Study designs for criminal justice research and applications

Criminal Justice

There are a large number of study designs that can be used to better understand issues in social sciences, including criminal justice (USC, 2014). Before a study design can be applied to a particular phenomenon or problem, however, they must be understood in terms of the strengths and weaknesses. In addition, most study designs will not be appropriate for a given situation and research goal. To better understand the strengths and weaknesses of particular study designs and appropriate applications this essay will discuss five that would be useful in criminal justice research. Two of these methods will then be used to explore how they could be used to study a professional practice issue in criminal justice.

Study Designs

Exploratory Study Design

Exploratory research is used when little is understood about a particular phenomenon and there is the possibility of future research using more quantitative methods (USC, 2014). The goals are primarily to provide a comprehensive description of a problem, suggest possible theories that would be applicable, and evaluate whether the problem would be amenable to additional study in the future. In other words, the exploratory study design would be useful for understanding whether a new, untested policing strategy may be having an impact on a particular crime statistic like domestic violence. For example, if an urban policing agency recently created a community policing unit it might be useful to interview the officers assigned to the unit, along with members of the public who the officers have encountered, to better understand whether the community policing strategy is producing better outcomes. The findings from an exploratory study cannot be generalized to the wider population because of the small sample size and conclusions about causality cannot be made.

Case Study Design

One of the study designs that could be used following exploratory research is the case study, because it allows researchers to narrow the research focus, thereby providing an opportunity to understand a phenomenon in greater depth (USC, 2014). Since only a limited number of subjects are included this study design is useful for investigating and characterizing issues that occur only rarely. Because of the small sample sizes, however, the findings cannot be generalized to the wider population and conclusions about cause and effect relationships cannot be made. In addition, there is no procedure that can control for selection and researcher biases. An example of a case study would be a detailed analysis of an encounter between community police officers and members of the public who were involved in a domestic dispute.

Cohort Study Design

The next logical step in researching the efficacy of community policing on domestic violence outcomes would be a cohort study. This study design uses a larger sample size than exploratory and case study designs and the subject included in the study all share some trait (USC, 2014). For example, all domestic violence statistics generated for a community policing neighborhood could be collected for a year and compared to same statistics collected for a neighborhood without community policing. Cohort studies therefore provide quantitative data and can make tentative conclusions about cause and effect (USC, 2014). The limitations are significant, however, and include the inability to control for confounding factors. For example, differences in the socioeconomic status of the two neighborhoods being compared could be having a significant impact on domestic violence statistics.

Meta-Analysis Study Design

If enough cohort and experimental studies have been completed investigating the same phenomenon of interest then the findings can be analyzed and combined in a meta-analysis to provide insights otherwise unavailable (USC, 2014). A meta-analysis is only possible, however, if the studies included used similar research methods and provided enough information about the data to render it amenable to statistical analysis. For example, if five policing agencies studied the impact of community policing on domestic violence outcomes using a cohort study design then conducting a meta-analysis could be informative. The conclusions reached in a meta-analysis would be weakened if the findings from the included studies differed in significant ways, but strengthened if there was general agreement among most or all studies. The overall effect of a meta-analysis is to increase the sample size and therefore the statistical power of the analysis.

Policing in a Post-Stop-n-Frisk Era

The former and now new police commissioner of the New York Police Department, William J. Bratton, has been tasked with keeping crime rates low following federal court mandates to stop the policing practice of stop-n-frisk (Goldstein, 2014). His plan is to focus on the tried and true policing strategy of 'broken windows,' which in New York City will take the form of aggressively going after low-level offenders. This is taking place in an environment of strident and prolonged criticism of the stop-n-frisk policing practice implemented during former Mayor Mike Bloomberg's tenure. The issue of whether Commissioner Bratton's plans will improve community relations will probably receive intense scrutiny by both the current mayor and the various oversight organizations that have a vested interest in this issue.

The two study designs which could be used to study whether community relations will improve are case study and cohort, with the expectation that the findings from both would complement each other. The case study could involve detailed interviews of selected community residents concerning their views about police conduct, thereby providing insight into what changes residents have witnessed and whether their fear of police encounters has diminished significantly. The cohort study could involve the collection of data concerning the frequency and nature of police stops, in addition to the frequency and nature of police misconduct complaints. The cohort study could also compare crime rates from before and after the start of the new administration in New York City. In this case, the cohort is the residents of New York City.