Term
Inaccurage Observation
(Common Error) |
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Definition
| Failure to observe things or mistakenly observe things that aren't so. |
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Term
Overgeneralization
(Common Error) |
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Definition
| Assuming a few similar events are evidence of a general patern. |
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Term
Selective Observation
(Common Error) |
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Definition
| Paying attention to future events and situations that correspond with a pattern and ignore those that do not. |
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Term
Illogical Reasoning
(A common error.) |
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Definition
| Thinking a streak of good weather will cause it to rain on the day you have a picnic planned. |
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Term
Ideology and Politics
(Common Error) |
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Definition
| Racial, political, religious, and personal bias |
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Term
| Four Purposes of Research |
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Definition
Exploration
Description
Explanation
Application |
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Term
Exploration
(4 purposes of research) |
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Definition
| Research conducted to explore a certain problem |
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Term
Description
(4 purposes of research) |
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Definition
| Observing, then describing what was observed. Describing the scope of the problem |
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Term
Explanation
(4 purposes of research) |
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Definition
| A type of research that seeks to explain why things happen. |
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Term
Application
(4 purposes of research) |
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Definition
Applied research, a type of explanatory research that trys to determine links between justice policy and crime or other problems.
Example: Estimating whether prison populations will be reduced from changes in parole standards. |
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Term
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Definition
Logical groupings of attributes.
Example: Male and female are attribues, and gender is the variable. |
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Term
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Definition
| A researcher that can link information to a specific person, but promises not to reveal their identity. |
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Term
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Definition
| Researcher cannot associate a given piece of information with the person researched. |
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Term
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Definition
Individuals
Groups
Organizations
Social Artifacts |
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Term
Individuals
(Units of Analysis) |
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Definition
A variety of individuals may be the units of analysis.
Examples: Plice, victims, defendants, inmates, gang members, and active burglars. |
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Term
Groups
(Units of Analysis) |
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Definition
Social groups may be used, they are different from individuals studied in a group.
Example: People who live in a specific police jurisdiction or beat. |
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Term
Organizations
(Units of Analysis) |
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Definition
Formal political or social organizations.
Example: A correctional facility. |
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Term
Social Artifacts
(Units of Analysis) |
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Definition
The products of social behavior.
Example: Newspapers or television shows. |
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Term
| Statistical Conclusion Validity |
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Definition
| Whether we are able to determine if two variables are related. |
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Term
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Definition
The quality of an indicator that makes it seem a reasonable measure of some variable.
Example: the sentence for a crime can be an indicator for how serious the crime was. |
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Term
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Definition
| The degree to which a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theoretical relationships. |
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Term
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Definition
| A measure can be validated by showing that it predicts scores on another measure that is generally accepted as valid. |
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Term
Causation in the Social Sciences
Three Requirements |
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Definition
To explain why things are the way they are. Some thigns are caused by other things.
1: The Cause must precede the effect in time.
2: Two Variables must be empirically correlated with each other.
3: The observed empirical correlations between two variables cannot be explained away as due to the influence of another variable |
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Term
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Definition
| The process by which we specify what we mean when we use particular terms. |
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Term
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Definition
| The concrete steps, or operations, used to measure specific concepts. |
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Term
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Definition
| A research project that studies a phenomenon by taking a cross section of it at one time and analyizing that cross section carefully. |
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Term
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Definition
| Research projects that are designed to permit observation over an extended period |
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Term
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Definition
Studies trends.
Example: A study that examines annual figures for prison po;ulation over time, comparing totals for the years before and after new sentencing laws took effect. |
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Term
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Definition
Variables whos attributes have only the characteristics of exhaustiveness and mutual exclusiveness. Having attributes that are different.
no numerical value, such as gender or occupation
Nominal variables are often gathered in order to place people into groups. Thus, nominal variables are also called categorical variables.
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Term
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Definition
When the actual distance that separates the attributes composing some variables does have meaning, the variables are interval measures.
Example: Fahrenheit temperature scale. |
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Term
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Definition
A level of measurement that describes a variable whos attributes have all the qualities of nominal, ordinal, and interval measures, and in addition are based on true zero.
Example: length of prison sentence |
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Term
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Definition
The quality of a research finding that justifies the inference that it represents something more than the specific observations on which it was based.
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Term
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Definition
| Logic, rationality,a nd observation |
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Term
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Definition
A mode of causal reasoning that seeks
detailed understanding of all factors that contribute to a
particular phenomenon.
Example: Police detectives trying to solve
a particular case use the idiographic mode of explanation. |
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Term
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Definition
A mode of causal reasoning that tries to
explain a number of similar phenomena or situations.
Explain: Police crime analysts trying to explain patterns of auto thefts, burglaries, or some other offense use nomothetic reasoning. |
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Term
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Definition
A conceptual definition is a
working definition specifically assigned to a term. |
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Term
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Definition
A definition that spells out precisely how the concept will
be measured. Strictly speaking, an operational defi-
nition is a description ofthe operations undertaken
in measuring a concept. |
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Term
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Definition
Inductive reasoning (induction) moves
from the specific to the general, from a set of par-
ticular observations to the discovery of a pattern
that represents some degree of order among the
varied events under examination. |
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Term
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Definition
Deductive reasoning (de-
duction) moves from the general to the specific. It
moves from a pattern that might be logically or
theoretically expected to observations that test
whether the expected pattern actually occurs in
the real world. |
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Term
| Three elements of the traditional model of science |
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Definition
| Theory, operationalizaiton, and observation |
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