Attached below is the exercise along with a powerpoint to use for reference complete it
CJ 2597 Criminal Justice Research Methods
Group Exercise
Date____________
Recognize Research Design & Related Issues
Problem 1
The criminal court in Norristown, Pennsylvania has recently implemented a drug court for drug-involved offenders, focused on providing treatment services for such offenders. The ultimate goal of the Norristown drug court is to reduce drug use and reoffending among its participants. After its first year of operation, the leaders of the court are eager to evaluate its impact and have asked the court statistician to conduct an evaluation study. In order to do this, the court’s statistician sampled a 400-group of drug court participants who entered the court within its first year of operation and followed them for one additional year. Based on comparisons of drug use and criminal involvement measures before and after the participation in drug court, the statistician reported that the Norristown drug court has been successful at reducing drug use and criminal offending among its participants.
What type of research design is this?
Are the conclusions of the court’s statistical evaluation report valid?
What are the major limitations of the design employed in this study?
Problem 2
In response to several killings of police officers by parolees released from state prisons in Pennsylvania, the Governor of Pennsylvania has appointed a Temple CJ research team to investigate the parole process in the state and make recommendations for safe and efficient release of parolees. As part of this investigation, the researchers in collaboration with the PA Parole Board are considering redesigning the current guidelines for parole decisionmaking. Based on data about past behavior (criminal history, prison misconduct), inmates who are eligible for parole are classified into three major categories, according to their reoffending risk level (high, medium and low). Within these categories, there are three parole release/supervision options consisting of an array of supervision conditions, involving different costs. Researchers recommend that within each risk level category parolees be randomly assigned among the three supervision options available to determine which one is more effective and efficient at preventing reoffending among parolees. Parolees in each risk category and supervision option are to be followed for a period of three years and reoffending outcomes recorded and compared with prior risk data.
What type of research design is involved in the study recommended by the researchers here?
What are its major strengths and limitations?
As decisionmakers, what would be your major concerns about this study?
Problem 3
A Temple CJ graduate student is interested in whether or not the death penalty has a deterrent impact on murder. For her dissertation research she is proposing to test the death penalty deterrence hypothesis in the following way: 1) by looking at murder rates in all states that have and have had the capital punishment before and after the period during which the Supreme Court put a moratorium on all executions in the United States (during 1971-1977); 2) by looking at crime rates for other violent offenses during the same period of time. The entire data set the graduate student is proposing to use covers the murder and other violent crime rates in the United States from 1950 to 2010, in monthly reports.
What type of research design is the student proposing?
Clearly identify all the components of the research design proposed here.
What are the major validity threats the graduate student is trying to address by proposing to look at violent crime rates other than murder? Explain.
Problem 4
Leaders of the Philadelphia criminal courts are considering the implementation of a mandatory multi-facet treatment program for all female offenders, targeted at their particular needs and risks. Such a program now exists just in a pilot stage, with just a minority of eligible offenders being referred to the program. Before implementing the treatment program for all female offenders, the court leadership wants to test the program’s main assumption that the treatment reduces future criminal involvement. The court has asked a team of researchers from the Criminal Justice Department at Temple to conduct a study to test this hypothesis. To conduct the study, the researchers proposed to sample 1,000 eligible female offenders, and randomly assign half of them to a group that will go thru the court’s treatment program; the other group will go thru the regular adjudication path in the criminal court. Data on involvement in criminal offenses are to be recorded for the period preceding the processing of offenders’ cases in the system, as well as after their completion of the program/adjudication of their cases (for a period of three years following case completion).
What is the research design in the proposed study?
As researchers, do you have any concerns related to the validity of the study’s potential findings? If so, what concerns do you have and why?
As decisionmakers, do you have any concerns about the proposed study? If so, what concerns do you have and why?
Problem 5
A Temple CJ graduate student is interested to test whether child abuse increases the likelihood of criminal involvement at early ages (before 18). To this end, she has secured the agreement of the Philadelphia Juvenile Court to sample an 800-case sample of juvenile offenders to include in her study (with agreement for research subjects to be sought later, after the research design is finalized). The student wishes to conduct a study that uses a very rigorous research design that would enable her to make causal inferences. However, the student is painfully aware that an experimental design, while desirable in most explanatory research, is inappropriate here. She is asking her advisor for help.
Are the students concerns about the inappropriateness of an experimental design justified? Why or why not? Explain.
What should the advisor suggest? Specifically, what type of research design would fulfill the graduate student’s research ambitions and how she should go about it to address potential validity threats?
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CJ 2597 - Criminal Justice Research Methods
Prof. E. Rely Vîlcică – Distribution with Permission Only
