Which of the following are social artifacts?
a. citizen attitudes about the death penalty
b. police crime reports
c. cities with over 250,000 inhabitants
d. months of the year
In case-oriented research a large number of cases are examined in order to understand a
small number of variables.
a. True
b. False
Evaluation in the criminal justice system seeks to link what?
a. the intended actions and goals of the policy to evidence that the policies are carried
out
b. the policies to the people who work within the agency
c. the people within the agency to their specific responsibilities
d. the written policies and the written goals
Crime rates are:
a. descriptive
b. explanatory
c. inferential
d. exploratory
Which of the following is another word for objectivity?
a. subjectivity
b. intersubjective agreement
c. attitudes
d. religiosity
When we attempt to answer questions about why something happens, the purpose of
our research is?
a. exploration
b. description
c. explanation
d. application
Researchers must decide on offenses, units and purposes before specifying measures of
crime.
a. True
b. False
Which of the following is not an advantage of telephone surveys?
a. respondents are eager to participate
b. they save time and money compared to face-to-face interviews
c. there is greater control over data collection
d. researchers’ appearance is not important
Our ability to determine whether a change in the cause is statistically associated with a
change in the effect is referring to what type of validity?
a. face validity
b. statistical conclusion validity
c. internal validity
d. construct validity
Despite a record number of cars being stolen in Newark, NJ in 2000, Newark’s auto
theft rate was really lower than
that of Miami, Denver and Chicago. The unit of analysis used in this example is?
a. group
b. organization
c. individual
d. social artifacts
When a research chooses a sample that is not typical of a large population this is known
as:
a. a cluster
b. probability
c. nonprobability
d. bias
According to the text book, because time order is a requirement for causal inferences,
the time dimension of research requires
a. careful planning
b. controlled environmental design
c. a minimum of two researchers working in tandem
d. none of the above
Which of the following is not accurate concerning the construction of explanatory
bivariate tables?
a. the cases are divided into groups according to attributes of the independent variable
b. each of the subgroups is then described in terms of attributes of the dependent
variable
c. the table is read by comparing the independent variable subgroups with one another
in terms of a given attribute of the dependent variable
d. if the table is percentaged down, read down and if the table is percentaged across,
read across
Which instrument asks people whether or not they have been the victim of a crime?
a. self reported survey
b. victim survey
c. computer-based survey
d. random survey
In his research, Gif examined whether people living in high-crime neighborhoods are
more likely to have guns at home for protection than those living in low-crime areas.
His unit of analysis was:
a. organizations
b. social artifacts
c. individuals
d. groups
Researchers must be able to classify every observation in terms of one and only one
attribute. Which of the following terms best describes this concept?
a. reliability
b. validity
c. mutual exclusiveness
d. exhaustiveness
Which of the following statements is accurate?
a. it is often as important to know that two things are not related as to know that they
are related
b. researchers are not ethically obligated to admit mistakes they made doing their
research
c. unexpected findings need not be reported
d. all of the above
When two variables are empirically correlated with each other, they must:
a. occur together
b. occur at different times
c. be on separate time and space continuums
d. occur in succession
The visible, objective context of a communication is known as:
a. latent content
b. manifest content
c. concept
d. validity
Which of the following have the potential to present ethical dilemmas/challenges to
researchers?
a. mandatory reporting requirements
b. withholding desirable treatments
c. staff misbehavior
d. all of the above
Your criminal justice class requires a study of the success of your state’s drug courts.
The professor suggests that you first select 10 counties from your state. From those ten
counties you will select the two largest cities from each. Finally the drug courts in each
of the cities will be monitored to measure success. What type of sampling design did
your professor suggest?
a. stratified sampling
b. multistage cluster sampling
c. multistage cluster sampling with stratification
d. judgmental sampling
Finding the right sponsor in a formal organization is often the most important step in
gaining access.
a. True
b. False
To assess the impact of child abuse upon later criminality, Dr. Rose chose to select
some adults whose names appeared as child abuse victims in local police records and
another group of adults who were not victims of abuse. What technique is being
employed?
a. cohort design
b. classical experiment
c. double-blind experiment
d. nonequivalent-group design
The authors of your text caution when using reports of significance tests that the
researcher should be aware of which of the following?
a. that these do not represent tests of substantive significance
b. that significance tests always show the relationship between the variables of interest
c. that there is no relationship between the size of the sample and the results of the
significance tests
d. all of the above
Which of the following represents problems for reliability?
a. any time you have a single observer as the source of data
b. use of different interviewers during the course of a research project
c. there are different coders used to evaluate the data
d. all of the above
In an examination of violent crime among the most populous nations in the world, the
United States ranks very high along with England, France and Australia. The chance of
being raped is higher in France than in the United States. What units of analysis are
being used?
a. individuals
b. organizations
c. social artifacts
d. groups
Which of the following variables allows for attributes to be placed on a continuum with
equal distance between points?
a. nominal and ordinal
b. ordinal and interval
c. interval and ratio
d. all of the above
In a table, if we have two rows and two columns, how many degrees of freedom are
there?
a. 4
b. 2
c. 1
d. 0
When no reasonable sampling frame exists and a probability sample cannot be drawn,
at least estimates about the sample accuracy are available through nonprobability
samples.
a. True
b. False
FBI statistics and annual reports from the Federal Bureau of Prisons are examples of:
a. nonpublic agency records
b. new data collected by agency staff
c. published statistics
d. content analysis
When using agency records, it is possible to move from individual to aggregate units of
analysis, but not the other way around.
a. True
b. False
Which of the following is a technique that works well when interviewing subjects about
topics that may be emotionally or psychologically challenging?
a. having the researcher ask questions from behind a curtain so that the subject does not
see the interviewer
b. asking the subject to respond to questions on a laptop computer
c. putting the researcher in a disguise so that the subject does not know their identify
d. putting the subject in a disguise so that they cannot be identified
Observation involves all of the following except:
a. conducting experiments
b. interviewing people
c. watching people and detailing what you see
d. statistical manipulation
Which of the following is accurate with respect to the relationship between impacts and
outputs?
a. outputs are policy actions while impacts are goals
b. impacts are related to what the policy goals attempt to achieve while outputs are
related to the means of achieving the goals
c. impacts are the goals and outputs are what is achieved
d. outputs are policy goals while impacts are how the policies are applied
A primary advantage of the semi-structured interview when compared to the structured
interview is that it allows:
a. more data to by gathered
b. unscheduled probes to be used
c. cognitive changed to take place
d. multiple topics to be studied