Knowledge of Deviance and Crime 2

I once has an exciting academic argument about crime with one of my colleagues, She argued that punishments for guilty perpetrators should be determined by ascertaining the severity of pain felt by the victim regardless of the crime that took place. By contrast, I argued that our existing system of determining punishments is superior because it is based on the severity of harm inflicted upon victims including society more generally. While seemingly similar, I pointed out that they are quite different. In our existing system, a homicide will always be considered more serious than, say a robbery even if there was little pain involved in a homicide and there was considerable fear generated by a robbery. Further, I argued that some homicide victims may experience very little pain and they may not have family members who would experience pain. Fundamentally, we possessed very different _ assumptions.

Epistemological

What are the four minimums for causality

1. Variables should covary

2. Temporal sequence

3. Covariance should be non spurious

4. Research should be theoretically based

Three other terms that quality theory and research should have

• Reliability (consistent findings)

• Validity (accurate and precise findings)

• Representative (how far may we generalize?)

Example of representativeness in lecture

• Eating disorders and psychologists

• Psych makes assumption that we all have something in common

• Couch their conclusions on humanity, when only performed study on 50 people

Covariance means that

• Variables are associated with one another (go together)

• ex: salt and pepper, lemon and lime

In their pursuit for a better understanding of the causes of crime and deviance, researchers have identified the following variables as important:

• Age

• Sex

• Socio-economic status (SES)

• Visible-minority status

Which identified variable is the weakest

• SES

• More middle-class people carry out crime

What is the strongest identified variable

• Sex

• Social or biological

temporal sequence suggests that

• Cause must come before effect

• Independent variable (cause) must come before the dependent variable (effect)

Which variable came first: Self-esteem and promiscuity

Either way

• could be defined by time series analysis or longitudinal survey research approach

Which variable came first: Violence and age

Age

Which variable came first: depression and body image

Both ways

Which variable came first: brain chemistry and homelessness

Both ways

Non spurious relationships is why scholars perform

Literature reviews

Durkheim’s research on _ has been found to what

Suicide has been found to meet the tests of time and replication, therefore considered reliable

Validity refers to whether a researcher has in practice

• Captured what they have examined

• Does the empirical measure capture the real meaning of the concept

• Ex: is it valid to measure motivation by using a person’s annual outcome?

What are the problems of measurement?

• Unclear questions

• Double-barrelled questions

• Competent respondents

• Long questions/items

• Negative items generate bias

Examples of unclear questions

• Do you think our politicians are honest?

• What is your ethnicity

Example of double-barreled questions

Should the government reduce taxes on education and health care

Example of competent respondents

Do you think Premier Stelmach’s proposed oil royalty rate increases in Alberta are fair?

Example of a long question

The 1980 Quebec referendum question

Example of how negative items often generate bias

Agree or disagree? The Alberta government should not increase oil royalty rates

• Many people will read over the word not and answer on that bias

Their exists great philosophical debate about establishing

Causality

• some argue that there are many more requirements than have been identified here