Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons^™

Psychosocial Analysis Of An Ethnography At The Cuyahoga County Public Defenders Office, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review

Too often, social science majors become jaded with their field of study due to a misperception of the nature of many potential jobs which they are qualified for. Such discord is prevalent amongst undergraduates who strive for work in the criminal justice system. Hollywood misrepresentations become the archetypes of the aforementioned field, leaving out the necessity and ubiquity of accompanying desk work. Still other social science majors struggle to identify theoretical interpretations in praxis.

Postmodern Social Control: Dividuals And Surveillance, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review

As a society's foundational philosophy changes, so, too, will its forms of social control. By using the works of thinkers like Deleuze and Foucault as pivot points, the dynamic nature of social interactions and the agents to mediate those actions shall be investigated. This article includes findings from archival analysis written in a journalistic prose for simplicity of consumption.

Killings Of Police In U.S. Cities Since 1980: An Examination Of Environmental And Political Explanations, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Most research on killings of police in urban areas attempted to link lethal violence against officers to the violence and disorder in the communities they work.Yet support for this relationship is inconsistent. Fewer studies considered whether local political arrangements affect killings of police. This study attempts to remedy this gap by using recent data to investigate the relationship between the political conditions of large U.S. cities and the number of homicides of police officers in the line of duty in the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. Negative binomial regression analyses suggest that racial income inequality and the size of the …

The Conjunctive Analysis Of Case Configurations: An Exploratory Method For Discrete Multivariate Analyses Of Crime Data, Terance D. Miethe, Timothy C. Hart, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Derived from comparative approaches in both qualitative and quantitative research, the current study describes a simple exploratory technique for the multivariate analysis of categorical data. This technique is referred to as the conjunctive analysis of case configurations. After describing the logic and underlying assumptions of this conjunctive method, it is applied and illustrated in the study of the federal sentencing of drug offenders. The relative value of this conjunctive approach for purposes of exploratory data analysis and its overall utility as a method for confirmatory research are also discussed.

Incidence Of Four-Generation Family Lineages: Is Timing Of Fertility Or Mortality A Better Explanation?, Sarah H. Matthews, Rongjun Sun

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Objectives. This article estimates the percentage of lineages that include four or more generations for a sample of the U.S. population and explores how social status and race are related to lineage depth.

Methods. We assembled data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households in order to estimate the proportion of adults in four or more generations for the Wave 2 sample (1992-1994). When necessary, we used various decision rules to overcome an absence of information about specific generations. We examine relationships between lineage depth and sociodemographic variables by using logistic regressions.

Results. The …

Taking On The Unknown: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis Of Unknown Relationship Homicides, Wendy C. Regoeczi, Terance D. Miethe

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Aside from noting the dramatic rise in their numbers, homicides with unknown victim/offender relationships have attracted little research attention. This study uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis and data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports for 1976 through 1998 to examine the nature of unknown relationship homicides and changes in their structure over time. The findings indicate that a large number of unknown relationship cases are contained within a few prevalent homicide situations while also occurring in a diverse array of less common situations. The situational context of unknown homicides exhibits considerable change over time, shifting from the killing of older White males …

The Application Of Missing Data Estimation Models To The Problem Of Unknown Victim/Offender Relationships In Homicide Cases., Wendy C. Regoeczi, Marc Riedel

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Homicide cases suffer from substantial levels of missing data, a problem largely ignored by criminological researchers. The present research seeks to address this problem by imputing values for unknown victim/offender relationships using the EM algorithm. The analysis is carried out first using homicide data from the Los Angeles Police Department (1994-1998), and then compared with imputations using homicide data for Chicago (1991-1995), using a variety of predictor variables to assess the extent to which they influence the assignment of cases to the various relationship categories. The findings indicate that, contrary to popular belief, many of the unknown cases likely involve …

The Impact Of Density: The Importance Of Nonlinearity And Selection On Flight And Fight Responses, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Unlike commonsense notions and the findings from animal research, the literature concerning the effects of density on human social behavior is paralyzed by contradictory findings. This article examines empirically two fundamental issues which could account for this and which are central to the density-crowding debate: (1) whether observed crowding effects are the result of causation or selection and (2)whether individuals are negatively affected by both low and high levels of density. Data from the Toronto Mental Health and Stress study are analyzed using structural equation modeling to investigate these questions. The results support the notion that the effects of density …

Review Of Comparative Perspectives On Social Movements: Political Opportunities. Mobilizing Structure, And Cultural Framings (Book), Robert Kleidman

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Reviews the book "Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structure, and Cultural Framings," edited by Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald.

Organizing Engineering Work - A Comparative-Analysis, Peter F. Meiksins, Chris Smith

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the organization of engineering work in six industrial capitalist countries. It identifies four major models for the organization of engineering work; the engineering profession did not succeed in achieving professional “closure” in any of the six countries under review. A review of the historical evolution of the organization of engineering work in each of the six countries reveals that engineering has been shaped by a complex interaction among the profession itself, employers, the state, labor, and preindustrial forces. However, none of the national variations on the four models for organizing engineering labor is stable or without …

Crime And Deterrence: Correlation Analysis, William C. Bailey, J. David Martin, Louis N. Gray

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

A correlation analysis of the severity and certainty of punish ment and offense rates for the major index crimes produces results consistent with the predictions of deterrence theory. Certainty of punishment proves to be the chief deterrent for most crimes. Homicide, however, is influenced by severity, pos sibly reflecting the differences between homicide and other of fenses. Little evidence of interaction is found between certainty and severity in effects on crime rate. A powerfunction proves to better describe the relationship between the punishment varia bles and crime rates than a rectilinear equation-a conclusion which, even apart from the date, appears …