Which type of questions should be avoided on a questionnaire?
a. short items
b. contingency questions
c. ambiguous questions
d. matrix questions
Which of the following would be an example of content analysis in criminal justice
research?
a. counting the stories devoted to the coverage of crime in your local newspaper
b. counting the number of robberies that happen in your city
c. measuring the average length of time from arrest to disposition in your city
d. determining the average number of inmates housed in your city’s jail on a daily basis
Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo designed a simulated prison to measure _____.
a. the dispositional hypothesis
b. the degree of violence that prison guards innately have
c. the situational hypothesis
d. how violent inmates can be subdued
Which of the following represents voluntary participation?
a. giving small amounts of money to a subject
b. asking people on the street at the noon hour if they would like to participate in
research
c. using a class of students at the local college
d. full disclosure of research purpose with informed consent
Qualitative research____________________.
a. is unable to generate theory
b. can be called a process of grounded theory
c. can be used to produce only quantitative data
d. is unreliable
Policy analysis searches for _____.
a. infeasible courses of action
b. the generation of information and collection of evidence of the benefits
c. the consequences that would follow the implementation of various courses of action
d. fluidity and does not always ‘start at the beginning and conclude at the end.”
Three broad distinctions underlie many of the variations of scientific research. Which is
of the following is one not of these distinctions?
a. idiographic and nomothetic explanations
b. inductive and deductive reasoning
c. quantitative and qualitative data
d. social and cultural artifacts
Secondary analysis can be cheaper and faster than collecting original data.
Which of the following represents a discrete variable?
a. gender
b. annual salary
c. age
d. hours worked
Problem solving is a fundamental tool in problem-oriented policing and involves which
one of the following analytic steps?
a. Carefully defined specific problems.
b. Conduct in-depth analysis to understand their causes.
c. Undertake broad searcher for solutions to remove these causes and bring about
lasting reductions in problems.
d. All of the above
A survey distributed on a college campus discovered that males support the death
penalty in greater numbers than do females. The units of analysis in this case would be
_____.
a. social artifacts
b. groups
c. organizations
d. individuals
When researching a population where it is impossible or impractical to compile a list of
the elements, what is the proper sampling technique to use?
a. stratified sample
b. systematic sample
c. cluster sample
d. simple random sample
Field research in criminal justice may produce either qualitative or quantitative data.
The value of institutional review boards includes which of the following?
a. they provide expert advice on how to resolve ethical dilemmas present in some
research
b. since some researchers are not disinterested parties, IRBs offer outside judgments
about ethical considerations
c. they make sure that researchers are not overlooking the rights and well-being of their
subjects
d. all of the above
What can be said about the relationship between process evaluations and impact
assessments?
a. process evaluations can be used in interpreting results from an impact assessment
b. process evaluations monitor program implementation but impact assessments do not
answer questions about a program’s effects
c. process evaluation cannot be used to interpret outcomes
d. there is no relationship between impact assessments and process evaluations
Three major aspects of the overall scientific enterprise are _____.
a. theory, data collection, selective observation
b. theory, data collection, data analysis
c. data collection, data analysis, funding
d. theory, data analysis, funding
Professor White asked his students to put the number of hours each studied for the final
exam on a piece of paper and turn that paper in with the exam. The pieces of paper
indicate that students studied 10, 3, 4, 25, 1, 4, 4, 12, 6, 8, and 10 hours. What is the
mean number of hours studied?
a. 10
b. 7.9
c. 7
d. 6
Things we know from direct experience are a direct result of which type of reality?
a. agreement reality
b. expressed reality
c. assumed reality
d. experiential reality
National Crime Victimization Survey and the British Crime Survey both use _____ to
gather data.
a. simple random samples
b. stratified sampling
c. multistage cluster sampling
d. quota sampling
One of the following is not accurate with respect to the construction of questionnaire
items. Which one is inaccurate?
a. use only questions, no statements
b. short items are the best
c. avoid negative items
d. avoid the temptation to ask questions in a manner that determines a specific answer
Which of the following is not correct concerning structured observations?
a. they enable the researcher to generate numeric measures of observed conditions
b. they are best suited for studies where a researcher is expected to encounter a wide
variety of situations
c. they are more reliable than other methods
d. they require careful training
An empirical measure that adequately reflects the meaning of the concept under
consideration is known as _____.
a. reliability
b. validity
c. accuracy
d. face validity
Which of the following have been identified as disadvantage of the use of
computer-assisted interviewing?
a. respondents seem to sense a greater degree of confidentiality
b. get more “productive” answers to questions dealing with topics such as drug use
c. increase the speed and efficiency of the responses
d. It can be difficult to print and archive a complex questionnaire used in CAI.
Which of the following illustrates a population where cluster sampling would be the
best choice?
a. law enforcement officers in the United States
b. Uniform Crime Reports
c. convicted violent criminals
d. news paper reports
Which of the following would not be a unit of analysis?
a. individuals
b. groups
c. organizations
d. variables
Which of the following is not appropriate for use as a sampling frame?
a. telephone directories when you wish to sample attitudes toward a new law
b. lists of licensed drivers when you wish to ask juveniles their opinions about drinking
prohibitions
c. taxpayer rolls when the researcher is interested in public concerns about school
appropriations in their community
d. American Medical Association membership lists to survey doctors about their
attitudes concerning HMOs
Which of the following is accurate concerning empirical research?
a. empirical research is a mathematical rather than a logical operation
b. mathematics is a very difficult but efficient language
c. criminal justice is the applied branch of mathematics
d. empirical research is a logical rather than a mathematical operation
Which statement is true regarding rates?
a. Rates are fundamental inferential statistics in criminal justice research.
b. Rates are used to standardize some measure for comparative purposes.
c. In criminal justice crime rates per 100,0000 population is a common convention in
reporting.
d. These are the only governmental statistics that are calculated to discuss crime
Which of the following are social artifacts?
a. citizen attitudes about the death penalty
b. editorials in the New York Times
c. cities with over 250,000 inhabitants
d. months of the year
Sometimes it is necessary to make the same measurement more than once. This is
known as _____.
a. test-retest method
b. inter-rater reliability
c. split-half method
d. face validity
In calculating the rate of rapes within New York City, which of the following would
appear to be the best data for the denominator?
a. females living in New York City
b. all people living in New York City
c. all males living in New York City since nearly all rapes are committed by males
d. females over the age of 21 living in New York City
If the variable that you are interested in studying is so rare that it is unlikely to be
discovered using random sampling, what is the best alternative?
a. accidental sampling
b. quota sampling
c. stratified sampling
d. purposive sampling
Data collected by or for public agencies is readily available and researchers have tight
control over the actual data collection process.
Because of some controversial medical and social science research, the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services has had to step in and establish regulations
designed to ___________________________.
An example of variable-oriented research is the _________________ design.
Bivariate analyses typically have an explanatory purpose.
A list of all elements in a population is referred to as the sampling frame.
Not only is it necessary to measure dependent variables in impact assessment, the
researcher also needs to measure the context within which the program is conducted.
When random assignment to experimental and control groups is not possible, the
researcher may be forced to use a(n) _____________________ design.
The correspondence between a target population and sampling frames affects the
_____________________ of the samples.
Surveys tend to be high on reliability and generalizability, but can have a weak point in
__________________.
The independent variable in a classical experiment must be a ratio level variable.
Individuals may be units of analysis in criminal justice research.
Evaluation apprehension occurs when officials fear that their own job performance is
not being rated.
____________________ is appropriate whenever some policy intervention occurs or is
planned.
The use of ___________________ sampling helps researchers generalize to a larger
population.
The two pillars of science are logic and ______________.