Research Methods Chapter 12

Which of the following would not be considered appropriate use for agency records?

experimental research

Which type of the listed studies are highly aggregated summary data from published statistical series not typically used?

exploratory

Are agency data designed for research?

Generally, no.

The publication produced by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that includes information about hundreds of justice agency data sets, characteristics of criminal justice agencies, and perceptions of crime, to name just a few, is:

the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics

What factor is most important when evaluating the reliability and validity of agency records?

how the data was collected

The use of secondary analysis of data has become very popular because:

it is faster because the data is readily available

The visible, objective context of a communication is known as:

manifest content

Which of the following would not be an appropriate target of content analysis?

number of domestic violence arrests

Sometimes there are problems with the people or patterns that are gathered as agency data within the criminal justice system. Which of the following is an incorrect statement with respect to the data gathered by the agencies identified?

police officers deal not with individual calls but with cases

FBI statistics and annual reports from the Federal Bureau of Prisons are examples of:

published statistics

Which of the following is most accurate with respect to published statistics?

published statistics such as FBI data presents potential threats to validity and reliability

Which of the following would not impact the validity and reliability of a study using agency records?

recognition on the part of the researcher that criminal justice data is a composite of criminal behavior, ability to detect that behavior and decisions about system response to that behavior

Which of the following is not an advantage of using secondary data?

reduction in validity threats

All of the following are examples of information collected by or for public agencies except for:

research produced by faculty at private colleges and universities

Virtually all criminal justice record keeping is a

social process.

Which entity was established by the 1994 Crime Bill?

COPS

The systematic study of messages and the meaning those messages convey is

Content analysis.

Which of the following is not considered to be a published statistic?

Detroit Police Department call of service statistics

Which of the following would be an example of agency records that would be appropriate as a source of data for research?

Federal Bureau of Prison inmate records

Which of the following would not be an example of the data coming from the Census Bureau that have criminal justice applications?

Uniform Crime Report

The Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is housed at which institution?

University of Michigan

NCVS data would be helpful in answering all of the research questions except

Why might an offender change from doing burglaries to committing home invasions?

They underlying meaning of a communication is it's:

latent content

You are analyzing data that has been collected in annual waves for the past twenty years. Which of the following might be problematic in this type of analysis?

the definitions of some key items have changed over time within the culture

Which of the following is important to remember when using agency records?

the discretionary actions by criminal justice officials and others can affect the production of agency records

In which of the following analyses is content analysis least likely to be used?

the number of murder convictions in Michigan during 2009

Which of the following is not an example of nonpublic agency records?

the records of criminal convictions at your local courthouse

Which of the following is not accurate concerning validity and reliability of agency records?

the shorter the time intervals under study the greater the concern about procedure changes

If you wanted to measure the number of date and acquaintance rapes that happen in this country and use UCR data as your source, what is likely to be your most significant problem?

validity

Which factor has the greatest impact upon a geographical area becoming a "hot spot"?

where people are repeatedly victimized

Secondary analysis of data collected by other researchers has become

Increasingly important.

What happens to the potential for clerical errors as the number of clerical entries increases?

It increases.

The visible, surface content of a communication is its

Manifest content.

The way in which data reflect organizational processes and decisions in addition to the concept being measured is

Social production of data

Which of the following is not an example of the use of secondary analysis?

developing a measurement for your city's juvenile intake facility

Which of the following data sources could not be coded for use in content analysis?

agency aggregate statistics

Which of the following is not a source of reliability and validity problems with agency records?

agency data are designed to track patterns, not people

In Sherman and colleagues' research dealing with crime hot spots they chose to use 'calls for service' to local law enforcement as a means of measuring where different types of crimes happened with greatest frequency. They noted some problems with the use of calls for service. Which of the following represents those problems?

all of the above

In Widom's research on the relationship between early child abuse and later delinquency or adult criminal behavior which of the following were considered to be either validity or reliability problems?

all of the above

Which of the following is accurate concerning having agencies collect original research data?

all of the above are accurate

Which of the following is not a problem with respect to units of analysis when using agency records?

all of the above are potential problems

The operational definition of any variable is composed of:

attributes

In Widom's research on child abuse discussed in your text, what was used as matching criteria for the public school records?

being born at the same hospital

Which of the following represent reliability or validity concerns when a researcher uses agency records?

changes in the operational definitions the agencies use to specify key terms

The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics is the most comprehensive Bureau of Justice Statistics publication. It includes a multitude of data including all of the following except:

complete crime data from all local police departments

Dr. Jones is having his Introductory to Criminal Justice students analyze cartoons. He instructs them to identify the number of violent acts per show, the type of violent act and the characteristics of the victim. Dr. Jones is having his students use:

content analysis

Social artifacts such as written documents or articles from newspapers would be best understood using which of the following?

content analysis

Which of the following is an accurate statement concerning the use of content analysis?

content analysis involves a systematic study of messages and the meaning that those messages convey

Secondary analysis encompasses which of the following sources of criminal justice data?

content analysis of agency records

Which of the following is an example of content analysis in criminal justice research?

counting the number of stories devoted to the coverage of crime in your local newspaper

A researcher is interested in using content analysis to determine how the United States Supreme Court has changed its interpretation of the 4th Amendment's "unreasonable" search and seizure prohibition over time. Which of the following are the units of analysis?

court decisions in 4th Amendment cases

Topics that lend themselves to the use of content analysis tend to focus upon the links between communication and:

criminal justice policy

Which of the following is not a concern about the use of agency records?

data will be accurate because agency data has to be

When dealing with the conceptual problems that emerge from complex relationships between different units of count, Maxfield and Babbie suggest:

defining individual people as units of analysis

Agency records and statistics published by agencies or governmental entities are most commonly used for which type of studies?

descriptive

Which of the following situations would not have an impact upon error in agency records?

having very little data to input

In the text, an example was given concerning the difficulty in trying to measure how much crime happened to victims who were not residents of South Florida. Since police only routinely kept records on where victims stayed locally (such as hotel addresses) researchers could have an additional question added to the incident recording form asking for the victim's permanent address. All of the following would be benefits of that except:

it is much more expensive to add a question to a form because it requires all the forms to be reprinted

In an effort to ensure that textbooks for introductory level criminology and criminal justice courses are gender and race neutral an analysis of the language was undertaken. Which of the following would be appropriate?

measuring the latent content

Clinic workers in a major Northwest city have been asked to track the incidence and patterns of STDs in their patients as part of a research project dealing with public health. They ask a number of specific questions upon intake but do not ask about their clients' sexual partners. The only way to examine patterns in the spread of the STDs is to add a question to the intake form about the identity of their sexual partners. The data that was gathered illustrates:

new data collected by agency staff

A researcher is interested in studying the budgeting of money within a police department in a mid-sized American city. She gains access to the department's detailed records of expenditures and human resources. This is an example of which type of agency records, as described in the text?

nonpublic agency records

Dr. Quinn is interested in studying the amount of overtime worked by police officers. He gains access to agency personnel files. This is an illustration of which type of data?

nonpublic agency records

Which of the following is not accurate with respect to the data that agencies collect?

nonpublic records, even though significant for our understanding of criminal justice processing, are unavailable to any researcher who does not work for the specific agency

Which of the following statements is most accurate?

once units of analysis are defined, sampling agency records is relatively simple

Coding in content analysis involves the logic of conceptualization and:

operationalization

Being able to benefit from the work of topflight professionals and esteemed academics is an advantage of using:

secondary data

It is often said that agency data are not designed for research purposes. Which of the following support that statement?

some criminal justice agencies collect data because they are legally required to do so

When a researcher uses the term "silo databases" she is referring to:

stacks of data that are isolated from each other

Electronic formats of published statistics enjoy which of the following as an advantage over written records?

the data can be read directly into statistical and or graphics computer programs for analysis