2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Horrible book, March 24, 2009
This book was nothing more than a culmination of other peoples research and investigations. It presented no new thoughts on the subject matter. Additionally, the presentation of the material was done in a completely vague manner that created more confusion than enlightenment on the subject.
Final assessment: I regret that it was required reading for my criminal justice cohort. There is simply no reason why a text book must be lame and drawn out to be considered academic material.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent research book!, March 24, 2008
Wow, this is an excellent book that demonstrates different types of research that is usable not only in Criminology but in any other subject. It is overviews important statistical research methods, which explained in clear and descriptive way. It also uses other interesting methods that used only in criminology. Overally there is the content in short:
Introduction to criminal justice research methods: theory and method;
a. scientific research;
b. Common sense method;
c. probabilistic nature;
d. qualitative and quantitative research;
e.language of research;
f.examples of research;
-general steps;
-problem formulation;
ETHICS
~all about ethics in criminal justice research;
RESEARCH DESIGN: EXPERIMENTAL MODEL AND ITS VARIATIONS
-res des. in nutshell;
-experimental model;
-causality;
-rival casual factors;
-internal factors;
-external factors;
-related rival casual factors;
-examples of experimental design;
~examples and explanations of all kinds of designs (over 8);
Data gathering strategies and special case of uniform crime reports
-social surveys;
-research using GIS;
crime index;
crime rate; (stopped on chapter 4.) a lot more following up-
ch5.Sampling and survey research-questionaries;
ch6.Interviews and telephone surveys
ch7. Participation observation and case studies;
ch8. Unobtrusive measures, secondary analysis and the uses of official statistics
ch9.Validity, realibility and triangulated strategies;
ch10. scaling and index construction;
ch11.Data analysis, data presentation;
ch12. data analysis- user guide to statistics;
ch13. policy analysis and evaluation research;
appendixes: how to write the research report, etc....
Overall- I am impressed by the amount of presented topics and quality of their description. Great book for the great value!
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