The document is attached below. You will most likely need the powerpoint I'm attaching below to use to answer the questions
CJ 2597 Criminal Justice Research Methods
Group Exercise
Date____________
Recognize Sampling Techniques & Related Issues
Problem 1
A researcher in the Criminal Justice Department at Temple University was asked to conduct an evaluation study of the Philadelphia Drug Treatment Court. In order to do this, he was given access to all drug court participants in the last year (a total of 5000 drug-involved offenders). The researcher plans of using a 500-case sample and to select the sample he will use a computer generated program that will select every 10th drug court participant on the list.
What type of sampling design is this?
What should the researcher do before he selects the sample (to prevent any type of sample bias)?
Can the study’s findings be generalized to all drug courts in the United States? Why or why not? Explain.
Problem 2
The Criminal Justice Department at Temple University wishes to conduct a study to learn about the CJ majors’ satisfactions with undergraduate CJ courses. The professor in charge of the study has a complete list of all CJ majors, by year of study (a total of 3000 students) and plans of surveying 500 of them. In order to select the 500-student sample the professor has asked her research assistant to use a computer program that generates random numbers to select the 500 subjects to be included in the sample.
What type of sampling design is this?
Can the survey findings be generalized to the entire population of CJ majors at Temple? Why or why not? Explain.
Problem 3
A Temple CJ graduate student is interested in Temple students’ attitudes toward the death penalty—in particular the student is interested to see whether the attitudes vary by the level of study pursued (undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels). She has access to a complete list of all Temple students (30,000): 60% pursue undergraduate studies, 20% pursue graduate studies, and 20% pursue professional degrees. The student is considering drawing a simple random sample of 1000 students but is worried that such an approach might result in a sample that does not reflect the true student population proportions. She believes this would pose a serious problem for her study. She is asking her mentor for advice.
Are the student’s concerns justified? Why or why not? What is the major problem that the student is concerned about?
What sampling method should her advisor suggest to respond to the student’s concerns?
Problem 4
A team of Temple CJ researchers is assisting the Philadelphia Criminal Courts to design guidelines to help judges in making pretrial release (bail) decisions. In order to do this the researchers need first to observe the current bail practices in all types of cases. They expect—based on discussion with judges—that bail decisions vary, depending of the types of charges involved. They also learn that the bulk of cases involve misdemeanor offenses and some felony offenses but that more serious felony offense are rare and that homicide cases are very rare (when compared with the total). To make sure they can get a full in-depth picture of bail decisions in all types of cases, including the ones that are rare, the researchers decided to sample a total of 3000 decisions from the cases decided in the last 3 years, with an equal number (600) of cases from each of the following five categories of cases: misdemeanor offenses; felony III, felony II, felony I, and homicides.
What type of sampling design did the researchers employ?
Can the findings of the study (sample estimates) be representative of the bail decisions in Philadelphia during the study period? Why or why not? Explain.
Problem 5
Students in a CJ graduate research methods course at Temple University are asked to conduct a survey of a sample of 500 undergraduate students about their attitudes toward rehabilitation. They are to test the hypothesis that such attitudes among Temple undergraduate students vary by gender (that female students view rehabilitation more favorably than male students). The graduate students are then given information about the gender distribution of the overall undergraduate student population (55 percent females and 45 percent males) and are told to make sure that the sample has the same proportions of male and female undergraduate students as in the total population. Abiding by this requirement, the graduate students proceed to sample 275 undergraduate female students and 225 undergraduate male students by approaching them on campus and securing their consent for participating in the survey.
What sampling method did the graduate students employ?
Can they make generalization from the survey findings to the overall undergraduate Temple student population? Why or why not? Explain.
Problem 6
A graduate student in the CJ Department at Temple is proposing for her dissertation to look at attitudes about punishment. She has designed a questionnaire that she wishes to pre-test before conducting the study on a general population. To pre-test the survey, she is administering the survey to her fellow graduate students and to the undergraduate students in her Introduction to Criminal Justice course.
What type of sampling did the graduate student employ?
What the sampling method appropriate for the purposes intended? Explain.
Problem 7
A researcher in CJ Department at Temple University is interested in conducting a qualitative study of drug dealers who escape apprehension by the police, to study specific techniques they use to avoid arrest. To secure possible participants she obtained a list of drug offenders arrested by the police, approached a couple of them who agreed to put her in contact with a couple of drug dealers who were never caught, and further on she secured the participation of those two drug dealers, under conditions of confidentiality. Eventually, she was able to increase her sample size to 20 drug dealers, whom she got to by way of referral from one drug dealer to another.
What sampling method did the researcher employ?
What the sampling method appropriate for the study purposes intended? Explain.
Can the findings of the study be generalized to all drug dealers who escape police apprehension? Why or why not. Explain.
Problem 8
A graduate student in CJ Department at Temple University is interested in conducting a descriptive study of all police officers in the United States (to learn basic demographic information). In thinking about the sampling method to employ to select his subjects, the student is facing the problem of having no comprehensive list of all police officers in the US and no source to ask for such a list. He is asking his advisor for suggestions.
What should the advisor suggest? Describe specifically the steps that will help the student obtain a sample that will be representative of the entire population of US police officers.
What are the sampling issues that the student should be aware of once he obtains the sample as recommended by his advisor?
8
CJ 2597- Criminal Justice Research Methods
Distribution with Permission Only
