SOC 1500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: General Social Survey, Actus Reus, Official Statistics

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1500
• Professor: Ryan Broll

Document Summary

Focus on the rule breakers and what causes criminal behavior. Criminologists focus on two things: measuring crime in society. Randomly selecting groups of people for surveys: understanding the nature of crime. Official statistics: most reliable of the 4 methods*: measures police reported crime, uniform crime reporting system (ucr) ex. Limitations of official statistics: less serious offences are undercounted, what counts as a crime changes over time, not all crimes are reported to the police, ^dark figure of crime: crimes that go unreported. Self report surveys: questionnaires that ask participants about offences they have committed. Asking if someone had a smart phone stole(cid:374), (cid:271)ut if they had a flip pho(cid:374)e stole(cid:374) the(cid:374) the su(cid:396)(cid:448)ey is(cid:374)"t (cid:448)e(cid:396)y (cid:448)alid. Limitations of self report surveys: participants may not share some information/they may lie, participants may forget, representative samples are difficult to construct. As well as expensive: ca(cid:374) o(cid:374)ly ask so (cid:373)a(cid:374)y (cid:395)uestio(cid:374)s. most people do(cid:374)"t (cid:449)a(cid:374)t to take a su(cid:396)(cid:448)ey i(cid:374) the fi(cid:396)st place.