Graduate Study in Psychology Peer-Reviewed

¶ … Graduate Study in Psychology Peer-reviewed journals: Their importance The Internet has provided casual researchers and scholar-practitioners alike with unprecedented access to information. However, not all sources of information are created equal. There are many websites and Internet magazines that have biased, incomplete, out-of-date, or erroneous information in them. A research paper is only as good as its sources. Peer-reviewed journals provide access to high-quality information authored by reputable scholars in the field.

The information in such journals is tested using some sort of empirical basis (in the social and natural sciences) and represents the mainstream beliefs of scholars in the field, rather than unsubstantiated opinion. I know that the articles I downloaded are peer-reviewed because: 1. They identified themselves as journals; 2. Had volume and issue 'numbers'; 3. I used ProQuest rather than a general Google search, and specifically identified the fact I was looking for peer-reviewed scholarly journals; 4.

When I Googled the names of the journals, the websites associated with them identified them as peer-reviewed sources of professional societies; and 4. When using my own 'common sense,' I noted that the articles were written by academics in a balanced, reasoned fashion, and cited peer-reviewed journals within their own texts. The articles' subject matter was detailed, specific, and scholarly. Also: 5. The scholarly credentials and potential conflicts of the authors were identified.

In the field of criminal justice, using peer-reviewed journals is particularly important, given the morass of biased and opinionated materials on subjects in the field such as the death penalty and racial profiling. With these issues, politicians and interest groups often use statistics and emotionally-laden language to sway the public to a particular viewpoint. A scholar-practitioner must take a dispassionate view, rooted in the facts and an objective assessment of both sides of the issue.

Of course, individual scholars and journals can also be biased, and it is important to amass more than one or two sources for a research project. However, by using peer-reviewed journals, there is a far greater likelihood that the information will have value. References Moolenaar, D.E., & G. (2009). Modelling criminal justice system costs by offence. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 15(4), 309-326. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10610-009-9110-2 Zalman, M. (2007). The search for criminal justice theory: Reflections on Kraska's theorizing criminal justice.

Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 18(1), 163-181,186. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/223393722?accountid=14872 ABSTRACT: This paper illustrates how to estimate criminal justice system costs by offence type. Criminal justice system costs are all the costs the authorities incur to prevent and investigate crime, prosecute criminals, impose sentences, and take care of victims and offenders. There are two approaches: the break-down and the bottom-up approaches. The break-down approach decomposes the aggregate budget into smaller pieces.

The bottom-up approach multiplies known costs per activity by volumes for each activity and offence type. Both approaches can be combined with two types of estimates: incidence-based and prevalence-based estimates. An incidence-based estimate identifies all costs attributable to crimes.