Scientific Research On The Criminal Justice Arena

Scientific research in the criminal justice arena serves various purposes and has different points. There are five points to scientific research. The five points of scientific research that will be discussed in this paper are question, hypothesis, experimentation, data analysis, and conclusion. Research can provide useful and exciting insights into community problems and how police agencies operate. It can reveal potentially useful programs and strategies for dealing with problems. It can show which programs are successful and which are not. It can suggest new strategies to deal with old issues. It can provide information needed to improve existing programs. And it can inform the public and elected officials. (Vito, Tewksbury, Kunselman†¦show more content†¦A hypothesis is often defined as an educated guess because it is almost always informed by what you already know about the topic (Harris, 2008). A hypothesis always consists of variables, or groupings of specific attribu tes of what you are looking to solve. There are dependent and independent variables within a hypothesis, or in layman terms, cause and effect. In short, the independent variable is the cause and the dependent variable is the effect (Maxfield, Michael, Babbie 2008). For example, in the above paragraph we questioned the effect of the lack of law enforcement training on unlawful arrests, so from this question we can create a hypothesis. A good hypothesis on this would be; Police officers that lack proper training are more likely to unlawfully arrest a citizen than a police officer who does not lack proper training. In this hypothesis, the independent variable or cause is the lack of police officer training while the dependent variable or effect is the possibility of it leading to unlawful arrests. Once the hypothesis has been formed, experimentation can begin. Experimentation is the third step in the scientific research process. The experiment is designed to test the generated hypothesis and either supports or refutes it. The experiment takes the independent and dependent variables and tests them by manipulating the independent variable. As the independent variable is manipulated, the dependent variable is measured (Harris, 2008). In the trainingShow MoreRelatedScience Merit And Scientific Merit1696 Words   |  7 PagesConcept of Scientific Merit Introduction As future scholars, we tend to hear a lot about Scientific Merit. But, that same old question might pop in our mines, which is should this learner even care or worry about scientific merit? 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