ICJ 715 Research Methods in International Crime and Justice

30 HOURS LECTURE PLUS CONFERENCES 

The purpose of this course is to provide an understanding of the basic use of different methods used to obtain data in criminology and CRJ research in comparative, international and global contexts. The focus will be equally on thinking statistically and qualitatively. Statistical thinking involves drawing sensible conclusions from various kinds of data by interpreting appropriate statistics. This course covers basic bivariate statistics and some models with multiple independent variables. Qualitative methods will focus primarily on participant-observation, on asking questions, on writing field notes, and on the transformation of these primary field data into written ethnographic documents. This is a basic requirement for both doing social science research and for becoming an educated consumer of such research.