Why learn research methods? Unlike most other courses of study, research methods will not acquaint you with a specific topic or subject area. Rather, they focus on how scientists—in this case, those in criminal justice and criminology—go about finding answers to questions. Sometimes the questions may have never before been objectively investigated. A course in research methods provides the tools that make it possible to be on the cutting edge of one’s profession. This text will acquaint you with these research tools and concepts.
An underlying assumption of this text is that one can best learn research methods by learning how to read and understand basic research reports before trying to conduct any research oneself. This read-research-before-doing-research philosophy has guided the organization of each chapter. Within the first five chapters, students are given the essential concepts for reading scientific research reports. Thereafter, each new chapter helps students move toward thinking about designing meaningful research of their own.
This text is unusually broad in two respects. First, even though it has been written primarily for criminal justice and criminology majors, there is an underlying recognition that everyone in the social sciences shares essentially all of their research methods and findings with one another. Consequently, the text begins by introducing students to each of the social and behavioral sciences, as well as to related disciplines such as psychiatry and education.
The second way the text is broad has to do with the geographic dispersion of the examples that are discussed. A concerted effort was made not to limit coverage to studies conducted in the United States and a few other Western industrial societies.
One more fairly unique feature of this text is that it closely integrates research methods with statistics. This integration is made possible in part by devoting chapters 3 and 4 to acquainting students with the most widely used statistical concepts. In no way do these two chapters substitute for a course in statistics. Instead, they ensure that whether students have taken statistics or not, they understand the essential role of statistics in designing and interpreting nearly all criminal justice research.
COMMENTS FOR STUDENTS
A fair number of criminal justice students look forward to their first course in research methods with the enthusiasm of a dental patient in need of a root canal. Not only does the subject sound dry and technical, but the thought of statistical concepts being interwoven with research methods (which is the case) makes research methods intimidating, especially for those who may not have had a course in statistics.
Although learning research methods takes effort, this text has been designed to be user-friendly, even when dealing with some fairly complex statistical and theoretical concepts. The most critical points are clearly stated and illustrated with examples chosen to be interesting in their own right.
For those wondering about how their learning will be gauged, test questions are provided to your instructor to be used at his or her discretion. These questions are intended to test student understanding of the main points made in each chapter. Some questions will ask you about the meaning of terms, all of which will appear in bold and italicized print, while other questions challenge you to combine concepts to derive logical conclusions. The text is loaded with examples and illustrations, but these are to help you learn and remember the main points; they will not be the focus of test questions.
COMMENTS FOR INSTRUCTORS
Students often view a course in research methods as ‘‘inherently uninteresting and difficult’’ (Bridges et al., 1998, 14). This text seeks to combat such attitudes early and often. Among the strategies used has been to fill the text with intriguing examples to illustrate the methodological principles being discussed. The text is also written in a conversational style, sometimes asking students to stop and think about how they might address certain problems before suggesting the likely solution.
Another feature of the text that may be useful from a teaching standpoint is that the topics are arranged and labeled in ‘‘bite-sized’’ modules, giving instructors opportunities to ask students for input. For example, the first chapter describes each of the social sciences. As an icebreaker, have students name one of the social sciences in no particular order and then explore with them how research in each of these disciplines might be useful in the field of criminal justice. Another feature of the module format is that instructors can choose to teach the chapters in any order they wish.
This text is accompanied by various ancillary materials, including a Power-Point outline of each chapter into which several assignments are inserted for students to complete if you so choose.
If you spot any inaccuracies or misleading information, please bring them to our attention by contacting Lee.Ellis@minotstateu.edu, Richard.Hartley@utsa.edu, or twalsh@boisestate.edu. In addition, if you have interesting examples of research studies that could be used to illustrate points or provide challenging assignments in the future, please send them to us.
Special thanks to Katherine Greenup for her help with indexing the book.
Lee Ellis
Richard D. Hartley
Anthony Walsh