CJC 102 Ch Assignment

Research is at the heart of criminology and criminologists often use a wide variety of strategies to explore highly controversial issues that impact society. Briefly outline the various types of research strategies (survey, self-reporting, case studies, secondary analysis, and participant observation) discussed in your textbook and then describe how you would use each method to explore the issue of innocent defendants being sentenced to death.

There are various ways to collect research data for specific crimes. Although there is no way to get an accurate statistic for crime research data, there are five main strategies to obtain the data which are: surveys, case studies, participant observations, self-reporting, and secondary analysis. For example, if I were to try to gather data on rapists, the data gathering strategies that I would use that would maybe be most helpful in gathering the closest accurate data would be case studies and secondary analysis only because the rapist wouldn’t openly admit raping anyone in a survey, and women who feel like they were raped because of their own perception would make an inaccurate statement. The reason why a case study would work is because a rapist case needs close attention to detail and that is what a case study is- an in depth investigation. And a secondary analysis could possibly catch anything that the case study could have possibly missed. If I were trying to get the data for theft rates in an area, the data gathering strategies that I would use would be the surveys and the secondary analysis. If I was trying to gather data to see the how often rape happens in women or men’s jails, the data gathering technique that I would use would be participant observations because this method involves a participant going undercover and collecting the data personally which makes it a lot more accurate and specific. The participant would go into the jail and see for themselves what is going on and would report back what they