Memo

TO: Students in 8106
FROM: R. B. Taylor
DATE: 9/28/08
RE: Your comments about Weisburd et al.

At the end of class last time I asked you to write about the most important point you got out of the volume on white collar crimes of the middle class, and your biggest criticism.

This memo shares with you some concerns that arose when I looked at your responses. Let me state those concerns, direct you to readings that may prove helpful, and strongly encourage you to work harder on offering cogent comments about what you are reading. I also follow up on an internal validity issue that arose.

BTW, the keep/kill vote was about 50/50.

Misunderstanding of external validity

Comments from several of you suggest that despite my attempts at clarification, there is still considerable confusion about external validity. One of you said:

"Before they make statements, they may consider a different sample." Another one of your was concerned about "the fact that authors committed such an important wcc as environmental crimes, crimes against consumers, and crimes committed by corporations." Someone else said: "it did not include information relative to environmental crimes." Along a related line another one of you was concerned about: "limiting the sample to only include those convicted of a crime from a short list." Another one of you said: "The results of the study are influenced by how they did their data collection."

Please read Chapter 9 from Research Methods in Criminal Justice which is on the Bboard site under documents, and pay very close attention to the discussion about external validity.

It could well be that the results of the study were not influenced by how they did their data collection.

Please read this and we will talk more about it.

Need sharpening

The critical comments from a couple of folks were quite unfocused. Here are two examples:

"Something just seems too easy about it all"

"The researchers' methodology made their findings appear spurious."

As a graduate student, after you have sat through around 90 minutes of discussion about a book and its theory and its results, you really need to be able to say more than this!

As the discussion moves along you need to be keeping track and making notes and processing as we go along. When I see comments such as these last two I really worry about how much processing is going on during class.

If you have trouble keeping track of the discussion, you can try dividing up the discussion into segments, and at the end of each segment make some notes to yourself.

Everyone needs to be tracking as the discussion moves along, and if you are not, then flag me down.

Following up on internal consistency

In class Pat Griffin raised a question about the somewhat weak convergent validity among the indicators for a key index in the volume. To fully understand the significance of this important question you want to know more about convergent validity. Read, if you have not yet:

Campbell, D., & Fiske, D. (1959). Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod matrix. Psychological Bulletin, 56(2), 81-105.

It is on Blackboard under documents.

Bring questions about these articles to class on 10/6