28 Jan Gun-related violence

Between the chapters in this course on crime measurement/operationalization, and the chapter on survey research that we are currently reviewing, you should have a decent handle on how to create a survey instrument – and more importantly, the strengths and weaknesses of this popular type of research design. The following two exercises will assess your ability in questionnaire construction (exercise I), and your overall understanding of survey research (Exercise II).

Exercise I

With the recent horrors of gun-related violence on high-school (e.g., Columbine; Jonesboro, AR; Pearl, MS) and college campuses (e.g., Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois), citizens and advocacy groups have placed an inordinate amount of pressure on state legislators to enact legislation to combat this violence. As state legislators ruminate on bills aimed at reducing gun violence, you have been tasked by the legislator you work for with the task of developing a questionnaire to collect information from her constituents. Of particular interest are the “campus carry” laws, which may allow individuals to carry firearms on college campuses. Being that you have advanced degrees in social science, with extensive experience in survey construction, she wants to know what you think should be included in the questionnaire. Based on this, answer the following discussion questions.

1. First, describe what you are interested in knowing about the topic of how to reduce gun violence and how campus carry laws might affect that goal.

2. Since an appropriate questionnaire does not exist for this topic, you explain to the legislator how you will have to develop a new instrument. She wants to know what that process will entail. Answer the following questions within your explanation.

a. How will a list of possible questionnaire items related to the topic be created?

b. How will you establish the validity and reliability of these items, and why is this necessary?

c. Why must the wording in the questionnaire be appropriate for the target audience?

d. Why must the instructions clearly specify who should answer the questions?

e. How and why should you avoid asking any questions that are biased, leading, or double barreled in nature?

f. Why should the questionnaire be pretested before it is officially used?

3. Why have you selected either a Thurstone or a Likert scale?

Exercise II

You have recently landed a job with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Violence Prevention. You have specifically been tasked with conducting research on the topic of school-bullying. When you present your ideas to the program directors, they ask you to expand the topic to include workplace violence, along with school bullying, and to provide different strategies for the collection of the data.

Based on these instructions, answer the following discussion questions.

1.How would you begin the process of collecting data on the topics of school- bullying and workplace violence?

2. Describe how data could be collected using surveys, and provide the advantages and disadvantages of this strategy.

a. Describe how you would increase the response rate for a self-administered mail survey.

b. Describe how the data could be collected using the internet.

3.Describe how the data could be collected by using interviews (e.g., structured, semi-structured, and unstructured), and provide the advantages and disadvantages of this method.

4. Describe how the data process for interviews would differ between face-to-face interviews and telephone interviews.

5. Describe how the data could potentially be collected using the different strategies for field research/observation (e.g., full participant, ethnography, participant researcher, researcher participant, complete researcher), and provide the strengths and weaknesses of this strategy.

6. Describe how the data could be collected using secondary analysis of existing data, and provide the advantages and disadvantages of this strategy.

Format:

· no specific length/page requirement to this assignment, you are asked to

answer the questions comprehensively

· 1” margins throughout the document.

· 12-point, Times New Roman Font.

· single-space within each answer (including the letters – e.g., 1a, 1b), but double space between answers (e.g., 1, 2, 3).