Criminal Justice
Each discussion answer must be a minimum of 400 words. Will be checked using turnitin for plagiarism.
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#1
Identify the key tenets of qualitative methods used in criminal justice research.
- What do you see as the most critical aspects of qualitative research methods?
- How do these key tenets of qualitative research assist us when evaluating criminal justice data?
- How do these key tenets contribute to successfully interpreting published research findings?
- How would you apply these tenets to answer a criminal justice research question?
#2
Discuss the salient aspects of the six steps of qualitative analysis suggested for use by the author. (I have wrote the 6 steps below for you that was taken word for word out of the book for you to elaborate on in your own words)
- What are these six steps and what are their most salient aspects?
- How do these steps assist us when evaluating criminal justice data?
- How do these steps contribute to successfully interpreting published research findings?
- How would you apply these steps to answer a criminal justice research question?
Step 1. Organize and prepare the data for analysis. This involves transcribing interviews, optically scanning material, typing up field notes, cataloguing all of the visual material, and sorting and arranging the data into different types depending on the sources of information.
Step 2. Read or look at all the data. This first step provides a general sense of the information and an opportunity to reflect on its overall meaning. What general ideas are participants saying? What is the tone of the ideas? What is the impression of the overall depth, credibility, and use of the information? Sometimes qualitative researchers write notes in margins of transcripts or observational field notes, or start recording general thoughts about the data at this stage. For visual data, a sketchbook of ideas can begin to take shape.
Step 3. Start coding all of the data. Coding is the process of organizing the data by bracketing chunks (or text or image segments) and writing a word representing a category in the margins (Rossman & Rallis, 2012). It involves taking text data or pictures gathered during data collection, segmenting sentences (or paragraphs) or images into categories, and labeling those categories with a term, often a term based in the actual language of the participant (called an in vivo term).
Step 4. Use the coding process to generate a description of the setting or people as well as categories or themes for analysis. Description involves a detailed rendering of information about people, places, or events in a setting. Researchers can generate codes for this description. This analysis is useful in designing detailed descriptions for case studies, ethnographies, and narrative research projects. Use the coding as well for generating a small number of themes or categories— perhaps five to seven themes for a research study.
Step 5. Advance how the description and themes will be represented in the qualitative narrative. The most popular approach is to use a narrative passage to convey the findings of the analysis.
Step 6. A final step in data analysis involves making an interpretation in qualitative research of the findings or results. Asking, “What were the lessons learned?” captures the essence of this idea (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). These lessons could be the researcher’s personal interpretation, couched in the understanding that the inquirer brings to the study from a personal culture, history, and experiences.
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