Research Methods in Criminal Justice – Theory and Philosophy

Brought to you by The American Public Safety Training Institute (TAPSTI) www.tapsti.org, this 2 hour session will review the work of Dr. Peter Kraska and Dr. W. Lawrence Neuman in their excellent textbook entitled “Criminal Justice and Criminology Research Methods” (2012, 2nd ed.).  This first seminar helps answer some basic questions about knowledge, how it is constructed and what it has to do with criminal justice studies. We have questions we ask every day, departments across the country need research done, but who is to say what research needs to be done and how it is to be done to satisfy the needs of that Chief, Warden, Regional Administrator, or other agency manager who needs to make serious and accurate decisions based on your work? This seminar introduces the concepts of epistemology, positivist social science, interpretive social science, and critical social science. Then we go into the parts of a theory and variables in research before expanding to the development of a theory.  The latter half of the seminar reviews Grounded Theory, Temporal Order, Association, Types of Variables, etc. and then we finish up with Hypothesis and errors in reasoning.