CJ 315W Research Methods in Criminal Justice: Research Project

CJ 315W Research Methods in Criminal Justice: Research Project

CJ 315W Research Methods in Criminal Justice: Research Project
This assignment requires you to carefully develop a research plan that examines the research
question you choose in the field of criminology and criminal justice. You should select a
research design that best suits your question and that maximizes the various aspects of validity
and reliability as discussed in class. The research project should include the following sections:
1) Introduction (2 paragraphs) (10% of the grade)
You should begin by posing a research question and giving an introduction of why this question
is important to the proposed study. Discuss how the findings of the study will help us understand
crime/criminal justice-related problems and make a contribution to the body of literature. Finally,
address whether the findings will promote a change in public policy and improve your
community safety.
2) Literature Review (2 pages) (20% of the grade)
In this section, you must conduct a literature review of scholarly books and journal articles that
have addressed your research question over the past twenty years. Find and include 5 sources for
the literature review. Discuss the theoretical framework used in these studies and summarize
their research methods and findings. Also, discuss their strengths and weaknesses.
3) Methodology (3 pages) (60% of the grade)
Because our course is designed for research methods rather than statistical applications, you are
not required to analyze your data and present findings. However, you need to detail the method
you will use for your project in this section.
Your methodology section, depending on your research design, should generally include: 1) the
conceptualization and operationalization of the independent variable(s) and dependent variable
(only one for this assignment); 2) one testable hypothesis and the explanation of how the
hypothesis relates to the theoretical framework and the existing literature in the previous section;
3) the description of your chosen research design, the way of collecting data for the project, and
a discussion of internal/external validity and reliability.
Select one of the following designs for the assignment: 1) Experimental/quasi-experimental
methods; 2) Survey methods; 3) Content Analysis; 4) Existing/secondary data; 5) Field research
methods (participant-observation, interview, or focus groups).
4) Ethics (2 paragraphs) (10% of the grade)
Using the three principles of the Belmont Report, you should discuss ethical concerns you might
be faced with. Depending on the method you select, ethnical concerns may vary.

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