Category: Writing

Federal regulations require special safeguards for research
on persons with impaired cognitive capacity. Special safeguards are also
required for research on prisoners and on children. Do you think special
safeguards are necessary? Why or why not? Do you think it is possible for
individuals in any of these groups to give voluntary consent to research
participation? What procedures might help make consent to research truly
voluntary in these situations? How could these procedures influence sampling
plans and results?

Under what conditions do you think that randomized
assignment of subjects to a specific treatment is ethical in criminal justice
research? Was it ethical for Sherman and Berk (1984) and the researchers who
conducted the replication studies to randomly assign individuals accused of
domestic violence to an arrest or a nonarrest treatment? What about in a
laboratory study with students similar to yourself? Do you think it would be
ethical to assign students randomly to be “prisoners” in a study similar to
Zimbardo’s (2007)?

How much pressure is too much pressure to participate in a
probability-based sample survey? Is it OK for the U.S. government to mandate
legally that all citizens participate in the decennial census? Should companies
be able to require employees to participate in survey research about
work-related issues? Should students be required to participate in surveys
about teacher performance? Should parents be required to consent to the
participation of their high school–age students in a survey about substance
abuse and health issues? Is it OK to give monetary incentives for participation
in a survey of homeless shelter clients? Can monetary incentives be coercive?
Explain your decisions.

Go to the Stanford Prison Experiment website
(http://www.prisonexp.org). Read the information provided about the Stanford Prison
Experiment.
1. Write a brief essay on the study, including the purpose
of the study, the type of experiment, the participant selection process, the
problems encountered during the study, and the results.
2. Go to the discussion questions provided on the website.
Answer the questions listed. What conclusions do you make about the Stanford
Prison Experiment?

1.Propose a sampling design that would be appropriate if you
were to survey students on your campus only. Define the population, identify
the sampling frame(s), and specify the elements and any other units at
different stages. Indicate the exact procedure for selecting people to be
included in the sample.
2. Propose a different sampling design for conducting your
survey in a larger population, such as your city, your state, or the entire
nation.
Web Exercises

Go to SocioSite (http://www.sociosite.net). Choose “Subject
Areas.” Choose “Crime” or “Criminology.” Find an example of research that has
been done using experimental methods. Explain the experiment. Choose at least
five of the key terms listed at the end of this chapter that are relevant to
and incorporated in the research experiment you have located. Explain how each
of the five key terms you have chosen plays a role in the research example you
have found.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of
probability-based sampling designs compared with nonprobability-based designs?
Could any of the research described in this chapter with a nonprobability-based
design have been conducted instead with a probability-based design? What are
the difficulties that might have been encountered in an attempt to use random
selection? How would you discuss the degree of confidence you can place in the
results obtained from research using a nonprobability-based sampling design?

Select a true experiment from the Journal of Experimental
Criminology, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, or sources suggested by your instructor.
Diagram the experiment using Exhibits 7.3 and 7.4 in this chapter as models.
Discuss the extent to which experimental conditions were controlled and the
causal mechanism was identified. How confident can you be in the causal
conclusions from the study, based on review of the threats to internal validity
discussed in this chapter: selection bias, endogenous change, external events,
contamination, and treatment misidentification?

All adult U.S. citizens are required to participate in the
decennial census, but some do not. Some social scientists have argued for
putting more resources into a large representative sample so that more
resources are available to secure higher rates of response from hard-to-include
groups. Do you think that the U.S. Census should shift to a probability-based
sampling design? Why or why not?

Design a true experiment to determine whether alcohol
consumption leads to increased violent attitudes or actions. Describe how your
design incorporates the three components of experiments. Evaluate how well your
design meets the criteria for identifying causality. What are the ethical
issues you face in this experiment?