Research Methods in Criminal Justice Assignment 4

RUNNING HEAD: African American/ Race Relations

Assignment 3 is to help you flush out more of the details of your research proposal. For this assignment, you are to address the following questions in 2-3 double-spaced pages with 1" margins (all sides) and 12 point font. Your heading should be no longer than one line, and should include the following: name, course, and assignment #. Please number each response, and submit your assignment in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format. Make sure that you follow the directions carefully.

1.  List at least 7 variables that will be measured in your research. No more than 3 of these variables should be demographic variables (i.e., race/ethnicity, age, sex/gender, socioeconomic status, etc.). The inclusion of each variable should be justified in terms of theory or prior research that suggests it would be an appropriate independent (IV) or  dependent variable (DV) or will have some relation to either of these. Please indicate whether each variable is an independent or dependent variable, and write a conceptual definition for each. Whenever possible, the definition should come from existing literature that you have been reviewing.

2.  Discuss whether you are planning on conducting an experimental or non-experimental design to test your research question(s) and hypotheses. Given the general design that you choose, provide more detail as to the specific research design chosen and why. For example, true experiments or randomized experimental designs, quasi experiment designs (nonequivalent control group designs or before-and-after designs/pre-test posttest), and nonexperimental designs (cross-sectional designs and longitudinal). Please note that if you choose a longitudinal design, please specify the type - Repeated cross-sectional design, fixed-sample panel design, or event-based design.

Assessing the effectiveness of incarceration in reducing crime

Name:

Institution:

Assessing the effectiveness of incarceration in reducing crime

1. Independent variables affect crime are age, education, and race. Age is one variable that affects the recidivism. Study show that lawbreaking rate increases as one grows up and reduces as one gets old. The prisons have high number of minors that older people. Education also another factor that affects recidivism. Literacy affects one’s behavior and the chances of securing job. Race and ethnicity affects crime. Study shows that African American are holding the highest number in the prisons. Dependent variables include family, poverty, religion and location of residence. Family is one of the main factors that form an individual and his personality. A child values his parents and violent behavior of their parents affects the child’s way of life. A person’s income and ability to secure a job can have an effect of repetition of crime. Religion is another variable whereby Muslims are on a higher edge of committing crime than Christians. The location of residence affects if a person gets back to crime or not.

2. True Experimental design

 An experimental design will be used in testing the research questions. The true experimental design is my choice of design. True experimental design helps a researcher to manipulate the independent variable to observe the effects on the dependent variable. It uses random assignment of the participants to groups to prevent any external factors from having any effect on the results. The variables to be used will suit better with this experimental design as the use of random values will make work easier and bring about.

1. Potential threats to internal and external validity

Internal validity refers if the experiment treatment or condition makes a difference to the outcome or not and if there is enough evidence to substantiate the claim while external validity refers to the generalizability of the treatment or the conditions outcomes across various settings. True experimental design provides greater internal validity that external validity. Using the true experimental deign does not offer complete protection against the external validity. It may, in some cases increase the some threats. True experimental design aims at providing the cause connection between the treatment and outcome, in this case the how the variables affects recidivism. The experiment is set to control variables. Representativeness is a potential threat of true design.

True experiments require strict control over the experimental conditions, the resource effects are major. The sample size is always too small to be representative of the participants under study. Ecological validity is another potential threat. Usually the experimental setting is under manipulation and is artificial. The surrounding factors under the experiment may interact with the intervention to bring about unrealistic effects. Internal validity is affected by events that occur besides the treatment. Other factors are testing, instrumentation statistical regression and mortality. Selection is another threat as it is brought about by randomization. The physical and the psychological changes of the participants is another factor affecting internal validity.

Feedback:

(1) -"Dependent variables include family, poverty, religion and location of residence." These are not dependent variables – They are independent variables. Your main dependent variables should be crime rates (property and/or violent).

You are missing your key independent variable, which is some measure of incarceration. Please defer to previous studies in how they have measured the impact of incarceration on crime rates.

(2) True experiment does not work for your research question. Please look at previous studies that have assessed the the impact of incarceration on crime rates. What research design did they use?

(3) See Q2. Once you determine the most appropriate research design, this will shape the potential threats to internal and external validity.