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Tentative Methods Suggested Reading List
(rev. May 24, 2004)

General Books

  1. Hindelang et al. 1981. Measuring Delinquency. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
  2. Duffee et al. 2000. Measurement and Analysis of Crime and Justice, part of Criminal Justice 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. * All entries are important *.
  3. Rossi et al. 1998. Evaluation: A Systematic Approach. 6th Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  4. Fitz-Gibbon, Carol and Lyons Morris, Lynn. 1987. How to Design a Program Evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  5. Patton, Michael Quinn. 1987. How to Use Qualitative Methods in Evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  6. Maxim, Paul S. 1999. Quantitative Research Methods in the Social Sciences. New York: Oxford University Press.
  7. Wilson, David and Mark Lipsey. 2000. Practical Meta-Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  8. Prevenier, Walter and Martha C. Howell. 2001. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Cornell University Press.
  9. Pope, Carl, J. Lovell, and S. Brandl. 2001. Voices from the Field, Readings in Criminal Justice Research. CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
  10. Cook, Thomas D., and Donald T. Campbell. 1979. Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
  11. Pearl, Judea. 2000. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  12. The Maryland Report on Crime Prevention. 1997. http://www.ncjrs.org/works/.
  13. Maxfield, Michael G. and Earl Babbie. 1995. Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology. Wadsworth Publishing. CA.
  14. Boruch, R. F. (1997). Randomized experiments for planning and evaluation: A practical guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  15. Campbell, D.T., & Stanley, J.S. (1966). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Articles

Experiments
  1. Weisburd, David. 1993. "Design sensitivity in criminal justice experiments." In M. Tonry (Ed.), Crime and Justice: A Review of Research (volume 17, pp.337-379). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  2. Sherman (Ed). 2003. Special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on "Misleading evidence and evidence-based policy: Making social science more experimental".
  3. Sherman, L.W. and E.G. Cohn. 1989. "The impact of research on legal policy: The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment." Law and Society Review 23:117-144.
  4. Binder, A., & Meeker, JW. 1990. "Experiments as reforms." Journal of Criminal Justice 16, 347-358
  5. Farrington, D.P. (2003). A short history of randomized experiments in criminology: A meager feast. Evaluation Review, 27, 218-227.
  6. Petersilia, J, & Turner, S. (1991) An evaluation of intensive probation in California. Journal-of-Criminal-Law-and-Criminology, 82, (3), pp. 610-658.
Self-Reports
  1. Junger-Tas, Josine and Ineke Haen Marshall. 1999. "The self-report methodology in crime research." In M. Tonry (Ed.), Crime and Justice: A Review of Research (volume 25, pp.291-367). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  2. Piquero, Alex R., R. MacIntosh, and Matthew Hickman. 2002. "The validity of a self-reported delinquency scale." Sociological Methods and Research 30:492-529.
Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research
  1. Laub, John H. and Robert J. Sampson. 1998. "Integrating quantitative and qualitative data." In Janet Z. Giele and Glen H. Elder, Jr. (Eds.), Methods of Life Course Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
  2. Giele, Janet Z. and Glen H. Elder, Jr. (Eds.). 1998. Methods of Life Course Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Crime Trends & UCR/NCVS Similarities/Differences
  1. Biderman, Albert D. and Albert J. Reiss, Jr. 1967. "On Exploring the 'Dark Figure' of Crime". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 374:1-15.
  2. Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, and Richard Rosenfeld. 1991. "Trend and deviation in crime rates: A comparison of UCR and NCS data for burglary and robbery." Criminology 29:237-263.
  3. Menard, Scott. 1992. "Residual gains, reliability, and the UCR-NCS relationship: A comment on Blumstein, Cohen, and Rosenfeld (1991)." Criminology 30:105-114.
  4. Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, and Richard Rosenfeld. 1992. "The UCR-NCS relationship revisited: A reply to Menard." Criminology 30:115-124.
  5. McDowall, David and Colin Loftin. 1992. "Comparing the UCR and NCS over time." Criminology 30:125-132.
  6. Steffensmeier, Darrell and Miles D. Harer. 1999. "Making sense of recent US crime trends, 1980 to 1996/1998: Age, composition effects, and other explanations. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 36:235-274.
  7. Blumstein, Alfred and Richard Rosenfeld. 1998. "Explaining recent trends in US homicide rates." Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 88:1171-1216.
  8. Blumstein, Alfred and Joel Wallman (Eds.). The Crime Drop in America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  9. LaFree, Gary. 1999. "Declining violent crime rates in the 1990s: Predicting crime booms and busts." Annual Review of Sociology 25:145-168.
  10. Lynch, James. 2002. "Trends in Juvenile Offending: An Analysis of Victim Survey Data." OJJDP Brief Report. http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/ojjdp/191052.pdf.
  11. Rand, Micahel R., James Lynch, and David Cantor. 1997. "Criminal Victimization, 1973-1995." NIJ Report. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cv73_95.pdf
  12. BJS. 2003. Four Measures of Serious Violent Crime. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/cv2.htm
  13. Rantala, Ramona. 2000. "Effects of NIBRS on crime statistics." NIJ Report. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/encs.pdf.
  14. Gove, Walter, et al. 2001. "Are the Uniform Crime Reports a Valid Indicator of the Index Crimes?" Criminology 23:451-501.


Sample Questions
  1. You have been asked by the governor of your state to evaluate a new domestic violence court. Your task is to set up the sampling design, research methodology including subjects, variables and analytic plain, and anticipated outcomes. Write an essay in which you outline one such proposal.

  2. There has been much talk about the advantages and disadvantages of cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Describe the debate, the ads/disads of each approach, and whether you think we should follow one approach over another approach in studying crime.

  3. Criminologists employ at least three main methods for studying crime rates. What are these three methods, what are their strengths and weaknesses. Describe what we know about crime trends with regard to each approach, and indicate a preference (should you have one) for which best "gets at" the crime picture in the US.

  4. One of the basic requirements of a finding is that it be replicable. Discuss the different kinds of replication/converging operations studies that might be conducted to support an initial demonstration of "an effect" and the strengths and weaknesses of each. Also, carefully discuss the roles of statistical inference, statistical significance testing (considering both types of statistical decision errors), direct replication, converging operations and meta analysis within this process. You can provide an example of a replication in criminology or related discipline in order to illustrate your point.

  5. Discuss the applications of true experiments, quasi-experiments and natural groups designs for addressing important issues for evaluation types of research. Your answer should address the strengths and weaknesses of each for the various types of internal and external validity (be sure to identify your preferred characterization of the relationship between these two types of validity). Give examples from a criminological or related discipline study.

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