Download Topics Appropriate for Agency Records

Field Research
o Field research encompasses two different methods
of obtaining data:

Direct observation

Asking questions
o May yield qualitative and quantitative data
o Often no precisely defined hypotheses to be tested
o Used to make sense out of an ongoing process
o Gives comprehensive perspective – enhances
validity

Go directly to phenomenon, observe it as completely
as possible
o Especially appropriate for topics best understood in
their natural setting

Street level drug dealers to distinguish customers
o Ethnography: Focuses on detailed and accurate
description rather than explanation
o Complete participant: Participates fully; true identity
and purpose are not known to subjects
o Participant-as-observer: Make known your position
as researcher and participate with the group
o Observer-as-participant: Make known your position
as a researcher; do not actually participate
o Complete observer: Observes without becoming a
participant
o
Qualitative Interview: Is based on a set of topics to be
discussed in depth rather than based on the use of
standardized questions
o
Field research is often a matter of going where the action is
and simply watching and listening
o
Also a matter of asking questions & recording answers
o
Field research interviews are must less structured than
survey interviews
o
Ideally set up and conducted just like a normal, casual
conversation
o Begins with initial contact: Sponsor, Letter, Phone
Call, Meeting
o Access to formal organizations

Find a sponsor, write a letter to executive director,
arrange a phone call, arrange a meeting
o Access to subcultures

Find an informant (usually person who works with
criminals), use that person as your “in”

Snowball sampling is useful as informant identifies
others, who identify others, etc.
o Controlled probability sampling used rarely;
purposive sampling is common
o Bear in mind two stages of sampling:

To what extent are the situations available for
observation representative of the general
phenomena you wish to describe and explain?

Are your actual observations within those total
situations representative of all observations?
o Note taking, tape recording when interviewing and
when making observations (dictation)
o Videotaping or photographs can make records of
“before” and “after” some physical design change
o Field notes: Observations are recorded as written
notes, often in a field journal; first take sketchy
notes and then rewrite your notes in detail
o Structured observations: Observers mark closedended forms, which produce numeric measures
o Useful to combine field research with surveys or
data from official records

Baltimore study of the effects of neighborhood
physical characteristics on residents’ perceptions of
crime problems (Taylor, Shumaker, & Gottfredson,
1985)

Perceptions: Surveys

Physical problems: Observations, actual population
and crime information - census data & crime reports
from police records
o Counted only when offense is seen; takes place only
in certain locations; crime of stealth and not
confrontation

Prevalence defined as ratio of shoplifters: shoppers

Subjects selected by systematic sampling, e.g., every
20th shopper was followed by a field observer

Other research staff were employed as shoplifters to
measure reliability of observers’ detections

Could adjust prevalence rate with reliability figures
o
Rate of use: # of people wearing: # of cars observed
o
Stationary observers at roadsides rather than mobile
o
Placed at controlled intersections
o
Sampled cars on three dimensions: Time of day, roadway
type, observation site; stratified sites by density of auto
ownership (correlated with population)
o
Emphasized marking “U” when uncertain
o
Alcohol has a disinhibiting effect which can lead to aggression
and subsequent violence
o
Researcher set out to learn how situational factors promote or
inhibit violence in Australian bars/nightclubs
o
Observers in pairs stayed 2-6 hours multiple times at 23 sites,
“complete participant” – narratives written later
o
Correlates: Violence in bars frequented by working-class
males; discomfort & boredom, drinking patterns, management
issues (cover, food availability, bouncers)
o
To deceive subjects?
o
To talk to people when they don't know you will be recording
their words?
o
To get information for your own purposes from people you hate?
o
To see a severe need for help and not respond to it directly?
o
To be strategic in your relations with others?
o
To "pay" people with tradeoffs for access to their lives and
minds?
o
To "use" people as allies or informants in order to gain entrée to
other people or to elusive understandings?
o Permits a great depth of understanding.
o Flexibility - research may be modified at any
time
o Inexpensive
o Has more validity than surveys or experiments
o Qualitative and not appropriate for statistical
descriptions of populations

Generalizability
o Has potential problems with reliability since
field research methods are often personal
(multiple coders)
Agency Records,
Content Analysis, and
Secondary Data
o Agency records, secondary data, and content
analysis do not require direct interaction with
research subjects
o Data from agency records – Agencies collect a vast
amount of crime and CJ data
o Secondary analysis – Analyzing data previously
collected
o Content analysis – Researchers examine a class of
social artifacts (typically written documents)
o Methods of studying social behavior without
affecting it
o Types of Unobtrusive Research:



Agency records analysis – examine published or
unpublished agency records
Content analysis - examine written documents such
as editorials
Analyses of secondary data
o Most commonly used in descriptive or exploratory
o Topics appropriate to research using content
analysis center on the important links between
communication, perceptions of crime problems,
individual behavior, and criminal justice policy
o Published Statistics
o Nonpublic Agency Records
o New Data Collected by Agency Staff
o Government organizations routinely collect and
publish compilations of data

FBI, Census Bureau, BJS, Federal Bureau of
Prisons, Administrative Office of US Courts

Often available in libraries and online
o Ted Robert Gurr (1989)

Used published statistics on violent crime dating
back to thirteenth-century England to examine how
social and political events affected patterns of
homicide through 1984
o Agencies produce data not routinely released

Police departments, courthouses, correctional facilities,
BJS: Correctional Population in the US, National Center for
State Courts: Court Caseload Statistics
o Child Abuse, Delinquency & Adult Arrests
o Crime Hot Spots: Geographic areas and times of day
that signal concentrations of various types of crime
o Agency Records as Measures of Decision Making

“Expect the Expected”
o Collected for specific research purposes

Less Costly, More Control

“Hybrid" source: Combines the collection of new
data—through observation or interviews—with dayto-day criminal justice agency activities

Need to obtain the cooperation of organizations
and staff
o If you use agency records, be attentive to match or
mismatch between Units of Analysis appropriate for
research question and Units of Analysis
represented in aggregate form
o You can go from individual to aggregate, but not
aggregate to individual
o Sampling: Taking subsets of agency records is
relatively simple and quite useful
Criminal Activity
o Incidents
o Crimes violated
o Victims
o Offenders
Court Activity
o Defendants
o Filings
o Charges and Counts
o Cases
o Appearances
o Dispositions
o Sentences
Apprehension
o Arrests
o Offenders
o Charges
o Counts
Corrections
o Offenders
o Admissions
o Returns
o Discharges
o Virtually all CJ record keeping is a social process –
“social production of data”

Records reflect decisions made by CJ personnel as
well as actual behavior by juveniles and adults

Discretion factors in to recordkeeping
o CJ organizations are more interested in keeping
track of individual cases than in examining patterns
o Potential for clerical errors due to volume of data
o Systematic study of messages – can be applied to virtually
any form of communication

Decide on operational definitions of key variables

Decide what to watch, read, listen to & time frame

Analyze collected data

As a mode of observation, content analysis requires a
considered handling of the what, and the analysis of
data collected in this mode, as in others, addresses the
why and with what effect
o First establish your universe, then your units of
analysis and sampling frame, then sample
o Communications need to be coded according to
some conceptual framework
o Choice between depth & specificity of
understanding:

Manifest content: Visible, surface content – similar to
using closed-ended survey questions

Latent content: Underlying meaning
o Reminders:

Remember operational definition of variables, and their
mutually exclusive & exhaustive attributes

Pretest coding scheme

Assess coding reliability via intercoder reliability method
and test-retest method
o Chermak (1998) sampled all crime stories from
every 5th day in first 6 months of 1990 – 1,557
o Sought to see how content determines allotment of
space and prominence of place (inches of coverage
in paper, where stories were placed, size of
headlines)
o Also coded offense type, # of crimes, weapon
usage, location, offender/victim characteristics
o Rosenfeld, Bray, and Egley (1999): how gang
membership might facilitate homicide in different
ways

Content analysis of police case files for homicides in St.
Louis over a 10-year period

Gang-motivated killings: Resulted from gang behavior or
relationships, such as an initiation ritual, the ‘throwing' of
gang signs, or a gang fight

Gang-affiliated homicides: Involves a gang member as
victim or offender, but with no indication of specific gang
activity
o Data collected by other researchers are often used
to address new research questions
o Sources: websites (BJS, NCVS, ICPSR, NACJD),
libraries
o Advantages – cheaper, faster, benefit from work of
skilled researchers
o Disadvantages – data may not be appropriate to
your research question; least useful for evaluation
studies (which are designed to answer specific
questions about specific programs), validity
o Inter-university Consortium for Political and
Social Science Research (ICPSR) has the
largest collection of raw data resources
including National Archive of Criminal Justice
Data (NACJD), established by the BJS (Bureau
of Justice Statistics)