This course introduces students to the quantitative and qualitative research methods used by crime and intelligence analysts. Topics such as measuring variables, assessing the reliability and validity of acquired intelligence, designing questionnaires, data preparation and coding, sampling and statistical analysis of quantitative data are covered. This course covers the major research and statistical techniques which criminologists,sociologists, and criminal justice researchers use to observe and interpret the social world. Part of this course focuses on issues related to the logic of research and research design and the general procedures for research design. Another part of the course will deal more specifically with a variety of particular techniques for gathering data: surveys; experiments and quasi-experiments; and field and observational methods. This course aims to make students more knowledgeable practitioners, consumers, and evaluators of social science data and research. Students should be able to perform a number of simple, though powerful analyses to describe data and reach conclusions based on these data. The five primary goals of statistics for this class are: (1) summarizing large and small data sets; (2) examining the integrity of large and small data sets; (3) determining which statistics best portrays the data; (4) comparing more than one variable to others; (5) applying statistics to problem solving and data driven decision-making through proper data collection and research design.
60% in FSCT 8436
3.0
Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:
Effective as of Spring/Summer 2006
FSCT 8431 is offered as a part of the following programs:
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