CJ 8305/605 Spring 08CJ
Advanced Statistics in Criminal Justice:
Questions to Accompany Readings
How to use the questions. I recommend you do this. a) Read the questions for an article first. b) Read the article. c) Re-read the article. d) Write answers. I am not going to ask you to hand in your answers but your should expect to be called on for any reading due for that class.
If you read an article but are so confused you cannot even begin to answer the questions then write down what your questions are and bring that with you to class.
Questions linked to readings: DATE is the week the readings are DUE
1/29/08
SAMPSON: Summarize in your own words the limitations of current neighborhood
effects research. What, in your own words, is the selection problem? What, in
your own words, are compositional effects
MORENOFF: in your own words, and just highlighting, explain how neighborhood
factors affect birth weight outcomes, and how/why social dynamics are relevant.
HLML00CC: answer the questions that go with the regression models.
2/5/08
SAMPSON (2003) In your own words, summarize his version of collective efficacy
theory. Think about the self reported health status outcome in the PHMC file. Can you outline a model of how it would be affected by collective efficacy
and/or local social ties?
THORNDIKE: in no more than two sentences, what did his article show?
LISKA: What are the implications of his perspective FOR THEORY when we are looking at the
percent of variance of an outcome that is at Level 2?
2/12/08
SAMPSON (2003) In the City and Community article, Sampson says that Dear and
other "new" LA school urbanists, have mis-characterized the Chicago School. In
what way have they mis-characterized it?
SAMPSON (2002) In the Criminology article, Sampson says one attribute of current
Chicago school work is "a relational concern with variablility in terms of
social organization as opposed to population attributes." Translate into
English, and give an example.; What does Sampson mean when he says "Social ties
thus present a challenge for thinking about crime"? Do YOU think there is a
similar challenge when we think about crime as a predictor of local ties or
local social climate or health status?
QUESTIONS BELOW NOT YET FINALIZED
2/19/08
TAYLOR ET AL (1985). What effects do we see of neighborhood crime rate on local
sentiments? Is this an ecological or a contextual analysis?
DUNCAN ET AL (2003) Comment on the three level ANOVA shown in Table II,
decomposing collective efficacy into the individual, family, and neighborhood
components, given what you know based on the Liska article.
2/26/08
GIBSON ET AL. (2002) In your own words, describe how Gibson et al.'s model
links social climate and fear of crime.
TAYLOR (2002) Label the social variables in the PHMC file using the terms provided in
this article; do NOT use the term "collective efficacy"
3/4/08
Quiz prep
3/11/08
Break
3/18/08
SAMPSON AND BARTUSCH: What variables do they use for "legal cynicism" and what
do you feel about that label for those variables? How about the variables and
the label "tolerance of deviance?" What are the neighborhood level correlates of
tolerance for deviance and how do we interpret those? How about legal cynicism?
3/25/08
DUNCAN ET AL (2003) What have you learned about the Level 2 and Level 3
predictors of collective efficacy?; summarize in your own words.
ROBINSON ET AL. What have you learned about the the CAUSES vs. the CORRELATES of
emotional fear? Block satisfaction?
4/1/08
ROUNTREE AND LAND Do your best to understand how this three level model is set
up. What is nested within what? Do your best to interpret Tables 2 and 3
4/8/08
WILCOX AND CLAYTON In terms of modeling, what is the difference between Tables 3
and 4? What does Table 4 tell you about the school level predictors of weapon
possession in school? In what ways is this model different from a) a plain old
ecological-level (school level) logistic regression? In what ways is this
different from an individual-level contextual logistic regression?
SAMPSON, RAUDENBUSH AND EARLS (1997). Describe briefly the outcomes
affected by collective efficacy, and the pathways by which CE influences these
outcomes.
4/15/08
SAMPSON, MORENOFF AND EARLS: Focusing on Table 4, and the outcome "child
centered social control", what do you learn about the neighborhood level
predictors of this outcome? In what ways is this model different from a) a plain
old ecological-level (neighborhood level) regression? In what ways is this
different from an individual-level contextual regression? (Skip the stuff on
spatial lag unless you are in Dr. Ratcliffe's course.)
4/22/08
AUSTIN ET AL Describe the limitations of Austin et al.'s analysis, and describe
the ways their analysis may have generated misleading results