The SAGE Handbook of Criminological Research Methods

David Gadd, Susanne Karstedt, Steven F Messner, David Gadd, Susanne Karstedt, Steven F Messner

• Editorial: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Año: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781473971707
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Sciences sociales
• Categoría: Criminologie

Conducting research into crime and criminal justice carries unique challenges. This Handbook focuses on the application of ?methods? to address the core substantive questions that currently motivate contemporary criminological research. It maps a canon of methods that are more elaborated than in most other fields of social science, and the intellectual terrain of research problems with which criminologists are routinely confronted.

Drawing on exemplary studies, chapters in each section illustrate the techniques (qualitative and quantitative) that are commonly applied in empirical studies, as well as the logic of criminological enquiry. Organized into five sections, each prefaced by an editorial introduction, the Handbook covers:

• Crime and Criminals

• Contextualizing Crimes in Space and Time: Networks, Communities and Culture

• Perceptual Dimensions of Crime

• Criminal Justice Systems: Organizations and Institutions

• Preventing Crime and Improving Justice

Edited by leaders in the field of criminological research, and with contributions from internationally renowned experts, The SAGE Handbook of Criminological Research Methods is set to become the definitive resource for postgraduates, researchers and academics in criminology, criminal justice, policing, law, and sociology.

David Gadd is Professor of Criminology at Manchester University School of Law where he is also Director of the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Susanne Karstedt has a Chair in Criminology and Criminological Justice at the University of Leeds.

Steven F. Messner is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology, University at Albany, State University of New York.

SECTION 1

Crime and Criminals

This first section of the handbook includes six chapters that reflect the rich diversity of methodological approaches in the contemporary study of crime and criminals. The contributions encompass both quantitative and quantitative approaches, and highlight the multi-disciplinary character of criminology as a field of inquiry. The chapters review relevant empirical studies, describe principal data sources, explain analytic techniques, and identify the more important challenges associated with the different methodologies.

The initial chapter in the section by Neal Shover focuses on how life histories and autobiographies can be used to address a wide range of important topics in criminology. Although scholars sometimes draw a formal distinction between these two types of materials, Shover chooses to incorporate autobiographies under the broader rubric of life histories, which he defines as ‘documents or productions written or in other ways recorded and made available to others that consist largely or entirely of first-person narrative about all or much of the subject’s life’. Similar to other forms of ethnographic data, these materials allow the researcher to ‘get close’ to the subject matter and to understand it from the vantage point of the actors involved. Such an understanding enables researchers to assess key assumptions about human agency that underlie influential criminological theories and criminal justice policies (assumptions that are sometimes implicit). Shover illustrates techniques for the analysis of these qualitative materials and carefully assesses both the strengths and limitations associated with the use of life history materials. In addition, by recounting his own experiences in the discovery and use of life history materials, Shover reveals the interesting intersection of personal biography and the development of professional research interests that often characterizes the criminological enterprise. The chapter concludes on the optimistic note that vastly improved technological resources to gain access to documents and to manage textual material are likely to enhance the potential of research based on life histories in the years ahead.

The next chapter, by Marvin Krohn, Terence Thornberry, Kirstin Bell, Alan Lizotte, and Matthew Phillips, shifts the focus from qualitative to quantitative criminological analysis. The authors discuss one of the most important tools used by quantitative researchers to measure involvement in delinquent and criminal activity: the self-report survey. In such a survey, respondents are asked to report their personal involvement in specified forms of illegal behaviour with guarantees of either confidentiality or anonymity. The chapter begins with a history of self-report studies, illustrating how the development of this measurement technique raised questions about the widely presumed inverse association between social class and offending that had been reported in research based on official statistics. The somewhat surprising results of the early self-report surveys stimulated further development of the basic methodology. As the authors explain, researchers were sensitized to the importance of considering the ‘domains’ of behaviour captured by the items included in the surveys (e.g., rather trivial versus serious offences) and the types of response sets offered to respondents (e.g., enumeration of the actual counts of illegal acts versus the use of truncated categories). The authors also describe some of the continuing challenges associated with the application of the self-report methodology in general and with its application in longitudinal studies in particular. These challenges, along with proposed solutions, are explicated with illustrations from the authors’ path-breaking longitudinal research that has employed the self-report methodology, the Rochester Youth Development Survey (RYDS).

David Gadd’s chapter explicates the in-depth interviewing technique known as the Free Association Narrative Interview Method, which can be employed in the psychosocial case study. Researchers adopting this methodological approach strive to capture the complexity of human agency by exploring ‘how the psychological and social constitute each other, without collapsing one into the other’. In contrast with virtually all other paradigms in contemporary criminology, the Free Association Narrative Interview Method takes seriously the role of unconscious motivation and, in particular, the role of unconscious defences against anxiety. Moreover, as the author explains, this methodology places heavy emotional and intellectual demands on researchers conducting the interviews, who must wrestle with their own defensiveness. Gadd richly illustrates the procedures for such interviews and the associated analytic techniques with excerpts from his own research based on case studies of perpetrators of domestic violence and racially motivated assault. In addition, he lays out some practical guidelines for researchers who would like to implement this distinctive type of in-depth interviewing in conjunction with psychosocial case studies.

Jodie Miller’s chapter explains how another qualitative data collection technique – what she refers to as ‘qualitative in-depth interviewing’ – has been applied productively to advance feminist criminology. Feminist criminology takes as its point of departure the underlying premise that gender is more than an individual-level independent variable. Rather, the relations of sex and gender systematically structure the social world in fundamental ways. Feminist criminologists are accordingly concerned with the ways in which ‘gender and gender inequality shape the experiences of those involved in crime’. Miller argues that the qualitative in-depth interview serves the objectives of feminist criminology particularly well by providing ‘reflective accounts of social life offered from the points of view of research participants’, which can stimulate insights about the cultural frames that participants use to make sense of their lives. Drawing upon grounded theory, Miller illustrates in detail useful techniques for the analysis of the data yielded by qualitative in-depth interviewing, including the development of systematic coding schemes, the formulation of emergent hypotheses, and the assessment of internal validity through comparative methods and deviant case analysis. Miller also calls attention to the importance of paying close attention the dynamics of the interviewer/participant relationship, especially in research on sexual violence. An overarching theme of the chapter is that realization of the potential of the qualitative in-depth interview requires rigorous inductive analysis.

The chapter by Yu Gao, Andrea Glenn, Melissa Peskin, Anna Rudo-Hutt, Robert Schug, Yaling Yang and Adrian Raine reviews the range of methodologies that are employed in contemporary research on neurobiological factors associated with crime and anti-social behaviour more generally. The authors observe that interest in this field has increased dramatically over recent years due in part to the development of new technologies that have greatly enhanced the capacity of researchers to measure neurobiological structures and functioning with increased precision. The chapter explains key research designs (e.g., behavioural genetic and molecular genetic designs), analytic frameworks (e.g., the decomposition of influences to those attributable to genes, shared environment, and non-shared environment), and sophisticated measurement techniques (e.g., structural and functional imaging, standardized assessments of neuropsychology) that characterize the field today. The emerging body of research summarized in the chapter identifies an array of neurobiological risk factors for anti-social behaviour. At the same time, the research points to important interactions between neurobiological factors and the social environment. The authors conclude the chapter with a call for “an integrative perspective on anti-social and criminal behaviour,” a perspective that is on the lookout for biosocial interactions. Greater knowledge about such interactions can enhance our understanding of etiological processes and inform potential intervention and prevention programs.

The final chapter in this section, by Tomislav Kovandzic, Mark Schaffer, and Gary Kleck, addresses a vexing source of erroneous statistical inference: ‘endogeneity bias’. As the authors explain, three common sources of such bias are reverse causality (when the outcome variable of interest exerts a causal influence on the theorized predictor variable), omitted variable bias (when the researcher is unable to include in the statistical model variables that are empirically related to both the outcome variable and the predictor variable), and measurement error (when the researcher has no alternative but to use an imperfectly measured proxy for the predictor variable). Drawing on econometric techniques, the authors explicate the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) framework for dealing with such bias, illustrating its criminological application through the study of the relationships between gun prevalence and homicide rates. Their analyses demonstrate the potentially serious consequences of endogeneity bias in research based on conventional multivariate regression modelling.

1

Life Histories and Autobiographies as Ethnographic Data

Neal Shover

Underlying the choice and use of ethnographic research methods is belief that regardless of the focus of criminological inquiry, investigators should get close to their subject matter and strive to understand it through the lived experience and perspectives of critical actors. Whether data are collected for what analysis of them reveals about the adequacy of theoretical explanations or because of interest in better-informed policy making, it can be helpful to build on or in other ways take account of first-person understandings and perspectives. Ethnographic investigators employ a variety of techniques for capturing these, including analysis of life histories and autobiographies. Generally a distinction is drawn between these, but they are alike in their essential composition: first-person narratives of all or a significant part of an individual’s life. Likewise, both autobiographies and life histories are retrospective descriptions and commentary on persons, situations and events considered significant by their authors.

The potential value of these materials can be appreciated by reflection on how historians use them as windows on past events, times and individuals of scholarly interest. Examining life history narratives enables historical investigators to see how significant events were understood and collectively constructed or responded to by persons who were living at the time. Along with examination of personal diaries, life histories are one of the most revealing ways contemporary readers can gain better understanding of the human dimensions of past cataclysmic events (Smith and Watson, 2001). Some of the most evocative and compelling pictures of the human destruction caused by warfare, for example, is available through the eyes of those affected by it who chanced to record their observations and experiences. Likewise, many feminist scholars count analysis of autobiographies and other life narratives among the most useful of materials (Cotterhill and Letherby, 1993; Smith and Watson, 2001; Swindells, 1995). Thus, investigators intent on understanding and chronicling the twentieth-century women’s movement, its origins and its struggles, would not deign to attempt this without consulting the life histories of key and lesser participants. Autobiographical materials are employed by investigators from a range of disciplines, but they are used most typically in the humanities and by criminological investigators with a humanistic theoretical bent.

The value of life histories and autobiographies for criminological research on a range of problems potentially is great. They can inform on topics as diverse as the social psychology of deterrence, criminal organization and crime desistance. Life histories can shine revealing light on criminalization movements and outcomes, the sources and dynamics of crime, and diverse reactions to it. They can educate about the operations of crime-control bureaucracies; those penned by criminal prosecutors, for example, might draw into sharper relief both the demands of their work and also how they are managed day to day in a web of organizational and interpersonal relationships. There may be no more telling or useful perspectives on plea bargaining than the recounted ones of lawyers and court personnel whose work routines and decisions give it life. Likewise, life histories penned by police officers who have worked undercover can inform readers about the practical challenges of these demanding and stressful assignments and how they are managed by officers.

This chapter discusses and discounts a distinction between autobiographies and life histories before retracing briefly my happenstance introduction to and use of them in several criminological investigations. This is followed by noting the limited value of individual life histories and the greatly increased analytic potential from examining multiple ones. The discussion throughout is limited primarily to how life histories can be used to examine criminal offending and criminal careers. Next the essay turns to the logic and mechanics of analyzing multiple documents and some of the strengths and challenges of doing so. An examination of what is known about the validity of information provided in published criminal life histories is then presented before the chapter concludes with comments on technological developments that have reduced the operational difficulties of using them to examine not only criminal offending but also other topics of criminological interest.

FIRST-PERSON LIFE NARRATIVES

Whether a life narrative is classed as autobiography or life history largely hinges on whether the idea and impetus for it originated with others and the extensiveness of their influence. The authors of autobiographies generally decide on their own to write their life story before settin...