answer 6 questions with a brief example

CRM340 – Assignment #4
For assignment #4, students will provide short-answer responses that address the four questions contained within the exercise below. Similar to the online exercises, students will be expected to apply the core concepts covered in chapters 3 & 4 and to appropriately identify examples of these concepts. Once you have answered all of these questions, please log into the Test link that has been provided in the folder for this week’s assignment. For each of the questions below, there will be an open area for you to type in your responses. Since there are multiple examples associated with certain questions, please make sure to number your responses in accordance to the example in which you are responding (i.e., if you are responding to example 1, put a 1 before your response). There will be no time limit associated with the test link, so feel free to log in multiple times throughout the week (make sure to save each of your answers before logging off).

1. Identify both the dependent and independent variable(s) in the following examples. Provide a brief explanation on why you think that the independent variable has an influence on the dependent variable.

1. A criminologist is interested in examining the influence that drug dependency has on the commission of property crimes for all males currently incarcerated in Florida.
2. Suppose you were interested in seeing if there is a relationship between past victimization and fear of crime among female undergraduates at MSU.
3. A sheriff believes that being incarcerated for a longer period of time influences an inmate’s risk of being HIV positive to increase.
4. A psychologist hypothesizes that prisoners who spend more time in lockdown are at an increased risk of developing mental problems.
5. Bursik and Grasmick argue that neighborhoods that have both weak social networks and lower levels of informal social control are more likely to have high rates of criminal activity.
6. Hirschi has argued that attachment to parents, commitment to conventional norms, involvement in prosocial activities, and the strength of an individual’s belief in societal norms all have an impact on criminal activity.

2. What is the unit of analysis (i.e., individuals, groups, organizations, or social artifacts) in the following examples:

1. A researcher is interested in examining how much information police officers record when responding to calls involving domestic violence. In order to answer this question, the researcher requests all of the police reports on domestic violence that have been filed in the last six months in Springfield.
2. A sociologist believes that there are distinct regional differences in the United States in terms of rates of criminal activity.
3. A criminology student is interested in determining to what extent hotspots policing is relied upon across police departments in Missouri.
4. In Institutional Anomie theory, Messner and Rosenfeld (1998) argue that there are distinct cultural and structural differences that explain why the United States has the highest violent crime rate among all western democratic nations.
5. A journalist would like to document the rise in awareness in the national media regarding the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s. In order to answer this question, the journalist gathers all of the news stories from five major newspapers that focused on crack cocaine over that decade.
6. A student is interest in distributing a survey to MSU undergraduates that asks them about their level of satisfaction with the food provided on-campus.

3. Identify the level of measurement (i.e., nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio) used in the following examples:

1. How much money you have in your pocket right now:
2. One’s class status, “Freshman,” “Sophomore,” “Junior,” “Senior”:
3. The cup sizes at a fast food restaurant, “small,” “medium,” “Large”:
4. Degrees Fahrenheit
5. A question that asks respondents about their religious affiliation:
6. If victimization is recorded as “yes” and “no”:
7. If drug dependency is measured as “high,” “medium,” “low,” and “none”:
8. The number of times an MSU student has eaten in PSU this week:
9. A question that provides the response categories of “strongly agree,” “agree,” “neither agree or disagree,” “disagree,” and “strongly disagree”
10. The number of times a parolee has violated the conditions of their parole:

4. For the following proposed research studies, determine whether the researcher should gather data from the Uniform Crime Report, the National Crime Victimization Survey(NCVS), the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), or the Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey. Provide 2-3 sentences that explain your answer.

1. A researcher is attempting to determine the prevalence of drug use among individuals who currently reside on college campuses.
2. A MSU student is interested in providing a chart in her class paper that shows the violent crime rate in Springfield from 1970 to 2012.
3. A criminologist would like to see the long-term emotional and physical impact that domestic violence has on victims.
4. A social psychologist plans on investigating police reports to determine the nature of the relationship between perpetrator and victim in rape cases.
5. After investigating the research plan outlined in question # 4, the same social psychologist decides to focus on the relationship between offender and victim in rape cases that were not reported to the police.
6. A public health official is interested in determining the prevalence of tobacco use among high school students.
7. A criminologist is interested in the total number of property and violent crimes reported to the police in the United States for all of 2010.