+1 862 207 3288 Smart Guns Sociology
Smart Guns, only a disruptive element or a way , alongside international arms trade treaties, to handle illicit small arms and light weapons (SALW) trafficking in West Africa.??
Project description
Assignment – Structured Research Proposal
TOPIC: ’’Smart Guns, only a disruptive element or a way , alongside international arms trade treaties, to handle illicit small arms and light weapons (SALW) trafficking in West Africa.’’
Complete a research proposal form not exceeding 3,000 words (excluding the reference list), to investigate a topic in a subject area relevant to your course. Your proposal should be guided by the methodological issues covered in the Research Methods module.
You are required to produce a structured research proposal, ensuring that you complete all elements of the Research Proposal assignment form (attachement 2). It is critically important that you carefully read all of this guidance before you start this assignment!!!!!!
Your proposal should emphasise how you intend to answer whatever research question you formulate – you should, therefore, devote most of your answer to theoretical and methodological issues. Please do not make the mistake of attempting to carry out a piece of empirical research and answer the research question within the proposal. Rather, you should provide a detailed and feasible account of what you would need to do in order to answer your research question, if you decided to pursue this research project for your dissertation.
Additional Guidance
If you are not planning(I am not planing) to undertake this proposed research for your dissertation, please make this clear in the proposal, and be sure your proposal provides a clear understanding of the resources that will be required to conduct the research, were the proposal to be accepted and commissioned, for example. This is very important in assessing the feasibility and quality of practical planning in your submission.
Even if you are not considering this topic for your dissertation, it would still be useful to think of the research in terms of a dissertation-sized project with similar time constraints, otherwise you may find that you have insufficient word space to outline a larger project. Remember, the two biggest limitations to carrying out research are time and money – it is likely you will have little of both so take this into account when you are designing your research project. Also consider carefully the issue of access – how likely is it that either companies or individuals are going to let you see documents/data or speak to them?
You must ensure that your proposal provides a concise ‘mini’ literature review to demonstrate your critical understanding of the subject area and previous research on this topic. You should try to discuss at least three previous pieces of research (Previous Research Findings section).
Do ensure that you demonstrate your understanding of social science research methods by providing supporting evidence from the research methods published literature (for your Research Methodology section). This is very important; you need to support and justify your chosen method and tools by referring to the academic literature.You must ensure that you demonstrate ethical awareness and give sufficient thought to any ethical issues. It is very rare in primary research, particularly concerning issues relating to crime, risk and security that there are no ethical issues.The word limit for your assignment is 3,000 words.
1). Introduction
This section should introduce the topic that you plan to research. You should detail the specific question you seek to answer (e.g. what is the nature of the relationship between CCTV installation and burglary reduction?) and set out a short list of clear aims and objectives.
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2). Previous Research Findings
You should provide a clear and detailed discussion of research that has previously been conducted in this area. You should outline their methods and research design and consider their findings.
Occasionally, you may plan to conduct research into a topic where little previous research has been conducted. If this is the case, you may need to widen your research parameters and you will need to find comparable research in either a closely related topic, or where methods used match your own. Do not simply repeat methods and findings, but ensure that you discuss these.
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3).Relevant Theoretical Perspectives/Framework
You should explain the perspective(s) that you will use to develop a theoretical framework to research and understand the problem and why you consider them to be most appropriate. You need to try to ensure that your proposed research is grounded in theory which will help you to structure and plan the research (as this will affect the research design, including your method(s) and how you analyse your findings). Looking at the theories and/or models that previous researchers in your topic area have used can help you with this. Note also that it is not always possible to find a theory that exactly matches your research problem. Therefore, you may need to take a more overarching view and look for theories that are relevant to the overall/general research topic area, rather than the specific research problem
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4). Research Methodology
You should outline at least two different types of research design that could be used for your proposed research. Each design should be feasible and it should be clear to the reader how the methods outlined in each design will enable you to achieve your overall research aim(s)There are often a number of different approaches that could be used to meet the overall aims and objectives of a research project so please consider the different ways in which you could research your chosen topic.
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Please enter Design 2 in below text box*
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Please enter Design 3 in below text box(optional)
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Please present your case for, and against, using each of these designs (supported by reference to the literature) in the below text box.*
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Please identify your preferred choice from the above possible designs, discuss your reasons for this and outline in detail the method(s) chosen in the below text box.*
You should outline the methods you propose to use (e.g. documentary evidence, questionnaires, interviews) and why you consider them to be most suitable for gathering the necessary information to address your research problem. Do ensure that you provide sufficient information and justification for your methods in this section regarding sampling, access, validity and reliability, and participant numbers, for example. It is vitally important that you make use of the extensive social science research methodology literature to explain the various methods available and to justify your choice. Not providing supporting references for this literature is likely to lead to you failing this assignment.
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5). Research Ethics
Please outline the ethical issues associated with your proposed research and what actions could be taken to address these. Ethics are an important consideration in research design and you should ensure that you have given sufficient thought to ethical issues. There are likely to be ethical issues relating to any type of primary research involving people, and also with certain types of documentary research. Again, ensure that you support this section with referenced evidence from the social research literature.
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6). Anticipated Problems
You should be able to anticipate problems in conducting your research and also be able to offer solutions as to ways of overcoming them (e.g. how to gain access to an appropriate sample).
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7). References
Please insert list of references in the below text box*
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Learning Resource : The Experimental Method
The experimental method is often considered to be the ‘gold standard’ of research, and as a result we sometimes give the mistaken impression that other methods are not scientific. This is not the case, but the experiment does have one real and very special characteristic that marks it out from the other methods available to us. The experiment is the best method for establishing the existence of a causal relationship between two variables – allowing us to decide whether or not a change in one variable results in a change in another variable.
The experimental method is a method of research that involves maximum input from the experimenter. The experimenter deliberately and actively manipulates one variable to establish what effect this change might have on the other variable. For example, we might be interested in the relationship between the size of a group of people and the extent to which members of that group offer assistance to someone who is apparently in distress. The two variables under examination are the size of the group and the amount of assistance offered. The experiment allows us to ask the question, does changing the size of the group result in a change in the amount of assistance the group members offer? (It would not make much sense to think about it the other way round – that is to investigate whether the amount of assistance offered affects the size of the group.) In an experiment we seek to exercise as much control as possible. That is we seek to hold constant as many other variables as possible. Such variables in our example might include: the gender of the participants and the person in distress, the nature of the distress, the expression of distress, the time of day, the level of lighting – an almost endless list. Control is achieved by conducting the experiment under controlled conditions where these variables can be fixed as much as possible. This leaves us with the two variables we are interested in. The variable that we think will be dependent on the other variable is known as the Dependent Variable. Thus in this example, as we think the amount of assistance offered will depend on the size of the group, the Dependent Variable is the amount of assistance offered. The other variable is referred to as the Independent Variable (these issues will be covered in more detail in later units of this module).
The best definition of an experiment is that it is a study in which we control as many variables as possible while manipulating the Independent Variable (the IV for short) and observe the effect of this change on the Dependent Variable (the DV). But for a true experiment there is one other important requirement. In a true experiment we must assign our participants randomly to our different levels of the IV. Thus each participant must have an equal chance of participating in the 3-person group condition and the 10-person group condition. This is important, because if this was not the case, we might introduce bias into the study. Suppose for a moment that you allowed your participants to choose which condition to participate in – you will immediately see that we have now confused (or confounded to use the technical term) the effect of group size with the sociability of the participants. That is, if we find that the bigger group offers less assistance than the smaller group then this might be because people who like big groups do not like helping others rather than anything to do with the group size per se.
So in an experiment we manipulate the IV, measure the effect on the DV, control all other variables and randomly assign the participants to the different levels of the IV.
If we do all this we can fairly safely conclude that any changes observed in the level of the DV are caused by the changes in the IV. Thus, we can infer a cause-effect relationship from
the results of this experiment. If our participants offered less assistance when we arranged for them to be members of groups of 10 than when we arranged for them to be members of groups of 3, we could safely infer that changes in group size caused changes in the assistance offered.
The experiment is really only a special type of observational study, but the fact that we observe the DV while both manipulating the IV and controlling all other variables makes it unique, and it is these characteristics that allow us to use the experimental method to establish the existence of a causal relationship between the IV and the DV. However, there are also distinct disadvantages associated with the experiment that make it an impractical and undesirable method in many fields of research. The major problem is that the level of control required is so high that we normally have to sacrifice a great deal of realism, and as a result our method has low ‘ecological validity’. Most experiments are conducted in laboratory settings to allow the experimenter to maintain control over a whole host of environmental and other variables. You may, justifiably, feel that the laboratory is not a good place to study natural behaviour.
Learning Resource : The Quasi-experimental Method
In social science research it is often not possible to conduct a true experiment. In particular it is often impossible to randomly assign participants to the levels of the IV. For example, suppose we are interested in the differences between the amount of assistance that men and women offer to a stranger in distress. An experimental design would require us to randomly assign our participants to either the ‘men’ or the ‘women’ condition. Even if we were allowed to undertake some rather radical surgery this would not be possible. Our participants arrive pre-assigned to our conditions. This is an example of a quasi-experimental study. Quasi-experimental studies are common in applied social science, and social scientists often blur the distinction between experimental and quasi-experimental studies. However, the difference is important because the quasi-experimental design does not allow us to make cause-effect inferences with the same degree of confidence as is possible with the experimental method. We always have to consider the possibility that it is some other variable related to the assignment of participants to the levels of the IV that has a causal relationship with the DV. For example, it might not be the sex of the participants that determines their willingness to assist the stranger, but some other variable correlated with sex, for example physical size. Quasi-experiments are still valuable scientific studies, but are rather more limited than experiments and the results from these studies must be interpreted with some added caution.
Learning Resource : Field Experiments
Field experiments are experiments that are conducted in an ordinary, natural environment – that is, away from the laboratory, although the physical location itself is not necessarily important. What is important is the extent to which it is possible to control other variables. Field experiments tend to be conducted in the ‘real world’ where the rigorous control of variables that can be achieved in the laboratory is not always possible. In fact many quasi-experiments (see above) are also field experiments, but field experiments like true experiments involve the random allocation of participants to conditions. Both field experiments and quasi-experiments are rather less reliable methods of determining cause-effect relationships than true experiments. The limiting factor for field experiments is that the lack of control may permit changes in other variables to influence the DV and so threaten the validity of conclusions about the cause-effect relationship between the IV and DV. For example if a researcher was conducting a field experiment to investigate the ability of participant ‘eyewitnesses’ to identify own- and other-race ‘suspects’, then s/he would need to ensure that the lighting and other conditions likely to influence the accuracy of the participants’ identifications did not vary systematically. It would be particularly damaging, for example, if the own-race identifications were tested on a day with better lighting than the other-race identifications. This disadvantage of field experiments has to be balanced against the increased realism or ecological validity afforded by this method.
Learning Resource : Non-Experimental Research Methods
There are a variety of valuable research methods that are collectively termed ‘non-experimental’. It is important to realise that just because these are non-experimental methods does not mean that they are not valid and valuable research methods. However, each of these methods has particular limitations which must be remembered when they are used. A particular limitation that applies to all of these methods is that we cannot safely infer a cause-effect relationship between the variables studied using these designs.
Learning Resource : Observational Methods
Observational research is ideally suited to the study of natural behaviour as it occurs in ‘real’ settings – that is outside the laboratory. Observational studies are often undertaken informally to allow a researcher to obtain an initial impression of the variables involved in a situation. For example, a social scientist interested in violence outside pubs might spend a few sessions simply observing people coming and going outside pubs to get a feel for the variables that might be involved in determining when fights break out. Alternatively, observational methods may be used in a rather more systematic fashion once a researcher has a more focused notion of the variables involved. Here our researcher might spend 14 nights observing behaviour outside a selection of pubs and might particularly note the number of people outside the pub at any time and the ratio of men and women present. Finally, observational research might be even more systematic, involving careful planning by the researcher who has now identified that s/he wishes to record the number of men and women present outside the pub in the 5-minute period immediately preceding a fight. The researcher will have to decide how to classify who is present outside the pub (as opposed to walking past) and will probably need to check the reliability of his/her observations.
An obvious advantage of observational research lies in its high level of ecological validity – that is, it is far more realistic that the heavily controlled research that takes place in the laboratory. By comparison, however, observational research is severely lacking in control and thus we need to be very careful in drawing causal inferences from our observation. For example, even if after very careful observation we have established that it is always the case that 5 minutes before a fight there is a mix of men and women outside the pub, with the men being in the majority, we can still not conclude safely that it is this mix that causes the fight; for example it could be that this is the average composition of a crowd who like to come and watch a fight that they somehow know is about to occur.
Learning Resource : Survey Research
Surveys are mechanisms for collecting the self-reported observations of participants (or respondents as they are often called in survey research). Surveys can be administered either verbally, when they are called interviews, or in written form when they are called questionnaires. Surveys also vary along the dimension from Structured to Unstructured (with Semi-Structured somewhere between these extremes). Structured interviews or questionnaires have a rigid sequence of pre-scripted questions that are always posed in the same order. Unstructured survey methods are designed to allow the researcher to be responsive to leads provided by the respondent and so the questions and their order is not so rigidly pre determined. Surveys can involve either Closed or Open questions (or ‘items’). Closed items are those where the respondent is given only a set number of possible responses (for example, yes/no or multiple-choice questions). Open questions allow the respondent to provide their own response.
A major advantage of this method is that it allows for the rapid collection and computer-assisted processing of large volumes of data – however, it can be difficult to design valid survey instruments. It is all too easy to bias an interview or a survey through the wording of the questions. For example I suspect that the following two questions on the same topic would generate very different responses:
– Do you think dog owners should be allowed to walk their dogs in public parks where they foul the grass where young children play and thus put the children at risk of blindness and other medical conditions? Yes/No
Or
– Do you think responsible pet owners should be allowed to exercise dogs in appropriate public places? Yes/No
The researcher also has to design the survey items very carefully to avoid questions that are difficult to understand (for example ‘Do you think that it is untrue that….’), make assumptions that might not be true or be offensive (such as ‘What is your husband’s occupation?’) or that have one answer that is obviously more socially desirable than the alternatives (e.g. ‘How often do you beat your children?’). Once a valid survey instrument has been designed, the next issue to consider is the selection of respondents – the sample. If the sample does not adequately reflect the population you wish to know about, then the results will not be applicable to that population. A particular problem here is that of low response rates – if only a proportion of people respond to your survey, there is a danger that the respondents have pre-selected themselves on the basis of some particular interest in the topic or other characteristic (for example, it has been shown that left-handed people are more likely than right-handers to return a questionnaire relating to handedness). Low response rates are likely to lead to very unrepresentative samples.
Learning Resource : Archival Research, Secondary Data, and Other Unobtrusive Measures of Behaviour
As we move through life we leave traces. For example, government and other archives will contain details of our birth, our health, our education, our income, our employment history and many other aspects of our lives. This information can provide a valuable source for unobtrusive research. For example, the massive growth in the use of email communication opens up a massive range of possible research topics to the social scientist. Many people send dozens of emails a day. A social scientist could use these messages to ‘reconstruct’ that person’s day and answer an enormous range of interesting questions. This type of research can be very time consuming – especially as it often involves ‘content analysis’. Content analysis is the name given to any technique designed to allow the researcher to make valid inferences by identifying specific characteristics of a message. Such characteristics might be particular phrases or ideas in written or spoken material. For example, a content analysis of emails might involve an analysis of the material in which the sender refers to the demands of their job. Content analysis is a very time consuming process and can be open to biases of the sort described earlier – unless researchers are very careful, they are likely to ‘find’ content that confirms their beliefs and to ‘miss’ content that disconfirms this belief. An additional problem is that the process of selective archiving or selective destruction of records can bias an archive.
Learning Resource : Case Studies
A case study involves the collection of data from a single individual. This normally involves intensive investigation of one individual who is selected for this study on the basis of some special attribute that makes him or her particularly interesting to the researcher. This method can give very important insights. For example it was widely used by the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud as he worked to understand the human mind better and today is adopted by cognitive neuropsychologists who study the precise pattern of cognitive impairments that follow brain injury. Detailed reports of the pattern of deficits suffered by a patient are closely examined by neuropsychologists who can use these data to both construct theories about the role of certain brain regions in particular cognitive functions, and ‘test’ existing theories against these new ‘data’.
However, there are problems associated with this method and scientists adopting this approach need to be particularly careful before drawing any inferences about cause-effect relationships on the basis of such data. In addition, researchers need to remember that the data can easily be biased by inaccurate reporting or recording of the details of the single case. These criticisms aside, a major strength of the case study approach is that it sometimes affords us an insight into a unique and particularly interesting situation. The knowledge gained can often then lead to further research using other approaches.
Learning Resource : Triangulation
We have seen that no one research method is ‘best’ in all situations, and each has flaws. Each method brings with it a chance of making a particular type of error. Fortunately these errors are not the same for all methods, and so if we can apply a variety of different methods, we should be able to get a more accurate view of the true picture. Allow me to draw an analogy with navigation at sea.
If we know that each of our methods will give us an indication of the ‘true’ state of the universe, but that each will bring with it a variable and unpredictable error, then the obvious thing to do is to take as many measures as possible using as many different methodologies as possible. If they all indicate a broadly similar finding then we can be confident that we have achieved a fairly accurate view of the universe. We might not know the exact truth, but we will have a sufficiently accurate estimate to work with – so long as we remember the errors inherent in our methods. The social scientist, so long as s/he is constantly aware of the likely sources of error in his or her observations, can use them to make safe inferences. Thus, there is virtue in using a variety of research methodologies.
Learning Resource : What is a literature review?
In the words of Fink (1998: 3), a literature review is ‘a systematic, explicit, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and interpreting the existing body of recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners’. For academics and scholars the potential body of recorded work is vast indeed. The world is literally filled with information and the amount of information is increasing at an incredible pace on a daily basis. The current version of the British Books in Print has over three million entries, and each day, hundreds if not thousands of new titles are being published. Added to this there are tens of thousands of specialist journals and magazines which publish on a regular basis, not to mention the thousands of mainstream media newspapers and magazines. Added to the growing pile is the output of radio and television and the truly boggling amount of information which is added to the Internet each hour. In short, the world is drowning in information and this poses particularly serious problems for potential researchers.
As we shall see, good research depends on at least a decent knowledge of what has gone before. But with mountains of new information accumulating so quickly these days, trying to stay abreast of developments becomes an extremely demanding task. For those who need access to information, be it for academic, professional or other reasons, it is a major challenge to ‘keep up with the literature’. However, this idea of the need to keep up to date with the literature on a continual basis may be one that is somewhat overplayed. For example, interviews with some of the world’s most productive (in terms of research output) and influential researchers in the social sciences has revealed that the typical pattern of working of these eminent figures was to access the literature on a strictly ‘need to know’ basis. In other words, when a specific piece of research or writing demanded up-to-date knowledge, they would have an information ‘blitz’ to find the necessary literature. Nevertheless, it is the case that there are times when those engaged in academic study need access to published information and have to find the necessary journals, books and so on, and then must attempt to make sense of the information gathered. A literature review is simply the end product of this process of accessing, reading, summarising and integrating published information. Further, it is standard practice do a literature review when writing up any research work. Thus, for example, the introduction to an empirical paper in a journal will very probably contain a succinct review of the relevant literature; the introduction to a Master’s dissertation will give a fuller account of the relevant literature; while the introduction to a PhD thesis will contain a substantially longer review of the literature.
Learning Resource : Reasons for conducting a literature review:
1.An aid to the area of research
• Helps identify and flesh out the research topic: What? Where? Why?
• Helps set specific research question(s): identification, revision, focus, definition
• Helps establish any hypotheses/propositions that should be tested, and aids in theory building
2. An aid to designing and doing research
• Introduces methodological issues and debates
• Provides insights into past practices and outcomes
• Helps with research design: describes different strategies, methods and procedures, levels of analysis, exploratory or explanatory, pros and cons, etc.
3. An aid to analysis
• Existing theory (range, type, ideological standpoint, etc.)
• Will the research be hypotheses testing or theory building?
• What analytical ‘tools’ and practices are most appropriate?
4. An aid to findings and conclusions
• Style of presentation that should be used
• Are the findings specific or generalisable?
• The level of analysis/abstraction that should be used
How significant are the research results (e.g. does it simply reinforce existing knowledge or is it ground breaking)?
Learning Resource : What Issues Should a Review Address?
Obviously, the content of any particular literature review depends a lot on the topic of the research, so let’s use a research topic example, say the accuracy of recall of children as witnesses, what specific topics might reasonably be found in a review of such a subject?
Once the relevant studies on children as witnesses have been identified and then selected for review, taking into account any exclusion criteria the reviewer might wish to apply, the literature review may seek to present some broad conclusions as to the accuracy of children as witnesses. However, the findings from the empirical research will need to be set against a background of methodological issues. Thus, the empirical findings regarding the accuracy of children as witnesses may vary as a function of sampling: children from certain backgrounds, or with certain types of experience, or of different educational ability may perform significantly differently as witnesses. Similarly, the method of stimulus presentation in different empirical studies might be important: for example, does accuracy of memory vary between live and videotaped presentations?; is there a difference in ability to be found when the children are observers or actually involved in the incident?
Yet further, there may be differences in research findings according to the type of questioning employed with the children. Thus, children’s ability to remember what they have witnessed may vary as a function of open versus closed questioning or narrative versus structured recall. Next there are issues of reliability and validity of measurement to consider: do the experimental designs of the various studies incorporate a style of measurement that will detect variations in the accuracy of memory? (A typical difficulty in this type of memory research is to use a methodology such as a highly structured questioning procedure that is too blunt, producing a ‘floor effect’ of uniformly low recall. Alternatively, an open questioning procedure, such as free narrative recall, can produce a ‘ceiling effect’ of uniformly high recall.) Yet further, not all studies will study the same exact variables, and reviewers must pick their way through a range of different ways of studying the same phenomenon. Finally, different studies will use different statistical methods, leaving the reviewer to try to make sense of experimental results that come from styles of different statistical analysis.
As is plain from the above, the reviewer’s task is far from simple: if you consider that the reviewer may typically be trying to make sense of more than one hundred studies, then the magnitude and complexity of the task becomes increasingly daunting.
Learning Resource : Literature Review Dos and Don’ts
Dos:
5. Identify and discuss the key relevant landmark studies on the topic
6. Include as much up-to-date material as possible
7. Check the details, such as how names are spelled
8. Examine your own biases and make them clear
9. Critically evaluate the material and show your analysis
10. Use extracts and examples to justify your analysis and argument
11. Be analytical, evaluative and critical and show this in your review
12. Manage the information: have a system for records management
13. Make your review worth reading; explain why the topic is interesting
Don’ts:
• Omit classic works or discuss core ideas without proper reference
• Discuss outdated or only old materials
• Misspell names or get the date of publication wrong
• Use concepts to impress or without definition
• Use jargon and discriminatory language to justify a parochial standpoint
• Produce a list of items, even if annotated; a list is not a review
• Accept any position at face value or believe everything that is written
Only produce a description of the content of what you have read
Learning Resource 1: Meta Analysis
Izzo and Ross (1990) offer a concise description of meta-analysis as ‘A technique that enables a reviewer to objectively and statistically analyse the findings of each study as data points . . . . The procedure of meta-analysis involves collection of relevant studies, using the summary statistics from each study as units of analysis, and then analysing the aggregated data in a quantitative manner using statistical tests’ (p. 135). Thus, with meta-analysis the conclusions are based on the quantitative statistical analysis of the pooled findings of relevant individual studies.
The main statistic used in meta-analysis is called the effect size. Simply, the effect size is an index of the magnitude of difference between two groups, typically an experimental (or treatment) group and a control group.
There are two important points to make at this point: first, not all the pooled studies in a meta-analysis will use the same research methodology; second, the pooled studies are likely to be conducted in different settings, with differing populations and using different methods of treatment. While calculating overall treatment effects across all the studies is informative, knowledge of the difference between ‘high effect’ and ‘low effect’ studies is potentially of much greater practical and theoretical significance. The technique of meta-analysis allows the reviewer both to control for the effects of different methodologies and to search for high and low effect studies. In practice this fine grained analysis is achieved by coding studies across a number of factors and then controlling for these factors in the analysis. At this point, almost inevitably, the statistics become increasingly more complex both in concept and execution.
It is clear that meta-analysis is a time-consuming, statistically complex endeavour and, again as might be expected, like all research methods, meta-analysis is not without its critics. Sharpe (1997) notes three specific criticisms of meta-analysis. First, the ‘apples and oranges’ criticism that refers to mixing together in the meta-analysis studies that are so dissimilar in nature that any results produced by the analysis are meaningless; second, the ‘file drawer’ criticism of selecting for analysis only published studies and hence potentially ignoring those that remain filed away because they do not produce the ‘right’ results; third, the criticism of ‘garbage in garbage out’, in which poorly designed studies exert a disproportionate influence within a meta-analysis. Of course, each of these criticisms can be answered: first by careful filtering of studies for inclusion in meta-analysis thereby reducing the apples and oranges effect; second by trawling for a range of source material, including unpublished as well as published sources; third, by coding within the analysis to allow for the relative methodological strength of different studies, so that more weight is given to better designed studies, thereby reducing the ‘garbage in garbage out’ effect.
Learning Resource : Research Proposals
In order to ensure well planned and structured research the process of writing a research proposal is required in many circumstances. In academia, students are required to produce a research proposal to describe their planned dissertations and academics are required to submit research proposals to potential funding councils. These proposals will be scrutinised and assessed to determine whether the proposed research is well thought out, feasible, and likely to produce valid and reliable results. The act of writing a research proposal requires careful consideration of the various stages of your research, and the obstacles that are likely to present themselves throughout the course of the study. This preparation is crucial for conducting high quality research, and there are a number of areas which must be considered in any good proposal.
Learning Resource : Identifying a research problem
There are fundamentally two types of research problem that can be identified: pure research that involves developing theories and applied research that involves testing existing theories in the real world. However, it is often easier to consider slightly wider definitions of research using the following headings:
° Exploratory research – which involves investigating a new problem or issue;
° Testing-out research – which involves determining the limits of the application of exploratory research work; and
° Problem-solving research – which involves starting out with a practical problem from the real world and applying the available knowledge and intellectual resources to solving the problem.
Intensive researchsets out to identify how causal processes work in a particular situation; this approach leads to the familiar and popular case study approach to research work. Extensive research, on the other hand, sets out to describe and explain, usually through statistical analysis, how large groups of people who have, for example, similar perceptions, attitudes or social climates, behave under certain defined conditions. There are many arguments for and against each of these research approaches and as is normally the case in arguments of this type, the viewpoints are strongly influenced by which camp the protagonists reside in. Researchers advocating extensive research will argue, for example, that the intensive research approach fails to produce objective results that are relevant to anything other than the specific conditions in which the research was carried out. However, researchers advocating intensive research will argue that their research work solves real problems in the real world.
Much research carried out in the pure and social sciences is inter-disciplinary because it involves working and understanding theories and problems from many social and scientific disciplines. Frequently, research projects will require the researchers to take into account social, moral and legislative aspects of the organisational setting in which the research is conducted. Whilst this certainly makes the research work very interesting, it does require researchers to broaden their views about what issues are both relevant and important to a research project. This will often require the researcher to consider several sources of information and/or data and several research techniques in order to support the project.
Learning Resource : Selecting an appropriate methodology
Once you have identified the research problem, and research questions that you wish to address the next stage of the proposal is to consider the available research methodologies and select the most appropriate method. The selection of method will depend on a number of practical factors such as access to data and participants, the time available for the project, and the skills of the researcher. However the most important feature of your chosen method is to ensure that it addresses your research questions.
Learning Resource : Practical considerations
Another important aspect of planning research projects is to consider the practical issues that might arise during the research. This is of particular concern for applied research, and criminological research is no exception. By anticipating this potential issues, the researcher will be better equipped to deal with them if they do arise.
° Access to data
° Time management
°Anticipated problems
Learning Resource : Access to data
One of the most common obstacles in criminological research is access to data. For a research project to be successful, the researcher must have access to the data required within the limiting issue of the total resources available. It would be difficult to study the social behaviour of crofters in the Outer Hebrides if the researcher worked and lived in London because the time and cost of travel to undertake the observational assessments would be prohibitive. Similarly, it would be inappropriate to attempt to review the UK national crime statistics within the 20th Century, during a six-month research project, because the time required to access the information would be far in excess of the time available. Consideration should also be given to the research sample and to whether this is representative of the total population covered by the research question. In some projects, it may be necessary to resort to statistical tests in order to confirm that the sample employed is valid. A further issue is to ensure that the variables measured are both relevant and representative of the research question. In a project measuring employees’ job satisfaction, it would clearly be unacceptable simply to rely upon answers to a question of whether respondents were satisfied with their level of remuneration because job satisfaction covers a much broader range of issues than monetary reward.
An important issue in some research projects is the availability, per se, of the data required. A research project investigating whether there was a relationship between a bank manager’s willingness to arrange a home visit to a client in order to discuss investment options and the client’s bank balance would prove difficult for reasons related to the release of personal financial data about the bank’s clients. Similarly, a research project related to an assessment of the motivating factors behind large-scale fraud in the banking sector may prove difficult through lack of access to a suitable sample of successful and/or unsuccessful fraud cases.
Access issues need to be identified early in the planning stages of a research project, so that steps can be taken to try and secure the necessary access. This might involve additional applications to be submitted to organisations (e.g. the NHS, or NOMS) or negotiations with gatekeepers who have access to the data that is needed. These additional steps can be very time consuming, so to avoid long delays to research projects this needs to be addressed very early in the process.
Learning Resource : Time Management
Any project requires consideration of time management, and careful planning in order to ensure that the goals of the project can be reached in the available timeframe. Research is no exception, and so a good research proposal should consider the feasibility of the project relative to the time available.
The issue of time management is often influenced greatly by the methodology which has been selected by the researcher. For example, an extremely large-scale survey design which requires thousands of respondents will take substantially longer than a smaller survey design. Likewise, conducting interviews and the subsequent transcribing and analysis of the qualitative data is very time consuming and this needs to be considered at the planning stages.
Underestimating the time required for conducting research can lead to projects which do not finish on time and to budget, and in some cases the entire project can be at risk of not being completed at all. To avoid this, realistic consideration of time management is required, and including detailed research timelines in proposals can demonstrate that these issues have been carefully considered by the researcher.
Learning Resource : Anticipated Problems
A good research proposal will also include a section in which the researcher demonstrates that they are aware of other potential problems that might arise during their research, and have thought about ways to potentially mitigate these issues. When you are planning applied research which relies on cooperation from people or agencies in the ‘real world’, which much criminological research is, it is crucial to anticipate problems which might occur and provide evidence in a proposal that these can be overcome.
Learning Resource : Approaches to Ethical Decision-Making:There was little attention paid to ethical issues in social scientific research in the 19th Century. According to Barnes (1979) this was mostly to do with the methodological stance of social thinkers at the time, that is, the dominance of the ‘natural science paradigm’.
Compared with the natural sciences, however, the growth of interest in ethics among social scientists has been a relatively recent development. Some have argued that a concern with ethics began following the Second World War when the atrocious medical experiments carried out by Nazi German physicians in concentration camps led to the Nuremberg code of medical ethics for human experimentation. However, Barnes (1979: 22) argues that the burst of interest in ethics has stemmed less from ‘diffusion’ of the natural sciences and more from:
… an historical shift in the balance of power between the four parties to the research process, and from the institutionalisation of social inquiry in the ambient culture of industrialised societies. It is the outcome of a movement away from positivism towards a hermeneutic view of knowledge, and from an evaluation of knowledge as a source of enlightenment to an evaluation in terms of power and property.
Thus, he argues that the movement away from positivism or the ‘natural science paradigm’ has engendered certain changes within the social structure, such that citizens have become closer to scientists, and the power of gatekeepers and sponsors has increased over that of scientists. He further argues that:
… ethical problems encountered in natural sciences and, to a lesser extent, in medicine relate to the application of scientific knowledge in the real world rather than to the process of scientific discovery in the laboratory. … In social science at the present time ethical problems are posed by the process of social inquiry itself at least as much as by the application of the scientific findings of these inquiries.
Learning Resource : Ethics and the Research Process
Like value judgements, ethics have the potential to impinge at every stage of the research process – although they are often associated with the data collection stage. As in the case of value judgements, there are no absolute ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ethical answers. However, social scientists, like other groups, are able to impose standards of conduct on those who wish to join their ranks. If certain standards of conduct are generally accepted, for example, by the publishers of social science journals, then one will find it difficult to disseminate work which has not been conducted in the approved manner. Along these lines students conducting research work as part of their studies are required to have their plans vetted by Ethics Committees, a practice adopted by the Department of Criminology.
An important ethical principle is the doctrine of ‘informed consent’. Subjects should consent freely to involvement in research, and in order to do so they must be told the precise nature of the research, who is doing it and what the findings will be used for. This requires research participants to have the research explained to them in terms which are meaningful. This may apply particularly to research with minors, where, in addition, consent may need to be gained by proxy (e.g. parents or guardians). However, in certain circumstances it may be detrimental to research projects if participants are fully aware of the objectives of the research, for example, in experiments or field research. Similarly, in certain types of participant observation studies the researcher may have to choose between using covert methods or not doing research. In such cases, therefore, it may be appropriate to debrief and gain the informed consent of participants at the end rather than the beginning of research.
While the quest for knowledge is a worthy goal in its own right, some consider this an insufficient justification for intruding into the lives of people without their full and ‘informed consent’. Others justify their intrusions by arguing that the knowledge gained can be used to improve the lives of research subjects; however, many would argue that this is a dubious justification.
Ethical issues are, therefore, moral dilemmas which relate to the protection of subjects versus the freedom of social scientists to conduct research and disseminate findings. In recent years various professional associations have devised their own codes of ethics, for example, the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the British Society of Criminology. These codes are useful guides which can alert us to important issues. However, it is important to recognise the distinction between ethical guides, which provide basic moral principles, and ‘situational’ ethics, which are more difficult to predict, anticipate or prevent and can arise within the research context itself. We will now examine the main ethical principles in relation to different research methods.
Learning Resource : Ethics and Different Research MethodsYou should now be aware of some of the main principles used to differentiate between ethical and unethical research. We shall now consider the ways in which these principles are applied to different techniques of research. The following types of common social science research methods will be considered:
° Experimental research
° Survey research
° Nonreactive or unobtrusive research
° Field research
Learning Resource : Experimental Research
Experimental research is part of the quantitative tradition of social research and is usually associated with psychology and social psychology. It is considered positivist in its orientation and is particularly suited to research problems which allow the researcher to manipulate and control certain conditions in the pursuit of identifying relationships between independent (cause) and dependent (effect) variables. Through its use of statistical techniques, such as correlation coefficients and multivariate analysis, it seeks to establish causal relations. However, not all experiments take place in a controlled environment: for example, field experiments are conducted in natural settings as opposed to artificial ones.
Ethical considerations are a significant issue in experimental research because it is an ‘intrusive’ form of research that ‘interferes’ with people’s lives. In contrast to field experiments (based in ‘natural’ settings), the classic experiment involves placing research subjects in an artificial setting and attempting to manipulate their thoughts, feelings or behaviour to see how they respond. A classic example is Milgram’s obedience study (1974), which sought to discover how the horrors of the Holocaust under the Nazis could have occurred by examining the strength of social pressure to obey authority. Milgram was a social psychologist at Yale University who conducted a series of experiments between 1960 and 1964. Volunteers were recruited and were falsely led to believe that they were involved in an experiment on the effects of punishment on learning. The volunteers were recruited and asked to sign ‘informed consent’ forms. They were then assigned to the role of ‘teacher’ to test a ‘pupil’s’ memory of word lists and administer electric shocks (increased up to 450 volts) to pupils (actually experimental accomplices) when they made mistakes. The teacher could not actually see the pupil, who was situated in another room but they could hear the pupil. The equipment was rigged so that the pupil would not actually receive electric shocks but would feign pain upon receiving the shocks. The true aim of the study was to observe the extent to which subjects obeyed the authority of the experimenter.
The study demonstrated a surprisingly high percentage of subjects who would administer electric shocks to very dangerous levels. Ethical concerns centred around the use of deception and the emotional stress experienced by subjects. Critics argued that the experiments should have been abandoned at an early stage as soon as it became evident that participants were experiencing undue stress. Milgram, however, counter-argued that subjects were fully debriefed after the research and were free to withdraw from the experiment at any stage. He further argued that the ethicality of the experiment was less to do with the deception involved and more to do with the results obtained. Bickman and Zarantonello (1978) found support for this contention when they presented research subjects with four different written accounts of the Milgram experiment. They found that subjects were much more likely to designate an experiment unethical when the results indicated a high degree of obedience and were far less likely to do so when the results showed a low level of obedience.
A major ethical issue in experimental research is the issue of deception that is so common to this method. Researchers must be careful not to place participants in dangerous or anxiety-inducing situations. They are not inanimate objects but human beings and should therefore be treated with dignity and respect. The major strength of experimental research is the ability to exercise control over research subjects but, paradoxically, the more control one has, the greater the likelihood of ethical problems.
Learning Resource : Survey Research
Survey research is probably the most widely used social research technique. It can be traced back to the census, for example, the Domesday Book, which was a famous census of England conducted by William the Conqueror (1085-1086). The survey approach has been developed within the positivist tradition of social science and facilitates the collection, classification, codification and quantification of large amounts of data.
As you will see later in this module, surveys can generally be administered in one of three ways: the face-to-face interview, mail or online questionnaire and telephone interview. They are appropriate for finding out about people’s self-reported opinions, beliefs, attitudes and past or present behaviour.
The advantages and disadvantages of survey research will vary according to the way in which it is administered. However, one of the major strengths of this research technique lies in its ability to collect large (or small) amounts of data from a large section of the population. Once the data have been collected the method allows for precise comparisons to be made between respondents (and responses). The method is also considered extremely reliable.
The major ethical issue in survey research relates to the issue of privacy. Like the experimental method, the survey method is also intrusive as it probes into the lives of people, often in pursuit of private and personal information. Researchers involved in conductingany type of research are always confronted with the question: ‘Why should they talk to me?’ Experience has shown, however, that respondents are more likely to agree to take part in research when they are assured that information provided will be treated in confidence and they will remain anonymous.
A second issue concerns the principle of ‘informed consent’. Respondents have the right to participate ‘voluntarily’, to refuse to answer questions at any time, and/or withdraw from the research altogether. Experience also shows that researchers will encounter fewer problems from respondents if their questions are well developed (always piloted) and carefully constructed. Participants should be treated with due respect and questions must be asked sensitively. Researchers should always try to minimise anxiety or discomfort to respondents.
Learning Resource : Nonreactive or Unobtrusive Research
Both the survey method and the experiment are reactive or obtrusive techniques: that is, the people who are being studied are aware this is the case. Researchers are in direct contact with respondents (close proximity) and this can introduce both personal and procedural reactivity into the research context, for example, interview bias. Examples of nonreactive (unobtrusive) measures include: content analysis and secondary analysis of existing statistics, documents and survey data. This type of research does not involve the researcher in close physical proximity with respondents and raises a different set of ethical questions.
The major ethical implications of nonreactive methods concern the use of data collected by others and the rights of respondents to privacy and confidentiality. A second issue concerns the socially (and politically) constructed nature of official statistics: political and social values can influence the generation of secondary data and this should be treated with caution.
Learning Resource : Field Research
The field researcher becomes deeply immersed in the life of the group, organisation or community under study and this personal involvement raises a host of ethical dilemmas. A classic example of a piece of covert research which caused much debate and controversy was the study by Humphreys (1970) of male homosexual encounters in public toilets. The researcher adopted the role of voyeur (‘watchqueen’) and observed men engaging in ‘secret’ homosexual activities. The ethical problem at this stage of the research was that participants were not given the opportunity to consent freely. However, more controversially, Humphreys followed the men to their cars, took down their car licence number plates and about one year later approached the men to interview them in their own homes. This was under the guise of a different research project (a social health survey). The study raised problems concerning the ethical issues of consent and deception. However, it was also criticised for putting the men at risk of criminal prosecution, extortion and disruption to their family lives.
We will now discuss the main three ethical issues/dilemmas that arise during field studies:
° Deception
° Confidentiality
° Involvement with criminals/ deviants
Learning Resource : Deception
Deception can arise in field research in a number of ways. For example, in the case of ‘covert’ research, participants are not aware that they are taking part in the study. However, more often than not some participants will be aware of their involvement in the research
(overt) but it may become very tedious having to inform everybody you meet during the course of the study. Moreover, some researchers pose the question of whether field research (like daily life) is inevitably interactionally deceitful (Punch, 1986). During the course of research some participants will inevitably be deceived. In addition, once researchers have gained access they need to develop a suitable role and ‘good enough’ field relations. Sometimes a researcher will adopt a particular role in order to gain acceptance, ‘fit in’ or ‘pass’. This can also lead to people deception.
The most heated debate to have emerged in relation to the ethics of field research has centred on the debate between ‘covert’ and ‘overt’ research methods. Those who favour covert research methods (Douglas, 1976; Johnson, 1975) argue that the ends justify the means: that is, some areas of social life would be excluded from analysis if it were not used. This is the view of the ‘conflict methodologists’, who argue that deception is acceptable and legitimate because the explicit purpose of social research is to expose the powerful. Thus, Douglas (1979) vehemently protests against the use of codes of ethics because he argues they are a ‘deceit and a snare’.
Others disagree with the use of covert research methods (Erikson, 1967; Bulmer, 1982b) and argue that it contravenes the principle of ‘informed consent’, undermining any trust between the researcher and the researched and breaching a subject’s right to privacy. According to Erikson (1967) covert research is ‘bad science’. This dilemma has encouraged a debate over whether sociologists should, in some instances, adopt a policy of ‘non-interference’: that is, should some areas of social life be exempt from study? Moreover, if a researcher uses covert participant observation they will usually have to become a member of the group and this can lead to further ethical dilemmas. For example, Patrick (1973) became a member of a violent gang in Glasgow in the late 1960s, hiding his true status from all but one of the gang members. He changed the names of those he wrote about and waited a number of years before publishing his findings in order to avoid any possibility that they would be identified. Nevertheless, he still felt compelled to publish under a pseudonym (perhaps this was in his own self-interest, as once his identity was exposed to the rest of the gang they beat him up). Field research often places researchers in difficult and uncompromising situations whereby ethical dilemmas are much harder to anticipate, predict or control.
Learning Resource : Confidentiality & Involvement with Criminals/Deviants
During any field research study a researcher will often have access to a multitude of private and confidential data/information. As in other research methods it is important to take all the necessary precautions to protect the privacy of all members of the group and to make use of pseudonyms in field notes and other documentation.
Doing field research with criminals and deviants raises special difficulties for researchers as they will always be likely to come into possession of what Fetterman (1989) terms ‘guilty knowledge’ or what Klockars (1979) calls getting ‘dirty hands’. This raises a series of interlinked ethical questions:
° To what extent should researchers become involved in such illegal activities?
° To what extent does a researcher’s inaction condone illegitimate/illegal behaviour?
° To what extent should researchers be protected from the legal state apparatus?
Learning Resource : Conclusions
Social scientists, like other professionals, have developed their own code of ethics, but these are not generally as inflexible as those laid down for doctors and lawyers. In Australia, however, research is no longer simply guided by ‘codes’ but has become part of the legal structure (Sarantakos, 1994). The academic freedom previously enjoyed by researchers is now controlled by strict rules and regulations such that research can be a very fraught process.
It is up to individual researchers to accept responsibility for their actions. Codes can operate as useful guides, but researchers should also rely on academic convention and consultation with academic peers. They should always consider the ethical principles of privacy, harm, deception, anonymity, confidentiality and consent. In conclusion, in terms of the debate between ‘conflict methodologists’ and those who support the strict adherence to ‘codes of ethics’, a balance somewhere in the middle might be the best solution. Thus, researchers should not feel they have the right to ride roughshod over the rights of research participants in their quest for knowledge and must take these ethical principles seriously. However, perhaps we should question rigid ‘codes’ of practice, for they may be detrimental to the project of social science, especially if they do inadvertently protect the powerful rather than the weak (Galliher, 1982). The British Society of Criminology code of ethics also alerts researchers to the need to consider the ethical implications of their work for the wider discipline of criminology.
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