The exam will cover chapters 1 4 from the textbook lecture notes and classroom discussion This exam will not merely consist of recall The exam will have between 20 and 60 questions true false and or multiple choice THINGS TO KNOW Chapter 1 How do people tend to evaluate research i e personal values exceptions etc People tend to evaluate research based on personal values If the research confirms common sense than it is a waste of time but if it refutes common sense than it is wrong Public debate tends to rely on simplistic argument and common sense Also people focus on the exception rather than the rule and give great weight to personal experiences What are some of the basic sources of knowledge Besides personal values personal experiences and common sense other sources of knowledge include authority tradition and media Authority is trusting the judgment or information from someone with special expertise Tradition is the world as we know it it is our firmly accepted knowledge of the workings of the world and the values that guide our participation in it Both tradition and authority are double edged swords Be familiar with experiential and agreement reality Experiential reality Agreement reality everyone agrees sun sets in West the things we know from direct experience touching a stove things we consider real because we have been told they are real and Be familiar with why we can t even trust ourselves to make unscientific observations Inaccurate selective observations Inaccurate commonly fail to observe things right in front of us or mistakenly observe things that aren t occurring plans and measurement devices help prevent this such as photos Selective Once we have concluded that a pattern exists and have developed a general understanding of why we will be tempted to pay attention to future events and situations that correspond with the pattern and ignore those that don t Overgeneralization Occurs when we look for patterns to explain what is happening around us and assume that a few similar events are evidence of a general pattern Occurs more easily when there is pressure to reach a general understanding but also occurs without pressure Committing to large sample size for observations and replication are two things to prevent this Replication is the repeating of a study to see whether or not it produces similar results can even be done in slightly different conditions or in different locations Illogical reasoning Observations or thoughts that lead to reasoning that may sound plausible but isn t Gambler s fallacy the thought that a consistent losing streak increases the chances of winning and vice versa this has caused people to keep gambling for way too long thinking a win has to be right around the corner A streak of good weather means bad weather must be coming different example of gambler s fallacy Ideology and politics The main problem here is the inability to separate ideology and politics from the study of crime This means people allow beliefs and political factors to affect research observed results and interpretation of those results The danger lies in allowing such beliefs to distort how research problems are defined and how research results are interpreted Be familiar with the term probabilistic outcomes or relationships The presence of X means a more likely chance of Y occurring Y does not have to occur every time there is X so individual exceptions do not disprove the rule What is theory Theory is an attempt to develop plausible explanations of reality through organizing classifying explanation and prediction Theory helps us interpret facts Theory is a reasonable and informed guess about why things happen Theory needs to be formally testable Be familiar with the differences between the dependent and independent variables How are they related the outcome variable Determined or caused by something the predictor or causal variable The cause the dependent variable depends Dependent Variable Independent variable upon What is a hypothesis What relationship does a hypothesis try to explain Hypotheses specific statements about the relationship between an independent and dependent variable A null hypothesis assumes no relationship and most statistical tests assume the null hypothesis These were on the quiz so I included them in a list form Purposes of Research Exploration Description Explanation Application Errors in Personal Human Inquiry Inaccurate Observation Overgeneralization Selective Observation Illogical Reasoning Ideology and Politics Chapter 2 What is an ethical dilemma in scientific inquiry Ethical Dilemma balancing potential benefits against possibility of harm Note that ethical issues in criminology are especially difficult because our research frequently deals with illegal behavior that people are anxious to conceal Must be voluntary in order to be ethically sound It is unethical to force someone s participation What does voluntary participation mean Why is this important in an event In addition to this you cannot offer certain things as rewards such as parole time to cons grades to students or the opposite punishments or deduction from grades Generalizability is threatened when the people participating are only the people who are willing to participate the same goes for people who are bought with small payments Generalizability is the quality of a research finding that allows the inferring of experimental results to a more general population For example why people commit burglaries may be able to be generalized into why people commit other crimes as well In summation Voluntary Participation is important to both ethics and its threat to generalizability Be familiar with anonymity and confidentiality in scientific inquiry Anonymity A research study is considered anonymous when a researcher cannot associate given information with the person Confidentiality A researcher who is able to link information with a given person s identity but promises not to is providing confidentiality What were the problems with the Tearoom study Because the researcher misrepresented his identity and intent and because the privacy of the subjects was infringed during the study the Tearoom Trade has caused a major debate on privacy for research participants and is now often used as an example of highly controversial social research What were the problems with the Stanford Prison Study The guards and prisoners adapted to their roles more than they were expected stepping beyond the
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