Which of the following does not represent a criterion for causality?
a. there is a correlation between the cause and the effect
b. the cause precedes the effect in time
c. the change in the effect is not caused by some third variable
d. it is not necessary for two variables to be correlated with each other
Which of the following is a type of program evaluation?
a. exploratory studies
b. content assessment
c. impact assessment
d. content analysis
Which of the following would not impact the validity and reliability of a study using
agency records?
a. discretion of prosecutors in who to charge and what counts to add
b. decisions that are made by police officers to arrest verses give a warning
c. 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
d. decisions made by probation officers to revoke on new crimes and not technical
violations
Which of the following statements is not true concerning field research?
a. it does not provide a comprehensive perspective to the researcher
b. it often involves theory creation
c. it often combines observation and asking questions
d. it can provide both qualitative and quantitative data
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
The method of relying on available subjects is sometimes misleadingly called:
a. cluster sampling
b. convenience sampling
c. snowball sampling
d. quota sampling
Attempts to guard against harm to the participants in the simulated prison were
accomplished by all of the following except
a. making certain that all participants were psychologically healthy
b. insisting that those who were assigned the guard role would not use physical force
against those assigned to the role of prisoner
c. any participant who showed distress was released from the simulation early
d. allowing participants to select their preferred role (prisoner or guard)
Which of the following is not a source of reliability and validity problems with agency
records?
a. changes in definitions of crime over time
b. agency data are not designed for research
c. agency data are designed to track patterns, not people
d. data entry errors
In an attempt to gain access to a formal organization, you have found a sponsor, sent a
letter and spoken with the director by phone. You are now ready for the meeting and
you should do each of the following except for
a. going to the meeting prepared about the organization so that you can speak with the
director from an informed position
b. flattering the director, complement them on their attire, hair style and anything else
you can think of
c. asking for any procedures manuals or reports that may assist in your research
d. being sure to use the right words of encouragement and your best interviewing skills
With respect to telephone interviews, which of the following does not represent a
problem for the researcher?
a. caller ID, which is common now in many households, may reduce the number of
subjects that answer their phones
b. telephone surveys may reduce the risk to the researcher who would otherwise have to
go door-to-door
c. telephone surveys are limited to those people with home phones
d. people can hang up, thus increasing the number of calls you must make
Kim, while doing field research with a police department begins to become more
sympathetic to officers’ behavior.
She would be considered to be:
a. becoming sympathetic
b. going nave
c. becoming conservative
d. going native
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
Structured interviews consist of:
a. spontaneously created questions
b. predetermined questions and answer sets
c. timed specific responses
d. questions in hierarchical order
Measures of dispersion are appropriate for which types of variables?
a. nominal
b. ratio
c. ordinal
d. discrete
Richness, meaning, and shared cultural values are important parts of the qualitative
interview.
a. True
b. False
Which factor has the greatest impact upon a geographical area becoming a “hot spot”?
a. where occasional auto thefts happen
b. where people are repeatedly victimized
c. where community policing is used
d. where neighborhood watch programs exist
Which of the following is most correct with respect to the concept of ethical issues?
a. ethical issues are always obvious
b. ethical issues are not always apparent
c. ethical issues can often be ignored
d. ethical issues are only problems if the subject realizes they have been treated
unethically
Ethical issues found in the Stanford Prison Experiment included all of the following
except:
a. signed consent forms were obtained
b. participants in the role of guards were given minimal instructions
c. subjects were not fully informed of the procedures
d. as the study progressed, guards were permitted to modify or create rules
If you did not have the sampling frame of your population but still wanted to use a
probability sampling technique for statistical reasons, you should select what type of
sample?
a. quota
b. snowball
c. cluster
d. stratified
Methods of reporting crime are never updated and have been continually used since
their inception.
a. True
b. False
Grounded theories refer to which of the following?
a. testing a theory to see if the data fits
b. theories that have been constructed by faculty just beginning their careers
c. describes the inductive method of theory construction
d. describes the deductive method of theory construction
Which of the following guidelines are not appropriate for completing field notes?
a. do not rely upon your memory, you need to take notes
b. you do not need to take notes all at once, do them in stages
c. when in doubt take more notes than you think you will need
d. delay taking notes until you have left the research area because there is nothing like
being able to reflect on what you observed
What is considered a major draw-back to the accuracy of NCVS data?
a. it does not explain all crime that goes unreported
b. it does not allow the estimate of victimizations for individual cities
c. it is not a thorough as UCR
d. all of the above
As a principle, possible harm to subjects may be justified when the potential benefits of
the study outweigh the possible harm.
a. True
b. False
You have just completed the LSAT and scored 112. Your roommate who is no smarter
than you took the LSAT with you and scored 165. You were so upset with your score
that you decided to take the test again and you convinced your roommate to take it with
you for moral support. You both received scores on the second exam of 150. What
accounted for the differences in scores?
a. statistical regression
b. testing
c. instrumentation
d. maturation
To understand the critical realist perspective, one most understand:
a. their stance on the nature of reality
b. the nature of morality
c. marxism
d. all of these answers are correct
Electronic formats of published statistics enjoy which of the following as an advantage
over written records?
a. the data can be read directly into statistical and or graphics computer programs for
analysis
b. much of the electronic data is inappropriate for spreadsheet software
c. most do not contain the original data while printed reports contain aggregate
information
d. most will be considered confidential, thus not available to the researcher
Multistage cluster sampling with stratification, systematic sampling, simple random
sampling and disproportionate stratified sampling are examples of:
a. nonprobability sampling
b. probability sampling
c. sampling distributions
d. sampling frames
Problem analysis focuses upon whether the intended result was produced.
a. True
b. False
Which of the following is not an example of a concept?
a. delinquency
b. peer group
c. indoor temperature
d. social disorganization
An axiom is a type of
a. theory
b. variable
c. statement
d. concept