CHAPTER 1: SETTING THE STAGE: WHY LEARNING THIS …



DISCUSSION GROUP ANSWERSCHAPTER 1: SETTING THE STAGE: WHY LEARNING THIS STUFF IS IMPORTANT!1. If we are interested in the percentage of crime victims who did not report their victimization to the police, we are doing evaluation research. True or False?False, because we are simply describing something (the percentage of crime victims not reporting) we are engaged in descriptive research.2. If we are interested in the reasons why crime victims do not report their victimization to the police, we are doing explanatory research. True or False?True, in explanatory research we are interested in the causes and effects of a phenomenon—we want to explain why something happened, not just describe it.3. A logically interrelated set of propositions about empirical reality is referred to as a theory.4. A tentative statement about reality involving the relationship between two or more phenomena is a hypothesis. 5. The statement, “States that have a ‘concealed carry’ gun have higher rates of gun-related injuries and deaths,” is an example of a hypothesis. 6. If I wanted to study the effect of drug courts on recidivism, I would be doing evaluation research. True or False?True. Evaluation research concerns the implementation and effects of social policies and programs, like drug courts.7. The generalizability of a study is the extent to which it can be used to inform us about persons, places, or events that were not studied.8. If I was interested in the drinking behavior of college undergraduates at my university and I hung outside at bars on Saturday night asking students to fill out my questionnaire about their drinking behavior, my study might have low generalizability.9. Assuming that what I find out in my sample also holds true in the population is called making an inference or a generalization.10. Let’s say I was interested in the relationship between verbal IQ scores and delinquency among youth in my state between the ages of 12 and 18. I randomly selected 10 high schools from my state and collected information about the verbal IQ of the 500 youth in those schools. Those 500 youths from whom I collected information would be my sample and the much larger group of all 12- to 18-year-old youth in the state would be my population.11. The group that I want to make an inference or generalization about is called my sample. True or False? False. The group that I want to make an inference about is my population. I collect information from a subgroup of my population who are my sample. 12. The two major categories of sampling techniques are probability and nonprobability samples.13. What is the primary question of interest in sample generalizability?The primary question is, “Can findings from a sample be generalized to the population from which the sample was drawn?”14. What is the distinguishing feature of probability sampling?The essential characteristic of probability sampling is that we know in advance the probability that any element of the population will be selected into the sample. 15. If I have a sample statistic and I am using it to estimate an unknown population parameter, I am interested in inferential statistics.16. I want to know the average police officer salary among my city police officers. I take a sample of 50 officers from the population of 200 officers. The mean salary I calculate from my sample is called my sample statistic while the mean of the 200 officers is the population parameter. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download