Research Methods in Criminal Justice - Essay Example

Research Methods in Criminal Justice The main advantage of choosing these six precincts is that they would provide a comprehensive insight into the types, causes, effects, and potential ways of eradication of the crimes in the New York City. Selection of the six precincts for data collection saves a lot of time, resources, and energy of the researchers because detailed studies of all 76 police precincts across New York would have taken too long to complete which was not feasible considering the time and money constraints.

Also, that would have been too exhausting for the researchers to collect all the required information from the 76 police precincts efficiently, which would ultimately have lowered the quality of research. The researchers can utilize the same time, resources, and energy to collect detailed information from the six precincts, so that a better understanding of the prevailing crime situation can be developed. The disadvantage of such critical case sampling is mainly that it introduces bias in the research since data collection sources were strategically chosen.

In addition to that, study of just six police precincts is too less when compared with the total number of precincts distributed across the five boroughs in the New York City, i.e. 76. Although the researchers would be able to collect detailed information from the six precincts, yet a whole range of factors contributing towards the spread of crime in the rest of the boroughs would be missed out. As a result of this, the reliability of research would be lowered as somebody else collecting information from the left out precincts might reach different results for the same city.

Alternative sampling methods could be selection of precincts that would at least be equal to the sample size generated from the 76 precincts. A questionnaire-based survey from all precincts would be more convenient and reliable, yet the researchers would not be able to have a detailed insight that they can have by selecting just six precincts.