Fundamentals of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice - Softcover

Reseña del editor

Fundamentals of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice is a concise resource for understanding the multifaceted subject of research methods in the field of criminology and criminal justice. This book uniquely helps to teach research design and techniques within the context of substantive criminology and criminal justice issues of interest to students and the field. This is a briefer version of Ronet and Russ's successful The Practice of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice, written in a less formal style, with more concise examples drawn from everyday experience, and less coverage of complex or more rigorous methods. This is an excellent introductory methods text for undergraduate research courses in the fields of Criminal Justice and Criminology. It is ideal for students who need to understand how criminal justice research is done and appreciate the results, but may never do research themselves in the professional lives.

Features of the Brief Edition:

- the examples throughout the book integrate substantive criminal justice issues with research with a greater emphasis in the third edition on the major branches of the criminal justice system.

- integrates policy throughout Chapter 9, and discusses policy implications for research methods throughout the text

- integrates coverage of units of analysis in Chapter 2

- extensive use of graphics in every chapter facilitates students' understanding of concepts discussed

- contains extensive, updated exercise sets include Practice Exercises, Web research activities, SPSS exercises, Developing a Research Report activities

- includes a robust Student Study Site which includes GSS data sets, Appendixes on using quantitative and qualitative software, a demo for HyperResearch's popular qualitative analysis software, a sample research proposal, as well as a variety of interactive exercises for students to do on their own.

New to the 2nd edtion

1. New chapter on research ethics (Ch.3) that includes Zimbardo's prison experiment and Milgram's research on obedience to authority.

2. New coverage of evidence-based research and videos used for research

3. Updated discussion of causation that includes more field experiments and other unique methods.

4. New Case studies on effectiveness of drug courts, combining focus groups with official police records, homicide across nations,using Google Earth to track recidivism among sex offenders, evaluating the D.A.R.E. program, seeking higher education for inmates, among others.

5. Exercises available to use with Excel.

Biografía del autor

Ronet Bachman, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. She is coauthor of Statistical Methods for Crime and Criminal Justice, coauthor of The Practice of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice, co-editor of Explaining Crime and Criminology: Essays in Contemporary Criminal Theory. In addition, she is author of Death and Violence on the Reservation; coauthor of Stress, Culture, and Aggression in the United States; and coauthor of Murder American Style as well as numerous articles and papers that examine the epidemiology and etiology of violence, with a particular emphasis on women, the elderly, and minority populations. Her most recent federally funded research examines the desistance trajectories of drug-involved offenders 10 years after release from prison using a mixed-method design.

Russell K. Schutt, PhD, is a professor and the chair of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a lecturer on sociology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts Mental Health Center). He completed his BA, MA, and PhD (1977) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Sociology of Social Control Training Program at Yale University (1977–1979). His other books include Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research and Fundamentals of Social Work Research (with Ray Engel), Making Sense of the Social World (with Dan Chambliss), and Research Methods in Psychology (with Paul G. Nestor)―all with SAGE Publications, as well as Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness (Harvard University Press) and Social Neuroscience: Brain, Mind, and Society (coedited with Larry J. Seidman and Matcheri S. Keshavan, also Harvard University Press). Most of his peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters focus on the effect of social context on cognition, satisfaction, functioning, and recidivism, the orientations of service recipients and of service and criminal justice personnel, and the organization of health and social services. He is currently a coinvestigator for a randomized trial of peer support for homeless dually diagnosed veterans, funded by the Veterans Administration.