Law question data bank

1. Agency records, secondary data and content analysis do not require direct interaction with research subjects.

2. By its very nature, secondary analysis is always unobtrusive.

3. It is relatively easy and common to have agencies modify their data collection forms in order to get information needed for a specific research project being conducted from someone outside the agency.

4. When using agency records, it is possible to move from individual to aggregate units of analysis, but not the other way around.

5. Understanding the details of how agency records are produced is one of the accepted means of controlling reliability and validity problems.

6. Being able to link an individual to the agency data collected about him/her is a clear violation of reliability and validity.

7. Since criminal justice record keeping is a social process reflecting the decisions made by criminal justice personnel, a researcher must be careful of the impact this may have on the validity and reliability of the data.

8. Content analysis involves the systematic study of agency records.

9. Data collected by other researchers is often used to address new research questions.

10. Of all research purposes, evaluation is most effective when secondary data is used

\

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. Which of the following would be an example of agency records that would be appropriate as a source of data for research?

a. Federal Bureau of Prison inmate records

b. medical records

c. juvenile court records

d. defense attorney records

\

2. Social artifacts such as written documents or articles from newspapers would be best understood using which of the following?

a. content analysis

b. secondary analysis

c. agency records

d. none of the above

\

3. Agency records and statistics published by agencies or governmental entities are most commonly used for which type of studies?

a. explanatory

b. descriptive

c. evaluations

d. understanding the criminal justice system

\

4. Topics that lend themselves to the use of content analysis tend to focus upon the links between communication and:

a. criminal justice policy

b. the actual crime rates

c. the media’s understanding of criminal court convictions

d. understanding why people commit crime

\

5. All of the following are examples of information collected by or for public agencies except for:

a. published statistics such as National Crime Victimization Survey

b. research produced by faculty at private colleges and universities

c. nonpublic agency records such as internal police data identifying where most crime happens in their jurisdiction

d. new data collected by agency staff that is “hybrid” in nature

\

6. Which of the following would not be an example of the data coming from the Census Bureau that have criminal justice applications?

a. Census of Children in Custody

b. National Crime Victimization Survey

c. Survey of Inmates in Local Jails

d. Uniform Crime Report

\

7. The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics is the most comprehensive Bureau of Justice Statistics publication. It includes a multitude of data including all of the following except:

a. characteristics of criminal justice agencies

b. public opinion answers coming from the Gallup Poll

c. complete crime data from all local police departments

d. specific data on states using capital punishment and their execution statistics

\

8. Which type of the listed studies are highly aggregated summary data from published statistical series not typically used?

a. descriptive

b. explanatory

c. applied

d. exploratory

\

9. Electronic formats of published statistics enjoy which of the following as an advantage over written records?

a. the data can be read directly into statistical and or graphics computer programs for analysis

b. much of the electronic data is inappropriate for spreadsheet software

c. most do not contain the original data while printed reports contain aggregate information

d. most will be considered confidential, thus not available to the researcher

\

10. Which of the following is not an example of nonpublic agency records?

a. the FBI’s publication of the Uniform Crime Reports

b. information from a local police department concerning the number of crimes that happened within the past month

c. a prison’s collection of files dealing with inmates currently in their custody

d. a county courthouse’s records on defendants tried within the last six months

\