CRIM 320 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Descriptive Statistics, Federal Records, National Crime Victimization Survey
9 Apr 2020
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Ch 1: why the criminal justice researcher uses statistics. Social and behavioural scientist attempt to explain and predict human behaviour. Take "educated guesses" about the nature of crime and justice. Variables: any characteristics that varies from one individual/group to another or from one point in time to another. Hypotheses usually contain an independent variable (cause) and a dependent variable (effect) Ex: gender of person who gave birth to you is female. Social scientist consider the mother"s gender a given and not worthy to study bc it never varies. Mother"s age, race, and mental health are variables. In any group of individuals, they will differ from person to person and can be the key to greater understanding of the development of the child. To specify variables, researcher must also determine the unit of observation for the research. Unit of observation: the element that is being studied or observed.
