Criminological Research for Social Science Student (RGBUSTR005)
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Summary Criminological Research for Social Science Student (RGBUSTR005)
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Course
Criminological Research for Social Science Student (RGBUSTR005)
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
This is a complete summary on all the obligatory articles provided in the syllabus of the course Criminological research methods for social science students (last course of the minor).
Criminological Research for Social Science Student (RGBUSTR005)
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Week 1
Ferrel (1997): Inside the immediacy of crime
Approaches:
- Direct fieldwork: asserting yourself in the worlds of criminal life and criminal action
↳ Going native might push you to break the law as well
↳ Dirt knowledge: information learned during participating observation makes someone an
accomplice
↳ the lines between legality and illegality, and morality and immorality quickly become
unclear when someone goes native (illegal observation)
↳ Criminological field research: ambiguous morality and shady legality
↳ need to step out of the facade of objectivity
↳ A researcher who engages in illegal fieldwork may face jail time, court costs, betrayal of or by
subcultural accomplices, and censures by colleagues
↳ When considering participatory observation you must:
1. consider which kinds of criminality are appropriate or inappropriate to study
2. carefully weigh your responsibilities to the criminals, crime control agents and crime victims
affected by the research
3. anticipate the personal, professional and disciplinary consequences
Criminological verstehen =
1. subjective interpretation on the part of the social researcher
2. a degree of sympathetic understanding between researcher and subjects of study
3. the researcher comes in part to share in the situated meanings and experiences of those under
scrutiny
Meaning: the researcher understand the situational meaning of the crime in question, understand the
emotions and experiences of the criminals of study
= gained through attentiveness and participation
Bows (2018): Methodological approaches to Criminological research
Before conducting research topic and question → consider the research methodology
Research methodology: the framework for the study and determines how the research will be
conducted.
Methodology = the process of examining methods and comparing the kinds of knowledge they
produce
↳ this process is based on how the researcher views knowledge and the best way to gain
knowledge about a particular social phenomenon
↳ The end product is a particular method (or methods) which is/are adopted to
conduct the research
Meaning: The methodology = the system + methods = the tools
,Fig 1: Core elements of methodology
Developing a research methodology
Three broad research strategies:
1) Descriptive research: describes people, situations or phenomena
↳ Guiding questions underpinning the research but not a strict hypothesis
↳ This research is useful to provide contextual data which can then be developed into a
hypothesis
2) Explanatory research: intends to explain why a phenomenon occurs and is usually
developed to test a particular hypothesis
↳ Concern is producing conclusive answers
3) Exploratory research: often used when little is known about a phenomenon
↳ This type of research seeks to create hypotheses rather than test one
↳ It is not intended to produce final and conclusive answers, but instead focuses on
developing some initial knowledge about an issue or phenomenon
Qualitative methodology = concerned with exploring the behavior, opinions or perspectives,
feelings and experiences of people as individuals or groups
↳ interpretive approach to social reality: reality exist not independently of people, but
rather is socially constructed, and meaning is developed through experience
↳ Methods used = inductive: data is analyzed to see if any patterns emerge and the
findings are rooted in the data itself
↳ E. What are the emotional impacts of domestic violence on victims? / What are victims’
experiences of accessing support services? / What does ‘justice’ look like for domestic violence
victims?
Quantitative methodology = concerned with measuring or testing existing ideas or theories
(hypotheses) and generally assumes that reality exists independently of human construction and
experience
↳ positivist epistemology + concerned with scientific fact, which can be observed by
rigorous, independent testing
↳ validity and reliability = central
↳ = the ‘best’ method to gain valid, reliable knowledge
Meaning: focus is the accuracy of the measurement (In this case: Explaining crime and predicting
future crime)
, ↳ E. What characteristics of neighborhoods are associated with high burglary crime levels? /
What socio-economic factors are associated with high levels of burglary? / What effect do anti-
burglary measures such as CCTV or alarms have on levels of burglary?
Mixed-methods research: triangulation
↳ Four broad types:
1) Data triangulation involving time, space and people
2) Investigator triangulation involving multiple observers of the same object
3) Theoretical triangulation involving multiple perspectives on the same set of objects
4) Methodological triangulation, either within method (i.e. more than one quantitative method)
or mixed method (i.e. combining quantitative and qualitative methods)
Deciding methods of data collection
↳ Primary data collection vs secondary data collection
↳ Primary: involves collecting data which does not currently exist
↳ Secondary: the collection of materials, evidence or data which already exists but may not
have been collected or analyzed previously, or you intend to analyze it in a different way
↳ Both categories can be used to conduct empirical research (collection of new data), although
primary research methods are more commonly associated with empirical data as this involves the
collection of ‘new’ data
↳ Primary research methods: the type of method used will depend on the nature of the research, the
research question and the methodological framework
↳ Surveys and questionnaires
↳ Experiments
↳ Interviews
↳ Focus groups
↳ Creative or visual methods
Surveys
↳ Surveys seem the most popular method: most often used to obtain information on crime, criminals
and society’s reaction to crime
↳ A survey generally collects data on different variables, which can broadly be categorized into
three groups:
1) Attributes – this includes demographic information and characteristics such as gender, age,
sex, marital status, level of education
2) Behavior – this generally includes questions on the what, when and how often
3) Opinions, beliefs or attitudes – these seek to examine the respondent’s point of view
↳ Questions on surveys can be open or closed; however, they are commonly associated with
closed questions
↳ Open questions: broad how, what and why questions
↳ E. How does anti-social behavior affect your community? / What are the impacts
of the new legislative changes to ‘legal’ highs? / Why did you choose to take part in
restorative justice?
, ↳ Closed questions: yes/no questions or Likert scale questions
↳ E. Do you worry about anti-social behavior in your community? (yes/no) / Has the
change in legislation around ‘legal’ highs affected you? (yes//no)
Benefits to using surveys:
1) Allow researchers to gather a lot of information from a large sample of people in a single
instrument
2) Cost-effective
3) Relatively quick
4) Surveys can be useful if the researcher is seeking to gather data which is generalizable and
examine the social demographic characteristics of people who have been burgled to get an
idea of who is most at risk
Critiques:
1) the tendency to view things from the outside perspective
2) not adequately reflecting the experiences and/or feelings of the participants
3) fails to address how respondents’ meanings are related to circumstances
Interviews
For qualitative research: semi-structured or unstructured interviews
↳ Purpose = to gain in-depth data, placing the interviewee at the heart of the research and
inductively gleaning information in a natural setting
↳ ‘encourage richer, thicker description that might yield a true representation of
authentic, real, lived experience’
↳ this type of methodology is committed to ‘seeing the social world from the point of view of
the actor, expressing preference for a contextual understanding so that behavior is to be
understood in the context of meaning systems employed by a particular group or society’
↳ descriptions provided by interviews van inform theory, based on the data collected
Meaning: this method seeks to investigate the participants’ own reality
Limitations:
1) Mainly: the difficulty in generalizing
2) However: whilst themes and theories may be developed from interview-based research, it
is not necessarily the priority of the research to do this → purpose = to develop
understanding
Focus groups
= a collective, organized discussion and interaction between a group of people
↳ participants interact with each other, asking each other questions or making statements which
other participants respond to
↳ Benefits:
↳ Participants help to stimulate and develop data through their discussions with each
other
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