to investigate?

How were people or places selected for the study? What were the phenomena being studied, and how

were they measured or defined? How was information analyzed? Throughout this book, you will learn

what questions to ask when critiquing a research study and how to evaluate the answers.

Another goal of this book is to train you to actually do research. Substantive examples will help yousee how methods are used in practice. Exercises at the end of each chapter give you a way to try differ-

ent methods alone or in a group. But research methods cannot be learned by rote and applied mechan-

ically. Thus, you will learn the benefits and liabilities of each major approach to research and why

employing a combination of them is often preferable. You will come to appreciate why the results of par-

ticular research studies must always be interpreted within the context of prior research and through the

lens of social and criminological theory.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

The way this book is organized reflects our beliefs in making research methods interesting, teaching

students how to critique research, and viewing specific research techniques as parts of an integrated

research strategy. Our concern with ethical issues in all types of research is underscored by the fact that we

have a new chapter devoted exclusively to research ethics in addition to sections on ethics in every method-

ology chapter. The first two chapters introduce the why and how of research in general. Chapter 1 shows


18/559

how research has helped us understand themagnitude of and the factors related to youth violence. Chapter

2 illustrates the basic stages of research with a series of experiments on thepolice responseto intimate part-

ner violence. Chapter 3 is a new chapter that highlights issues of research ethics by taking you inside Philip

Zimbardo’s prison experiment and Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience to authority. It also introduces

you to different research philosophies. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss how to evaluate the way researchers design

their measures and draw their samples. Chapter 6 explores issues related to makingcausal connections and

a summary of the strengths and limitations of various research designs in making causal conclusions.

Chapters 7 through 9 present the three mostimportant methods of data collection: experiments, surveys,

and qualitative methods (including participant observation, intensive interviews, and focus groups). Chapter

10 examines methodologies that rely on existing content andincludes a discussion of secondary data analy-

sis, historicalandcomparative research, content analysis, andcrime mapping, along with a discussion of tri-

angulating methods. Chapter 11 covers evaluation research and policy analysis and highlights the different

alternatives to evaluation along with a discussion of the most appropriate methods to use for each evalua-

tion question (e.g., process versus impact). In this chapter, you will see how various methods have been used

to investigate the effects of several programs and policies, including problem-oriented policing, boot

camps, and mandatory sentencing laws.

In Chapter 12, we will work through an analysis of survey data on self-reported delinquency to see

how these statistics are used to answer actual research questions. We finish up in Chapter 13 with anoverview of the process of and techniques for reporting research results along with some ethical prob-

lems in writing. We have also added an introduction to meta-analysis, which is a special tool for study-

ing prior research.

The substantive studies in each of these chapters show how each methodology has been used to

improve our understanding of criminal justice–related issues, including the factors related to violence,

how question wording affects estimates of victimization in surveys, how gang members perceive their

world, how community police officers describe their role in comparison to regular patrol officers, the per-

ceptions of jurors who have participated in a death penalty case, the effects of inmates’ classification on

institutional misconduct in prison, and the effects of war on violence in a cross-national comparison, to

name just a few of the examples provided.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE FOURTH EDITION

The most distinctive feature of this text compared to others in the field continues to be the integration

into each chapter of in-depth substantive research examples from the real world. Examples from the lit-

erature are not simply dropped here and there to keep students’ attention. Rather, each chapter presents

a particular research method in the context of a substantive research story. When explaining a research

method or design decision, we use narratives from research in the field that delineate the decision-

making process. This serves several purposes including illustrating the process of research in the real

world, delineating why particular methods were selected over others, and highlighting the important role

research plays in policy decisions in our field. As such, this book’s success is due in no small measure

to the availability in the research literature of so many excellent examples. New examples of research

have been added in all data collection chapters. The following points are additional strengths of this textalong with a few of the new innovations in this edition:

Expanded coverage of ethical issues. We have added a new chapter on research ethics (Chapter 3) that includes

up-to-date information on institutional review boards. You will learn about issues in ethical practice

through research examples from Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment and through Stanley Milgram’s

THE PRACTICE OF RESEARCH IN CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICExviii


19/559

research investigations of obedience to authority. However, because we believe that every step in the

research process raises ethical concerns, every chapter still reviews the relevant ethical issues in the con-

text of each method of data collection, data analysis, and reporting including a new discussion of plagia-

rism in the chapter on reporting results (Chapter 13). The end-of-chapter “Ethics Exercises” also remain in

all chapters.

Streamlined introduction to research. We have incorporated a discussion of how victimization and offend-

ing are measured into the research story line of Chapter 1. It highlights the major sources of data includ-

ing the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program and National Incident-Based

Reporting System, the National Crime Victimization Survey, and various surveys that measure offending

behavior. We have also moved the discussion of validity and generalizability from Chapter 1 to Chapter

2 and updated the discussion to introduce the concept of “authenticity.” We changed the discussion of

these concepts to revolve around the research presented in the chapter on arrest and intimate partner

assault, which we believe will increase the understanding of these difficult concepts. A case study of a

literature review on the deterrence value of arrest in cases of intimate partner assault has also been added

to Chapter 2 to illustrate guidelines for effective literature searches.

Examples of criminological research as they occur in real-world settings. We include interesting studies takenfrom the literature on a variety of topics including the causes and correlates of violence, the efficacy of

arrest for intimate partner assault, the perceptions of police officers regarding community policing, and

an investigation into the lives of gang members, to name just a few. These real-world research examples

illustrate the exigencies and complexities that shape the application of research methods.

Updated discussion of causation that includes more field experiments and other unique methods. The discus-

sion of causation has been incorporated with several new field experiments from the literature including

research examining the impact of a criminal record on finding a job, the specialization of offendingpatterns

in recidivists, the impact of a lawyer at bail hearings (e.g., being released on own recognizance and bail

reductions), the impact of drug courts on recidivism, and the impact of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in

Canada. Along with this updated literature, we have introduced the “life calendar” method that is used to

more reliably solicit information from the past, which has been employed by numerous studies includingthe Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) system funded by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Expanded discussion of increasingly utilized methods such as systematic observation and crime mapping. We

have expanded the discussion of systematic observation and crime mapping within Chapters 9 and 10.

We have also added a series of photos and video clips that can be utilized on the Student Study Site and

used for coding exercises. These examples of systematic observation were obtained by Peter K. B. St. Jean

(2007) for his research published in Pockets of Crime: Broken Windows, Collective Efficacy, and the

Criminal Point of View.

New discussion of evidence-based policy and meta-analysis in the evaluation chapter . Because of the increas-

ing demand for systematic reviews upon which to base policy decisions, the evaluation chapter now

includes a discussion of evidence-based policy and meta-analysis. This section highlights a study exam-ining the effectiveness of school-based anti-bullying programs.

St ream li ne d re po rt in g re su lt s ch ap te r. Chapter 13 now focuses exclusively on reporting

results. We have also expanded the section on participatory action research (PAR) and included

a researcher’s narrative of the PAR process that resurrected a college program in prison and

Preface xix


20/559

evaluated its outcomes. We have also incorporated a discussion of plagiarism into the ethics

section of this chapter.

End-of-chapter exercise with new “How to Use Excel” appendix on the Student Study Site. In addition to indi-

vidual and group projects, each chapter includes exercises to give you experience in data analysis using

IBM® SPSS® Statistics, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. In addition, real data sets are provided

to enhance your learning experience including subsets of the National Crime Victimization Survey, a

state-level file containing crime rates and other variables that measure structural characteristics of each

state, such as the poverty rate, the divorce rate, and so on. Each chapter also provides updated end-of-

chapter Web exercises.

Aids to effective study. Lists of main points and key terms provide quick summaries at the end of each

chapter. In addition, key terms are highlighted in boldface type when first introduced and defined in text.

Definitions for these also can be found in the glossary/index at the end of the book. The instructor’s man-

ual includes more exercises that have been specially designed for collaborative group work inside and

outside the classroom. Appendix A, “Finding Information,” provides up-to-date information about using

the Internet. The Student Study Site also provides invaluable tools for learning.

If this book communicates the excitement of research and the importance of evaluating carefully themethods we use in research, then we have succeeded in representing what social scientists interested in

issues related to criminal justice and criminology do. We think it conveys the latest developments in

research methodology and thereby demonstrates that researchers are committed to evaluating and

improving their own methods of investigation.

We hope you enjoy learning how to investigate research questions related to criminal justice and crim-

inology and perhaps do some research of your own along the way. We guarantee that the knowledge you

develop about research methods will serve you well throughout your education, in your career, and in

your community.

SUPPLEMENTS

Companion Student Study Site

http://www.sagepub.com/prccj4e

This Web-based Student Study Site provides a variety of additional resources to enhance students’

understanding of the book content and take their learning one step further. The site includes self-study

quizzes, e-flashcards, a new “Learning From SAGE Research Articles” feature, Web exercises, real crime

data including a subset of the National Crime Victimization Survey data and the General Social

Survey, and appendices on how to use SPSS and Excel. It also contains interactive exercises with crim-

inal justice and criminology tracks specifically designed to help students get into the latest research

in the field.

Instructor Resources Site

A password-protected instructor resources site is available with this text. It offers a variety of

resources to supplement the book material, including lecture outlines, PowerPoint® slides, test ques-

tions with answers, and student project ideas. The site also contains articles on teaching criminal jus-

tice research methods, film and software resources, and Web resources.

THE PRACTICE OF RESEARCH IN CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICExx


21/559

A NOTE ABOUT USING IBM® SPSS® STATISTICS AND HYPERRESEARCH

To carry out the SPSS exercises at the end of each chapter and in Appendix D, you must have SPSS

installed on your computer. The Student Study Site includes several subsets of data, including data from

the National Crime Victimization Survey and the Uniform Crime Reports. Appendix E will get you up andrunning with SPSS for Windows or with Excel. You then may spend as much time as you like exploring

the data sets provided, or you may even use your own data. You also may carry out analyses of the

General Social Survey at the University of California, Berkeley, Web site: http://sda.berkeley.edu:7502/

archive.htm.

The study site to this text at http://www.sagepub.com/prccj4e contains a detailed discussion of what

it is like to do qualitative research with the statistical software package HyperRESEARCH. Here, you will

learn how to begin a simple project in HyperRESEARCH by creating and managing data and ideas, cod-

ing, linking, modeling, and asking questions about your narrative data.

Preface xxi


22/559

Acknowledgments

We must first acknowledge our gratitude to Jerry Westby, whose hard work and guidance on this project are unrivaled. He has been more than an editor; he is an ideas man, a tenacious fact finder, a moti-

vator, a therapist, and, most important, a friend. We are also indebted to Leah Mori for her supervision

of the project, to Karen Wiley for ushering the manuscript through production, and to Melinda Masson

for her meticulous attention to detail when editing the edition.

Gratitude also goes to the reviewers of this fourth edition, including Stephanie Halter, Plymouth State

University; Timothy C. Hart, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Pati K. Hendrickson, Tarleton State University;

Susan M. Hilal, Metropolitan State University; Stanley S. Jacobs, Villanova University; Satenik Margaryan,

Montclair University; and Isaac Van Patten, Radford University. Reviewers of previous editions included

Hank J. Brightman, Saint Peter’s College; Brian Colwell, Stanford University; Frank Cormier, University of

Manitoba; Amy Craddock, Indiana State University; Cathy Coghlan, Texas Christian University; Michael J.

DeValve, Fayetteville State University; Gennifer Furst, The College of New Jersey; Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld,

California State University–Stanislaus; Lori Guevara, Fayetteville State University; Stephen Haas, Marshall

University; Susan B. Haire, University of Georgia; Lucy Hochstein, Radford University; Kristy Holtfreter,

Florida State University; Kristen Kuehnle, Salem State College; James R. Maupin, New Mexico State

University; Eric Metchick, Salem State College; Wilson R. Palacios, University of South Florida; Ira

Sommers, California State University–Los Angeles; William Wells, Southern Illinois University–Carbondale;

Mark Winton, University of Central Florida; and Lisa Anne Zilney, Montclair State University. Andre Rosay

also provided an extensive and invaluable review of the first edition of this text. We also thank Lindsay R.

Reed and Hanna S. Scott for their diligence and hard work in writing the instructor’s manual, Ann Dupuis

and Sharlene Hesse-Biber for the appendix on HyperRESEARCH software, Margarita Porteyeva for the

appendix on Excel, and Peggy Plass, Kathryn Stoeckert, and Heather Albertson for additional interactive

exercises.We continue to be indebted to the many students we have had an opportunity to teach and mentor,

at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. In many respects, this book could not have been writ-

ten without these ongoing reciprocal teaching and learning experiences. You inspire us to become better

teachers!

Ronet is indebted to her terrific colleagues who are unwavering sources of support and inspire her.

To a first-rate office staff who not only keep all the trains running on time in our department but also are

wonderful friends: Linda Keen, Nancy Quillen, and Judy Watson. Ronet is also indebted to an amazing

circle of friends who endured graduate school together and who get together for a retreat one weekend

of the year (19 years and counting!) for guidance, support, therapy, and laughter: Dianne Carmody, Gerry

King, Peggy Plass, and Barbara Wauchope. You are the most amazing women in the world, and I am so

blessed to have you in my life. To Alex Alvarez and Michelle Meloy, my other kindred spirits for their sup-

port and guidance; to my mother, Jan, who remains my hero; and to my father, Ron, for his steadfast crit-ical eye in all matters of life.

And most important, we both wish to thank our spouses, Raymond Paternoster and Elizabeth Schutt,

for their love and support (and editorship!), and our children, John Bachman-Paternoster and Julia Schutt,

for all the remarkable joy they have brought to our lives.

xxii


23/559

C H A P T E R 1

Science, Society, andCriminological Research

1

Reasoning About the Social World

Questions and AnswersEveryday Errors in Reasoning

Overgeneralization

Selective or Inaccurate Observation

Illogical Reasoning

Resistance to Change

The Social Science Approach

Motives for Criminological Research

Social Criminological Research in Practice

Description: How Prevalent Is Youth

Violence?

Exploration: How Do Schools Respond to

Gun Violence?

Explanation: What Factors Are Related to

Youth Delinquency and Violence?

Evaluation: Do Violence Prevention

Programs in Schools Work?

Strengths and Limitations of Social

Research

Types of Research Methods

Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

Conclusion

On April 16, 2007, Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 students, faculty, and staff and left over 30 others injuredon the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Cho was armed with two semiautomatic

handguns that he had legally purchased and a vest filled with ammunition. As police were closing in

on the scene, he killed himself. The shooting rampage was the deadliest in all of U.S. history. Less than

a year later, on February 14, 2008, Steven Kazmierczak, who was described as “an outstanding student,”

entered a large oceanography class that was in session at Northern Illinois University and opened fire

using a shotgun and three handguns, which he had smuggled into the room using a guitar case. A total

of 24 people were shot, six of whom died, including Kazmierczak, who shot himself before police

arrived. The deadliest school shooting to take place in a high school occurred on April 20, 1999, when

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves at ColumbineHigh School in suburban Colorado.

None of these mass murder offenders were typical terrorists, and each of these incidents, as did the

other school shootings in the past 20 years, caused a media frenzy. Headlines such as “The School

Violence Crisis” and “School Crime Epidemic” were plastered across national newspapers and weekly

news journals. From a statistical standpoint, these headlines seemed a little late, particularly because the


24/559

juvenile arrest rate for murder had been declining. In addition, the thousands of other shootings that

occurred in less privileged communities during the same period rarely made the national news, yet rates

of murder in impoverished areas of the country are much higher than in privileged areas. You may say,

“Well, these incidents received attention because they involved mass killing.” We say, “What about

murders in the same area involving single victims that still received differential media attention?” For

example, a 22-year-old gang member named Omar Sevilla was shot to death as he walked to a drug and

alcohol treatment center. That same day only a few blocks away from Sevilla’s murder, a German tourist

named Horst Fietze was killed during a robbery. While Sevilla’s murder went largely unnoticed in the

press, the murder of Fietze received national media attention (Alvarez and Bachman 2008).

Unfortunately, the media play a large role in how we perceive both problems and solutions. In fact, 95%

of Americans say that mass media sources such as television and newspapers are their main source of

information on crime and violence (Surrette 1998). What are your perceptions of violence committed by

youth, and how did you acquire them? What do you believe are the causes of youth violence? Many factors

have been blamed for youth violence in American society, including the easy availability of guns, the lack

of guns in classrooms for protection, the use of weapons in movies and television, the moral decay of our

nation, poor parenting, unaware teachers, school and class size, racial prejudice, teenage alienation, the

Internet and the World Wide Web, anti-Semitism, and rap and rock music, and the list goes on.

You probably have your own ideas about the factors related to violence in general and youth violencein particular. However, these beliefs may not always be supported by empirical research. In fact, the

factors often touted by politicians and the media to be related to violence are not always supported by

empirical evidence. In the rest of this chapter, you will learn how the methods of social science research

go beyond stories in the popular media to help us answer questions like “What are the causes of youth

violence?” By the chapter’s end, you should understand how scientific methods used in criminal justice

and criminology can help us understand and answer research questions in this discipline.

The story of just one murderous youth raises many questions. Take a few minutes to read each of thefollowing questions about one of the Columbine shooters and jot down your answers. Don’t ruminate

about the questions or worry about your responses. This is not a test; there are no wrong answers.

• How would you describe Eric Harris?

• Why do you think Eric Harris wanted to kill other students?

• Was Eric Harris typical of other murderers under 18 years of age?

• In general, why do people become murderers?

• How have you learned about youth violence?

Now let us consider the possible answers to some of these questions. The information about Eric

Harris is somewhat inconsistent (Duggan, Shear, and Fisher 1999). He was the 18-year-old son of middle-

class professionals. He had an older brother who attended the University of Colorado. Harris apparentlythought of himself as a white supremacist, but he also loved music by antiracist rock bands. On his Web

page, he quoted from KMFDM, a German rock band whose song “Waste” includes these lyrics: “What I

don’t say I don’t do. What I don’t do I don’t like. What I don’t like I waste.” Online, Harris referred to

himself as “Darkness.”

Do you have enough information now to understand why he went on a shooting rampage in his

school?

2 THE PRACTICE OF RESEARCH IN CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

REASONING ABOUT THE SOCIAL WORLD


25/559

A year before the shootings at Columbine High School, Harris was arrested on a felony count of

breaking into a car. A juvenile court put him on probation, required him to perform community service

and take criminal justice classes, and sent him to a school counseling program. He was described by one

of his probation officers as a “very bright young man who is likely to succeed in life.”

Now can you construct an adequate description of Eric Harris? Can you explain the reason for his

murderous rampage? Or do you feel you need to know more about Eric Harris, about his friends and the

family he grew up in? How about his experiences in school and with the criminal justice system? We have

attempted to investigate just one person’s experiences, and already our investigation is spawning more

questions than answers.

Questions and Answers

When research questions concern not just one person but many people or general social processes, the

possible alternative answers multiply. For example, consider the question of why incidents of school

violence occur. Responses to a survey of mothers with children between the ages of 12 and 15 found that

the majority of mothers considered the most important factors that contributed to school violence to be

parents who did not teach children morals (87%), parents who supported aggressive behavior (78%), and

gang or peer pressure (70%) (Kandakai et al. 1999). Compare these answers with the opinion yourecorded earlier. Was your idea about the causes of youth violence one of the more popular ones held

by this sample of mothers?

We cannot avoid asking questions about the actions and attitudes of others. We all try to make sense

of the social world, which is a very complex place, and to make sense of our position in it, in which we

have quite a personal stake. In fact, the more that you begin to “think like a social scientist,” the more

questions will come to mind.

But why does each question have so many possible answers? Surely our perspective plays a role.

One person may see a homicide offender as a victim of circumstance, and another person may see

the same individual as inherently evil. Answers to questions we ask in the criminological sciences

also vary because individual life experiences and circumstances vary. The study of mothers’

perceptions conducted by Kandakai et al. (1999), summarized in Exhibit 1.1, gives some idea of how

opinions about the causes and cures for school violence vary. Even though previous research hasfound that the general public believes school violence is worse in urban schools than in suburban

and rural schools, only 14% of the mothers who had children in urban schools believed their child’s

school was more violent than other schools. However, a higher percentage of urban mothers (37%)

than suburban mothers (17%) reported that their child had been involved in one or more fights at

school. Somewhat surprisingly, even though these mothers perceived parental support for violence

as a major contributor to school violence, 4 in 10 of them believed it was acceptable for their child

to fight in certain situations.

Everyday Errors in Reasoning

People give different answers to research questions for yet another reason: It is simply too easy to make

errors in logic, particularly when we are analyzing the social world in which we ourselves are consciousparticipants. We can call some of these everyday errors because they occur so frequently in the nonsci-

entific, unreflective discourse about the social world that we hear on a daily basis.

For evidence of everyday errors, just listen to your conversations or the conversations of others

for one day. At some point in the day, it is inevitable that you or someone you are talking with will

say something like “Well, I knew a person who did X and Y happened.” From this one piece of infor-

mation, you therefore draw a conclusion about the likelihood of Y. Four general errors in everyday

CHAPTER 1 Science, Society, and Criminological Research 3


26/559

THE PRACTICE OF RESEARCH IN CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE4

Percentage Who Said Factor

Contributed a Great Deal

Parents who do not teach their kids right from wrong 87

Parent support for aggressive behavior 78

Gang or peer pressure 70

Lack of family involvement 67

Sale of alcohol or cigarettes to children 61

Poor parent-teacher communication 60

Seeing violence in the community 53

Violent messages in rap music 47

Seeing violence in the media 44

Lack of a dress code 30

reasoning can be made: overgeneralization, selective or inaccurate observation, illogical reasoning,

and resistance to change.

Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization, an error in reasoning, occurs when we conclude that what we have observed or

what we know to be true for some cases is true for all cases. We are always drawing conclusions about

people and social processes from our own interactions with them, but sometimes we forget that ourexperiences are limited. The social (and natural) world is, after all, a complex place. We have the abil-

ity (and inclination) to interact with just a small fraction of the individuals who inhabit the social world,

especially in a limited span of time.

Selective or Inaccurate Observation

Selective observation is choosing to look only at things that are in accordance with our prefer-

ences or beliefs. When we are inclined to criticize individuals or institutions, it is all too easy to

notice their every failing. For example, if we are convinced in advance that all kids who are violent

are unlikely to be rehabilitated and will go on to commit violent offenses in adulthood, we will prob-

ably find many confirming instances. But what about other youths who have become productive and

stable citizens after engaging in violence as adolescents? Or the child who was physically or sexu-

ally abused and joined a gang to satisfy the need for a family surrogate? If we acknowledge onlythe instances that confirm our predispositions, we are victims of our own selective observation.

Exhibit 1.2 depicts the difference between selective observation and overgeneralization.

Recent research on cognitive functioning (how the brain works) helps explain why our feelings

so readily shape our perceptions (Seidman 1997). Emotional responses to external stimuli travel a

shorter circuit in the brain than do reasoned responses (see Exhibit 1.3). The result, according to

some cognitive scientists, is “What something reminds us of can be far more important than what

E X H I B I T 1 . 1 Mothers’ Perceptions of the Factors Related to School Violence


27/559


Overgeneralization:

“Those peopleare never satisfied.”

Selective Observation:

“Those peopleare never satisfied.”

E X H I B I T 1 . 2 The Difference Between Overgeneralization and Selective Observation

it is” (Goleman 1995:294–95). Our emotions can influence us even before we begin to reason about

what we have observed.Our observations also can simply be inaccurate. If a woman says she is hungry and we think she said

she is hunted, we have made an inaccurate observation. If we think five people are standing on a street

corner when seven actually are, we have made an inaccurate observation. Such errors occur often in

casual conversation and in everyday observation of the world around us. In fact, our perceptions do not

provide a direct window onto the world around us, for what we think we have sensed is not necessarily

what we have seen (or heard, smelled, felt, or tasted). Even when our senses are functioning fully, our

minds have to interpret what we have sensed (Humphrey 1992). The optical illusion in Exhibit 1.4, which

can be viewed as either two faces or a vase, should help you realize that perceptions involve interpreta-

tions. Different observers may perceive the same situation differently because they interpret it differently.

Illogical Reasoning

When we prematurely jump to conclusions or argue on the basis of invalid assumptions, we are usingillogical reasoning. For example, it is not reasonable to propose that depictions of violence in media

such as television and movies cause violence if evidence indicates that the majority of those who watch

such programs do not become violent. However, it is also illogical to assume that media depictions of

gratuitous violence have no effect on individuals. Of course, logic that seems impeccable to one

person can seem twisted to another; the problem usually is reasoning from different assumptions rather

than failing to “think straight.”


28/559

Resistance to Change

Resistance to change, the reluctance to change our ideas in light of new information, may occur for

several reasons:

Ego-based commitments. We all learn to greet with some skepticism the claims by leaders of companies,

schools, agencies, and so on that people in their organization are happy, that revenues are growing, that

services are being delivered in the best possible way, and so forth. We know how tempting it is to make

statements about the social world that conform to our own needs rather than to the observable facts. It

also can be difficult to admit that we were wrong once we have staked out a position on an issue.

Excessive devotion to tradition. Some degree of devotion to tradition is necessary for the predictable func-tioning of society. Social life can be richer and more meaningful if it is allowed to flow along the paths

charted by those who have preceded us. Buttoo much devotion to tradition can stifle adaptation to chang-

ing circumstances. When we distort our observations or alter our reasoning so that we can maintain beliefs

that “were good enough for my grandfather, so they’re good enough for me,” we hinder our ability to accept

new findings and develop new knowledge. The consequences can be deadly, as residents of Hamburg,

Germany, might have realized in 1892 (Freedman 1991). Until the last part of the 19th century, people


Thalamus

Amygdala

Visual Cortex

Fight or Flight Response:

Heart rate and blood pressure

increase. Large muscles prepare

for uick action.

Source: From Goleman, D., Emotional Intelligence, p. 19. Copyright© 1995. Used with permission of Bantam Books, a divisionof Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.

E X H I B I T 1 . 3 Anatomy of an Emotional Hijacking


29/559

believed that cholera, a potentially lethal disease, was due to minute, inanimate, airborne poison particles

(miasmas). In 1850, English researcher John Snow demonstrated that cholera was, in fact, spread by con-

taminated water. When a cholera epidemic hit Hamburg in 1892, the authorities did what tradition deemed

appropriate: digging up and carting away animal carcasses to prevent the generation of more miasmas.

Despite their efforts, thousands died. New York City adopted a new approach based on Snow’s discovery,which included boiling drinking water and disinfecting sewage. As a result, the death rate in New York City

dropped to a tenth of what it had been in a previous epidemic.

Uncritical agreement with authority. If we do not have the courage to evaluate critically the ideas of those

in positions of authority, we will have little basis for complaint if they exercise their authority over us in

ways we do not like. And if we do not allow new discoveries to call our beliefs into question, our under-

standing of the social world will remain limited. As we will see in Chapter 3, an extreme example of this

problem is obedience to authority figures that can harm and kill others, including acts of genocide.

Now take just a minute to reexamine the beliefs about youth violence that you recorded earlier. Did you

grasp at a simple explanation even though reality was far more complex? Were your beliefs influenced by

your own ego and feelings about your similarities to or differences from individuals prone to violence? Are

your beliefs perhaps based on depictions of violence in the media or fiction? Did you weigh carefully theopinions of authority figures, including politicians, teachers, and even your parents, or just accept or reject

those opinions out of hand? Could knowledge of research methods help improve your own understanding

of the factors related to violent behavior? By now, we hope that you will see some of the challenges faced

by social scientists studying issues related to crime and the criminal justice system.

You do not have to be a scientist or use sophisticated research techniques to recognize and avoid these

four errors in reasoning. If you recognize these errors for what they are and make a conscious effort to


E X H I B I T 1 . 4 An Optical Illusion


30/559

avoid them, you can improve your own reasoning. In the process, you will also be heeding the admon-

ishments of your parents (or minister, teacher, or other adviser) to refrain from stereotyping people, to

avoid jumping to conclusions, and to look at the big picture. These are the same errors that the methods

of social science are designed to help criminologists avoid.

Thesocial science approach to answering questions about thesocial world is designedto greatlyreduce these

potential sources of error in everyday reasoning. Science relies on logical andsystematic methods to answer

questions, and it does so in a way that allows others toinspect and evaluateits methods. In the realm of social

research, these methods are notso unusual. After all, they involve askingquestions, observing social groups,

andcounting people, which we often do in our everydaylives. However, social scientists develop, refine, apply,

and report their understanding of the social world more systematically, or specifically, than Joanna Q. Public:

• Social science research methods can reduce the likelihood of overgeneralization by using

systematic procedures for selecting individuals or groups to study that are representative of the

individuals or groups that we wish to generalize.• Social science methods can reduce the risk of selective or inaccurate observation by requiring

that we measure and sample phenomena systematically.

• To avoid illogical reasoning, social researchers use explicit criteria for identifying causes and

for determining if these criteria are met in a particular instance.

• Because they require that we base our beliefs on evidence that can be examined and critiqued

by others, scientific methods lessen the tendency to develop answers about the social world

from ego-based commitments, excessive devotion to tradition, and/or unquestioning respect

for authority.

Science A set of logical, systematic, documented methods for investigating nature and natural processes;

the knowledge produced by these investigations.

Social science The use of scientific methods to investigate individuals, societies, and social processes,including questions related to criminology and criminal justice; the knowledge produced by these

investigations.

Motives for Criminological Research

Like you, social scientists read stories about incidents of violence committed by youth, observe this vio-

lence occasionally in their lives, and try to make sense of what they see. For most, that is the end of it.

But for some social scientists, the problem of youth violence has become a major research focus. The

motivations for selecting this particular research focus, as with any social science topic, can be any one

or some combination of the following:

Policy motivations. Many social service agencies and elected officials seek better assessments and

descriptions of youth violence so they can identify needs and allocate responsibility among agencies that

could meet these needs. For example, federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice and the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want to identify the magnitude of youth violence, and many

state and local officials use social research to guide development of their social service budgets.

Programs designed to rehabilitate young offenders often use research to learn more about the needs of


THE SOCIAL SCIENCE APPROACH


31/559

their clientele. These policy guidance and program management needs have resulted in numerous

research projects.

Academic motivations. Young offenders have been a logical focus for researchers interested in a number

of questions ranging from how an individual’s connection to parents and peers influences his or

her behavior to how the social conditions under which an individual lives, such as poverty, affect his or

her behavior. For example, social scientists have long been concerned with the impact that social disor-

ganization has on individual behavior. Early in this century, researchers at the University of Chicago were

interested in the effects that residential mobility and immigration had on levels of crime and delinquency

in urban neighborhoods. Today researchers are exploring similar questions concerning the impact of

disintegrating economic bases in central cities and their relationship to crime and violence. Other

researchers have focused on individual-level explanations such as neurological damage. Those who study

social policy also have sought to determine whether correctional programs such as boot camps and other

forms of shock incarceration serve to decrease the probability of juveniles reoffending in the future.

Personal motivations. Many whoconduct research on youth violence feel that by doing so they can help pre-

vent it and/or ameliorate the consequences of this violence when it occurs. Some social scientists first vol-

unteered with at-risk youth in such organizations as Big Brothers Big Sisters and only later began to developa research agenda based on their experiences.

Social Criminological Research in Practice

Of course, youth violence is not a new phenomenon in the United States. It has always been a popular

topic of social science research. However, the sharp increase in this violence in the United States that

began in the late 1980s was unprecedented. Predictably, whenever a phenomenon is perceived as an epi-

demic, numerous explanations emerge to explain it. Unfortunately, most of these explanations are based

on the media and popular culture, not on empirical research. Unlike the anecdotal information floating

around in the mass media, social scientists interested in this phenomenon have amassed a substantial

body of findings that have refined knowledge about the factors related to the problem and shaped social

policy (Tonry and Moore 1998). These studies fall into the four categories of purposes for social scien-tific research:

Descriptive research. Defining and describing social phenomena of interest is a part of almost any research

investigation, but descriptive research is the primary focus of many studies of youth crime and vio-

lence. Some of the central questions used in these studies were “How many people are victims of youth

violence?” “How many youth are offenders?” “What are the most common crimes committed by youth-

ful offenders?” and “How many youth are arrested and incarcerated each year for crime?” Measurement

(see Chapter 4) and sampling (see Chapter 5) are central concerns in descriptive research.

Exploratory research. Exploratory research seeks to find out how people get along in the setting under

question, what meanings they give to their actions, and what issues concern them. The goal is to answerthe question “What is going on here?” and to investigate social phenomena without expectations. This

purpose is associated with the use of methods that capture large amounts of relatively unstructured infor-

mation. For example, researchers investigating the emergence of youth gangs in the 1980s were encoun-

tering a phenomenon with which they had no direct experience. Thus, an early goal was to find out what

it was like to be a gang member and how gang members made sense of their situation. Exploratory

research like this frequently involves qualitative methods (see Chapter 9).



32/559

Explanatory research. Many people consider explanation to be the premier goal of any science.

Explanatory research seeks to identify causes and effects of social phenomena, to predict how one

phenomenon will change or vary in response to variation in some other phenomenon. Researchers

adopted explanation as a goal when they began to ask such questions as “Why do people become offend-

ers?” and “Does the unemployment rate influence the frequency of youth crime?” Methods with which

to identify causes and effects are the focus of Chapter 6.

Evaluation research. Evaluation research seeks to determine the effects of a social program or other

types of intervention. It is a type of explanatory research because it deals with cause and effect.

However, evaluation research differs from other forms of explanatory research because evaluation

research considers the implementation and effects of social policies and programs. These issues may not

be relevant in other types of explanatory research. The increase of youth violence in the 1980s spawned

many new government programs and, with them, evaluation research to assess the impact of these pro-

grams. Some of these studies are reviewed in Chapter 7, which covers experimental design, and in

Chapter 11, which covers evaluation research.

We will now summarize one study in each of these four areas to give you a feel for the projects moti-

vated by those different concerns.

Description: How Prevalent Is Youth Violence?

Police reports. One of the most enduring sources of information on lethal violence in the United States

is the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). James Fox and

Marianne Zawitz have been providing analyses of these homicide data for the Bureau of Justice Statistics

for many years including the most recent data available for 2005 (Fox and Zawitz 2009). Homicide

victimization rates indicate that for those under the age of 24, vulnerability to murder increased

dramatically during the mid-1980s through about 1994 when rates began a steady decline. After 2000,

rates of homicide victimization for this age group leveled off, but they have recently witnessed a slow

increasing trend (Fox and Zawitz 2009). What accounted for this unprecedented rise in youth violence

during the late 1980s and early 1990s? To answer this question, explanatory research is necessary. After

their in-depth descriptive analysis of youth violence during this time, Cook and Laub (1998) contend thatthe increasing homicide rates began with the introduction of crack cocaine and the conflict that

surrounded its marketing. However, the primary factor, they believe, was the increased easy availability

of firepower: “All of the increase in homicide rates was with guns, and it appears to be changing access

[to] and use of guns, rather than a change in the character of the youths, that best accounts for their

increased involvement in lethal violence” (p. 60).

Data measuring the prevalence of nonlethal forms of violence such as robbery and assaults are a bit

more complicated. How do we know how many young people assault victims each year? People who

report their victimizations to police represent one avenue for these calculations. The FBI compiles these

numbers in its Uniform Crime Reporting system, which is slowly being replaced by the National

Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Both of these data sources rely on state, county, and city law

enforcement agencies across the United States to voluntarily participate in the reporting program. Can

you imagine why relying on these data sources may be problematic for estimating prevalence rates of violent victimizations? If victimizations are never reported to police, they are not counted. This is

especially problematic for victimizations between intimate partners and other offenses like rape in which

only a fraction of incidents are ever reported to police.

Surveys. Instead, most social scientists believe the best way to determine the magnitude of violent

victimization is through random sample surveys. While we will discuss survey methodology in greater

detail in Chapter 8, this basically means randomly selecting individuals in the population of interest and



33/559

asking them about their victimization experiences. The only ongoing survey to do this on an annual basis

is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice’s

Bureau of Justice Statistics. Among other questions, the NCVS asks questions like “Has anyone attacked or

threatened you with a weapon, for instance, a gun or knife; by something thrown, such as a rock or bottle,

include any grabbing, punching, or choking.” Estimates indicate that youth aged 12 to 24 all have the

highest rates of violent victimization, which have been declining steadily since the highs witnessed in the

early 1990s, despite the recent increases observed in homicide rates for this age group in some locations.

Another large research survey that estimates the magnitude of youth violence (along with other risk-

taking behavior such as taking drugs and smoking) is called the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), which

has been conducted every 2 years in the United States since 1990. Respondents to this survey are a national

sample of approximately 16,000 high school students in grades 9 through 12. To measure the extent of

youth violence, students are asked the following questions: “During the past 30 days, on how many days

did you carry a weapon such as a gun, knife, or club?” “During the past 12 months, how many times were

you in a physical fight?” “During the past 12 months, how manytimes were you in a physical fight in which

you were injured and had to be seen by a doctor or nurse?” “During the past 30 days, how many times

did you carry a weapon such as a gun, knife, or club on school property?” “During the past 12 months,

how many times were you in a physical fight on school property?” and “During the past 12 months, how

many times did someone threaten or injure you with a gun, knife, or club on school property?”Of course, another way to measure violence would be to ask respondents about their offending

behaviors. Some surveys do this, including the National Youth Survey (NYS) and the Rochester Youth

Development Study (RYDS). The RYDS sample consists of 1,000 students who were in the seventh and

eighth grades of the Rochester, New York, public schools during the spring semester of the 1988 school

year. This project has interviewed the original respondents at 12 different times (we will discuss

longitudinal research of this kind in Chapter 6) including the last interview that took place in 1997 when

respondents were in their early 20s (Thornberry et al. 2008). As you can imagine, respondents are

typically more reluctant to reveal offending behavior compared to their victimization experiences.

However, these surveys have been a useful tool for examining the factors related to violent offending and

other delinquency. We should also point out that although this discussion has been specific to violence,

the measures we have discussed in this section, along with their strengths and weaknesses, apply to

measuring all crime in general.

Exploration: How Do Schools Respond to Gun Violence?

Research that is exploratory in nature is generally concerned with uncovering detailed information about

a given phenomenon, learning as much as possible about particular people and/or events. Asmussen and

Creswell (1995) were interested in the responses to school shooting incidents. Because school shootings

are relatively rare and there was virtually no empirical literature that addressed the topic, Asmussen and

Creswell performed an in-depth qualitative case study of a shooting incident that occurred at a large public

university. The incident occurred in a senior-level actuarial science class when a male graduate student

arrived early for the class one Monday morning armed with a vintage Korean War semiautomatic military

rifle loaded with a 30-round clip of .30-caliber ammunition. He carried another 30-round clip in his pocket.

Twenty of the 34 students in the class were already there, and most of them were quietly reading the

student newspaper. The instructor was en route to class. The gunman pointed the rifle at the students,sweptit across the room, and pulled the trigger. The gunjammed. Trying to unlock the rifle, he hit the butt

of it on the desk and quickly tried firing it again. Again it did not fire. By this time, most students had

realized what was happening and dropped to the floor, overturned their desks, and tried to hide behind

them. After about 20 seconds, one of the students shoved a desk into the gunman, and students ran past

him out into the hall and out of the building. The gunman hastily left the room and went out of the building

to his parked car, which he had left running. He was captured by police within the hour.



34/559

Asmussen and Creswell (1995) were surprised to find that instead of seeking safety after leaving the

classroom, all the students had stood together just outside the building. Although a few were openly

emotional and crying, many were kidding about the incident, as if it had posed no real danger. This denial

response is noted by the mental health literature, which finds that feelings of fear and anger usually

follow an initial response of denial and disbelief. The researchers found that many people in addition to

the students who witnessed it were traumatized by the incident. In fact, three distinct groups of people

sought counseling services during the weeks following the event. The first group had some direct

involvement with the assailant, either by seeing him the day of the gun incident or because they had

known him personally. The second group was the “silent connection,” comprising individuals who were

indirectly involved and yet emotionally traumatized. A large number in this group were parents. The third

group included people who had previously experienced a trauma and whose fears were retriggered by

this incident.

Because the assailant’s future was in the hands of the criminal justice system, the importance of

information from this system becamecritical tofeelings of safety. Twocombined debriefing sessions by mental

health counselors, the campus police chief, and two county attorneys were held for all those interested.

Another phenomenon observed on the campus was an increase in the number of professors and staff

who were concerned with disruptive students or students who exhibited aberrant behavior in class. To

manage this, the Student Judiciary Office advised departments on various methods of dealing withstudents who exhibited abnormal behavior in class. In addition, plainclothes police officers were sent to

sit outside classrooms and offices whenever faculty and staff indicated concerns.

To their surprise, Asmussen and Creswell (1995) found that the campus did not establish a special unit

to manage future incidents. The only structural change made was the installation of emergency phones

throughout the campus. In addition, no discussion was reported about formal linkages with community

agencies that might assist in the event of a future tragedy. In the end, Asmussen and Creswell’s

exploratory research illustrates the complexity involved in responding to a campus shooting.

Explanation: What Factors Are Related to Youth Delinquency and Violence?

What are some of the factors related to youth violence? Using the South Carolina YRBS, MacDonald

et al. (2005) examined the efficacy of General Strain Theory (GST) (Agnew 1992) and Gottfredson andHirschi’s General Theory of Crime (1990) in predicting youth violence. GST generally contends that strain,

such as disjunction between expectations and aspirations (e.g., wanting a good job but not being able to

get one), increases the likelihood that individuals will experience negative emotions, which in turn

increases the likelihood of antisocial or violent behavior. These negative emotions include anger,

anxiety, dissatisfaction, and so on. The general theory of crime claims that self-control, which is

primarily formed by the relationship children have with their parents and/or guardians, is the motivating

factor for all crime. Individuals with low self-control, the theory predicts, will be more likely to pursue

immediate gratification, be impulsive, prefer simple tasks, engage in risky behavior, have volatile

tempers, and so on.

To measure violent behavior, the YRBS asks respondents how many times in the past 30 days they

carried a weapon and how many times they were in a physical fight. To measure life satisfaction,

MacDonald et al. (2005) used six questions that asked respondents to report on general satisfaction or the

degree to which they felt “terrible” or “delighted” about family life, friendships, school, self, residentiallocation, and overall life. To measure self-control, the authors used the indicators of smoking and sexual

behavior to represent risky behaviors that are not illegal since they “reflect impulsivity and short-run

hedonism” (p. 1502). When predicting violent behavior, they also controlled for a number of other factors

like employment, drug use, family structure, and religious participation, along with age, race, and gender.

Consistent with the general theory of crime, MacDonald et al. (2005) found that high school students

who reported more impulsive behaviors, indicative of low self-control, also reported greater participation



35/559

in violent behavior. In addition, results indicated that students who were more satisfied with life were

significantly less likely to have engaged in violence compared to their less satisfied peers.

Evaluation: Do Violence Prevention Programs in Schools Work?

To reduce violence and create a safer atmosphere at schools across the country, literally thousands of schools have adopted some form of violence prevention training (Powell, Muir-McClain, and Halasyamani

1995). These programs generally provide cognitive-behavioral and social skills training on various

topics using a variety of methods. Such programs are commonly referred to as conflict resolution and

peer mediation training. Many of these prevention programs are designed to improve interpersonal

problem-solving skills among children and adolescents by training children in cognitive processing, such

as identifying the interpersonal problem and generating nonaggressive solutions. There is limited

evidence, however, that such programs are actually effective in reducing violence.

Grossman et al. (1997) assessed the efficacy of one such program for children in elementary school

called “Second Step: A Violence Prevention Curriculum.” The program involved 30 lessons, each

lasting about 35 minutes, taught once or twice a week. Each lesson consisted of a photograph

accompanied by a social scenario that formed the basis for discussion, role-playing, and conceptual

activities. Lessons were arranged in three units: (1) empathy training, in which students identified theirown feelings and those of others; (2) impulse control, in which studen