It is often said that agency data are not designed for research purposes. Which of the
following support that statement?
a. some criminal justice agencies collect data because they want to help researchers
b. often the data collected by criminal justice agencies is for their research use
c. agency records can be easily adapted to research purposes
d. data they do collect often reflect discretionary decisions by numerous individuals.
Which technique works well when interviewing subjects about topics that may be
emotionally or psychologically challenging?
a. having the researcher ask questions from behind a curtain
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 identity
d. putting the subject in a disguise so that they cannot be identified
The keystone of inquiry is _____.
a. sampling
b. induction
c. literature review
d. observation
Institutional review boards ____.
a. provide expert advice on how to resolve ethical dilemmas present in some research
b. are only necessary when research involves special populations
c. can be helpful when a researcher is struggling to publish his or her work
d. often assist researchers in applications for funding
Published statistics and agency records are often used in _____.
a. survey research
b. descriptive studies
c. experimental studies
d. qualitative research
The researcher can lessen the potential for harm when doing research by ____.
a. putting themselves in the line of danger to avoid harm to the participant
b. never telling the subject about the potential of harm
c. using field studies as the main source of research
d. considering which study design to use based on its potential for harm
Which of the following are necessary in the construction of closed-ended questions?
a. the response categories may be mutually exclusive
b. the response categories must be exhaustive
c. the researcher must focus on expanding responses
d. the response categories must be dichotomous
A researcher studies community-level arson rates in relation to economic indicators
such as household income, poverty, and unemployment. The researcher finds that
communities with higher arson rates have higher poverty and unemployment rates and
lower household income. The researcher concluded that unemployed people are more
likely to commit arson than are those who are employed. What error was just
committed?
a. the ecological fallacy
b. reductionism
c. using the wrong time dimension
d. an internal validity threat
Justice organizations are increasingly using techniques of _____ to study patterns of
cases and devise appropriate responses.
a. problem analysis
b. systematic interpretation
c. literature review
d. inductive reasoning
Audit trails consists of extensive logs of data, such as ____.
a. letters and phone calls
b. meetings
c. interviews
d. field notes and memos
A Residence Assistant (RA) at a local university devises a plan to spot check the dorm
for illegal drinking by randomly selecting a starting door for the first check, and then
knocking on every fifth door. What technique is the RA using?
a. stratified sampling
b. simple random sampling
c. quota sampling
d. systematic sampling
Which study design would allow a researcher to measure change in a general
population over time?
a. trend study
b. cohort study
c. panel study
d. cross-sectional study
Individual agencies maintain silo databases. Silo databases refer to
__________________________________________.
a. stacks of data that are isolated from each other
b. record-keeping procedures
c. agency-produced data
d. computerized criminal history
Qualitative research ____.
a. is unable to generate theory
b. being the basis of grounded theory
c. can be used to produce only quantitative data
d. is unreliable
Which statement is false with regard to the use of evaluation research?
a. it is gaining in popularity among researchers that really want to make a difference
b. federal requirements for program evaluations often accompany the implementation of
new programs
c. funding is available for program evaluations
d. Evaluation research may only use experimental design.
Scientific realism is rooted in the principle that:
a. similar interventions can naturally be expected to have different outcomes in different
contexts
b. the success of evaluations depends on the assignment of subjects to experimental and
control groups
c. there be equivalence between experimental and control groups before an intervention
d. treatment integrity must be rigorously guarded
Which statement is accurate with respect to the construction of questionnaire items?
a. Use only questions, no statements.
b. Use long descriptions to clarify meaning.
c. Avoid negative items.
d. Ask questions that lead to a specific answer.
Identifying why some people believe that police are doing a good job while other
people believe they are nor is an example of _____.
a. explanatory research
b. idiographic explanation
c. singular explanation
d. application research
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
We live in a world of two realities: _____.
a. expressed and assumed
b. experiential and agreement
c. expressed and agreement
d. experiential and assumed
Which of the following is true concerning sampling error?
a. If many independent random samples are drawn from a population, then the sample
statistics from those samples are distributed in a predictable way around the population
parameter.
b. Probability theory does not allow us to use a formula to estimate how closely the
sample statistics are clustered.
c. The standard error cannot identify how spread out of clustered the sample statistics
are around the population parameter.
d. None of these answers are correct.
Which statement is accurate?
a. The reason that researchers use probability samples is because they guarantee
representativeness of the sample.
b. In general, the more heterogeneous a population, the smaller the sample needed for
representativeness.
c. A simple random sample is appropriate when a researcher wants to over-represent a
characteristic in the population
d. A sample is representative of the population from which it is drawn if the aggregate
characteristics of the sample approximate those of the general population.
Logical sets of attributes are known as ____.
a. values
b. variables
c. concepts
d. operationalizations
When a professor assigns grades, the professor is engaging in ____.
a. measurement
b. operationalization
c. conceptualization
d. validity
A questionnaire is sent to 1,000 police departments in Florida and gathers information
on the number of sick days officers use after being involved in a shooting incident. This
is an example of ____ research.
a. variable-oriented
b. case-oriented
c. quasi-experimental
d. cohort
A researcher is developing a measure of the impact of living in high-crime
neighborhoods and, in assessing its reliability administers it to the same people on two
occasions several weeks apart. The researcher is assessing ____ reliability.
a. test-retest
b. inter-rater
c. split-half
d. face
Which statement is true about longitudinal research?
a. Data are useless
b. the changes in the operational definitions the agencies use to specify key terms does
not change overtime
c. the procedures the agency uses to collect the data will remain the same over time
d. as the time interval under investigation increases, so does the potential for change in
measurement.
In determining which role to assume while doing field research which of the following
should the research consider?
a. ethical and methodological considerations
b. how much money they have to do the research
c. who their subjects are
d. whether they will be using subjects in formal or informal organizations
Which behavior would have the least impact on 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 versus 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
Random assignment to experimental and control groups should reduce the threats to
_____.
a. instrumentation
b. maturation
c. reliability
d. small sample
One objective of this book is to help future criminal justice professionals become
_____.
a. informed consumers of research
b. informed consumers of books
c. experts in the department of justice
d. expert readers
When we say something is valid, we make a judgment about the extent to which
relevant evidence supports that inference as being ____.
a. reliable
b. probable
c. true or correct
d. interesting
Which statement is false with regard to field research?
a. It has greater validity and reliability than survey research.
b. It often involves theory creation.
c. It often combines observation and asking questions.
d. It can provide both qualitative and quantitative data.
When using agency records in their research, researchers keep in mind two general
maxims: ____.
a. “Follow the paper trail” and “expect the expected”
b. “Follow the paper trail” but “expect the unexpected”
c. “Follow the rules” and “expect the expected”
d. “Follow the trail” and “expect the paper”
When follow-ups are planned with mail surveys, ____.
a. response bias is not an issue
b. the anonymity of respondents is not guaranteed
c. the response rate increases
d. the response rate decreases
Experimentation is best suited for descriptive studies.
The subsequent questions in a series are called contingency.
Ethical considerations in research are typically quite evident.
Harm to subjects, researchers, or third parties is possible in ____________________
studies that collect information from or about persons engaged in criminal activity;
When a professor uses students in her class as research participants, there is a potential
for ethical problems in that their participation may not be __________________.
Content analysis is really a(n) __________ operation that represents the measurement
process.
Evaluation apprehension occurs when officials fear that their own job performance is
not being rated.
Explanatory scientific research centers on the notion of cause and effect.
Personal human inquiry is prone to errors such as overgeneralization, inaccurate
observation, replication, and selective observation.
Units of communication, such as words, paragraphs, and books, are not the units of
analysis in content analysis.
Manifest and latent content can be distinguished by the degree of _______________
required in measurement.
In evaluation studies, the group to whom the program is appropriate is referred to as the
program’s _______________ population.
If you want to ask several questions that have the same set of answer categories, an
efficient type of question to use is the ________________.
There are two basic options for researchers when asking questions: open-ended or
closed-ended.
The pillars of science are logic and rationality.