CRM 1300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Data Element, Hydroponics, Property Crime
Document Summary
Methodology: refers to the study or critique of methods. Reliability: identifies one of the standards (another being validity) against which the tools used to measure concepts are judged. Reliability refers to consistency of results over time. Validity: the extent to which a tool or instrument (questionnaire, experiment) actually measures the concept the researcher claims to be interested in and not something else. Crime rate: criminologists calculate crime rates (or rates of incarceration, conviction or recidivism) by dividing the amount of crime by the population size and multiplying by 100,000. This produces the standard rate per 100,000; occasionally it is useful to calculate a rate per million or some other figure when looking at less frequently occurring offences. Administrative record: a collection of information about individual cases. Levels of aggregation: refers to how data are to be combined. Data element: specification about what exactly is to be collected. Counting procedure: a consensus on how to count units and data elements.
