Exam 2 - Criminal Research Methods

What is the difference between a concept and a variable?

Concepts are abstract ideas, and Variables are real-world, tangible things

What is a variable?

Collection of related attributes of real-world, tangible things

What are attributes?

Breaks the variable down, example race: white, black, Asian

What is operationalization?

Outline of what is being studied. Example: Grading system

Measurement: is figuring out what a variable actually means for a study. Example: taking an Exam 

Measurements of Operationlization

Ordinal - categories that CAN be ranked. Example: Year at Temple: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior 

Nominal - categories that CAN’T be ranked. Example - Neighborhood, City 

Interval - exact number that CAN be negative. Example - Temperature 

Ratio - exact number that CAN’T be negative. Example - Crime Rate 

What is mutual exclusive?

Category or score only. Example- biracial

What is exhaustive?

Everyone has an answer.

What is a unit of analysis?

What you are studying and what you are collecting information on.

3 main ingredients of experimental design

Experimental Group, Control Group, 

Independent variable = X (some action) 

O = Dependent variable, Pre Test (observation

T1 - Pre test, T3 - Post test

Difference between the classic experiment and quasi-experiments

Classic Experiment - Randomization 

Quasi- Experiment - No Randomization

What is a double-blind experiment?

Double blind - neither the group nor the researcher knows who is getting the independent variable 

Caution - imperial order, temporal order, no alternative explanations 

Difference between case-oriented research, variable-oriented research, and a case study

Case - oriented research - large sample size, few variables 

Varible- oriented research - small sample size, tone of variables 

Case study -  specific event = one sample size

What is sampling?

Sampling - Subset of a population = sampling from a small size in that population 

Biased = Randomization. Hand-selected samples. Typically, randomization is best. 

History

something outside of the study that affects the study 

Maturation

People change over time

Instrumentation

measurement of dependent variable changes 

Statistical regression

extreme pretest scores. Regresses to the mean.

External Validity

can it be replaced? Replicated under a different conductor