Research Methods in Criminal Justice Exam Review
Course Introduction
This course provides an in-depth exploration of research methods used in the field of criminal justice, focusing on both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Students will learn how to design, conduct, and analyze criminal justice research, including formulating research questions, reviewing relevant literature, selecting appropriate methodologies, gathering and interpreting data, and adhering to ethical standards. Emphasis is placed on critically evaluating research findings and understanding their application to real-world issues in law enforcement, corrections, and the broader criminal justice system. Practical exercises and case studies help students develop the skills needed to conduct and assess research in a professional context.
Recommended Textbook
Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology 7th Edition by Michael G. Maxfield
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14 Chapters
1259 Verified Questions
1259 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: Crime Criminal-Justice And-Scientific-Inquiry
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90 Verified Questions
90 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) If a trial is the independent variable,then which of the following is the dependant variable?
A) courtroom
B) attorney
C) verdict
D) judge
Answer: B
Q2) Selective observation can be the result of
A) replication
B) illogical reasoning
C) ideology and politics
D) overgeneralization
Answer: D
Q3) The culture where we are born is made up of accepted knowledge about the world around us and is known as
Answer: tradition
Q4) means repeating a study,checking to see whether similar results are obtained each time.
Answer: Replication
Page 3
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Chapter 2: Theory and Criminal Justice Research
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Sample Questions
Q1) The two pillars of science are observation and ____________________.
Answer: logic
Q2) Using the deductive model,research is used to test ____________________.
Answer: theories
Q3) Which of the following constitute facts related to variables?
A) the empirical counterpart to a concept
B) variables can only be one value
C) more broad than concepts
D) cannot be observed
Answer: A
Q4) Which of the following cannot be studied scientifically?
A) physical attributes of humans
B) the purpose of life
C) changes in the number of elephants in the wild
D) astronomy
Answer: B
Q5) The logic of social scientific inquiry is based in the use of ____________________ to guide the inquiry.
Answer: theory
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Chapter 3: Ethics and Criminal Justice Research
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90 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) You are conducting research dealing with recreational marijuana use.You plan to ask questions of subjects brought into the laboratory and in order to pay them you need their name and address.You tell the subjects that you plan not to reveal their answers to your questions.What type of technique are you using?
A) confidentiality
B) anonymity
C) secrecy
D) privacy
Answer: A
Q2) The National Crime Victimization Survey prevents researchers of the public from having information on a victim's
A) age
B) relationship to an offender
C) place of residence
D) gender
Answer: C
Q3) Not harming people is an easy_____________________ to accept in theory,but it is often difficult to ensure in practice.
Answer: norm
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Page 5
Chapter 4: General Issues In Research Design
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Sample Questions
Q1) In the following research conclusion,what units of analysis are being used? "An enormous variation of deviant activities was represented in a sample of 1,485 news items.We categorized these deviant activities into five general types of analysis: violence,economic,political,ideological/cultural and diversionary."
A) individuals
B) social artifacts
C) organizations
D) groups
Q2) Social artifacts refer only to paper documents,such as newspapers,court opinions and police crime reports.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Threats to internal validity result from nonrandom,systematic error.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Identify four threats to validity discussed in your text.Give an example of each.
Q5) A(n) _________cause is a condition that must be present for the effect to follow.
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Chapter 5: Concepts Operationalization And-Measurement
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Sample Questions
Q1) Discuss the measures used to insure reliability: test-retest method,inter-rater,and split-half method.
Q2) ______________is the process by which we specify precisely what we mean when we use a particular term.
Q3) A person's height as a measure of a person's IQ would be seen as having what problem?
A) precision
B) reliability
C) accuracy
D) validity
Q4) Words are symbols in language that we use to represent mental images are known as__________ .
Q5) Reliability is threatened every time there is a single observer as the source of data. A)True B)False
Q6) Specifying the different____________ of a concept often paves the way for a more sophisticated understanding of what we are studying.
Q7) Reliability does not ensure____________ any more than precision ensures it.
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Chapter 6: Measuring-Crime
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Sample Questions
Q1) Discuss what your text refers to as "measuring crime for specific purposes." Compare these with the traditional methods.
Q2) Compare and contrast UCR and NCVS with respect to the type of crime data they collect and how they collect it.Identify the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Q3) The core sample of the Monitoring the Future is:
A) households
B) high school seniors
C) college students
D) jail inmates
Q4) Unlike the UCR,NIBRS does not implement:
A) a higher level of sophistication in reporting
B) the hierarchy rule
C) single time reporting
D) all of the above
Q5) _____________is an effort to convert the UCR to a more comprehensive crime report.
Q6) The victim in crimes such as prostitution,drug use and bookmaking is
Q7) _________of crime are important for many criminal justice research purposes.
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Chapter 7: Experimental and Quasi Experimental Designs
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Sample Questions
Q1) What technique can be used to help reduce the threat to experimental mortality?
A) increasing the sample size
B) decreasing the sample size
C) shorten the time between the pretest and the posttest
D) select only subjects who are female
Q2) In the classical experiment subjects are measured on the independent variable before the experiment begins and again after the dependent variable has been manipulated by the researcher.
A)True
B)False
Q3) In criminal justice experiments,what serves as a guard against the effects of the experiments themselves as well as events that may occur outside the laboratory during the course of experiments?
A) variable groups
B) control groups
C) administrative groups
D) posttest groups
Q4) Explain the role of randomization in classical experiments.
Q5) Explain why experimentation is not well suited for the purposes of description and exploration.
9
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Chapter 8: Sampling
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which method begins with a matrix or table describing the characteristics of a target population?
A) probability
B) snowball
C) quota
D) simple random sampling
Q2) Reliance on available subjects can be an appropriate sampling method if:
A) the researcher wants to study the characteristics of people who are passing the sample point at some specified time
B) collecting data from people what have all characteristics of a matrix
C) the researcher wants to do research on active criminals or deviants
D) the researcher only has a questionnaire to be completed
Q3) Which of the following is not appropriate for use as a sampling frame?
A) telephone directories when you wish to sample attitudes toward a new law
B) lists of licensed drivers when you wish to ask juveniles their opinions about drinking prohibitions
C) taxpayer rolls when the researcher is interested in public concerns about school appropriations in their community
D) AMA membership lists to survey doctors about their attitudes concerning HMO's
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Survey Research and Other Ways of Asking Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) Specialized interviewing will consist of which of the following?
A) the interview schedule is less structured than sample surveys
B) uses general guide that includes topics, issues, etc.
C) questions are not presented in a standardized order
D) all the above
Q2) What is an important consideration to think about when mailing questionnaires?
A) people don't like to have their name and address associated with the answers they give on a questionnaire
B) timing
C) people may not get their mail in time to return the questionnaire
D) people generally will not complete questionnaires
Q3) Which of the following represent advantages to the use of computer aided interviews?
A) the cost of the hardware and software is quite high
B) large scale systematic error can happen
C) batteries of laptops don't last long, and computers and software are subject to malfunctions
D) they prompt the researcher with the questions
Q4) Identify the strengths and weaknesses in general of survey research.
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Q5) What is CASI? What advantages and disadvantages does it offer for researchers?
Chapter 10: Qualitative-Interviewing
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Sample Questions
Q1) Unstructured interviews taking the following shapes:
A) conversational shape
B) flat shape
C) survey questions
D) none of the answers are correct
Q2) Which of the following is a line of questioning relating to qualitative interviews:
A) tree- and- branch approach
B) mountain and peak approach
C) ocean and sea approach
D) none of these answers are correct
Q3) Reflexivity refers to objectivity in the interview process.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Which of the following is not a type of interview used in qualitative research:
A) structured
B) semi-structured
C) unstructured
D) all of these types of interviews are used in qualitative research
Q5) The more connected one is to a group,the more of a ___________they are.
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Chapter 11: Field-Research
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Sample Questions
Q1) A theory that is created based upon experience and field observations is referred to as a ________theory.
Q2) "Going native" refers to the possibility that subjects may start to become too close to the researcher.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of the following is a serious consideration for researchers who adopt the role of complete participant when doing field research?
A) generalizability
B) ethics
C) validity
D) reliability
Q4) In Homel and associates' study of bars and violence,they were interested in learning how various ___________factors were related to public drinking that might produce violence.
Q5) Why is it often necessary to supplement field research with other forms of data? Give examples of other types of data that are often used in criminal justice research and how each may be used as a link to field research.
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Chapter 12: Agency Records Content Analysis And Secondary Data
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following would not be considered appropriate use for agency records?
A) explanatory studies
B) descriptive studies
C) applied research
D) experimental research
Q2) Which type of the listed studies are highly aggregated summary data from published statistical series not typically used?
A) descriptive
B) explanatory
C) applied
D) exploratory
Q3) Coding in content analysis involves the logic of conceptualization and:
A) application
B) operationalization
C) validity
D) generalization
Q4) Generally speaking,secondary data are least useful when the purpose of research is__________ .
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Chapter 13: Evaluation Research and Problem Analysis
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following best describes the example of the use of evidence-based policy?
A) agencies using evaluation to decide what evidence backs up current funding
B) justice agencies are linked to evidence used for planning and evaluation
C) agencies are linked to other agencies
D) all of the above
Q2) Evaluation in the criminal justice system seeks to link what?
A) the intended actions and goals of the policy to evidence that the policies are carried out
B) the policies to the people who work within the agency
C) the people within the agency to their specific responsibilities
D) the written policies and the written goals
Q3) Which of the following is not something of concern in the evaluability assessment?
A) determine the degree of support for your project
B) determine what the general program goals are as well as the specific objectives
C) determine how the goals are translated into the program components
D) whether the people in the organization have some sort of direct or indirect stake in the program
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Chapter 14: Interpreting-Data
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Sample Questions
Q1) The mean can be a misleading measure of central tendency when:
A) the distribution is very close together
B) the distribution is very spread apart
C) the mean, median and mode equal zero
D) none of the above, the mean is never misleading
Q2) In #43 above,what is the median number of hours studied?
A) 4
B) 6
C) 5
D) 10
Q3) Which of the following is not true concerning the use of multivariate tables?
A) they are constructed in the same manner as bivariate tables
B) they include only one independent variable
C) the dependent variable is explained in terms of more than one independent variable
D) they include more than one independent variable
Q4) When we generalize from samples to larger populations we use _____________statistics to test the significance of an observed relationship.
Q5) The standard deviation is the square root of the_________ .
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