CJ 605 Spring 04 Advanced Statistics in Criminal Justice:
Questions to Accompany Readings

Questions linked to readings: DATE is the week the readings are DUE

1/26/04
SAMPSON: Summarize in your own words the limitations of current neighborhood effects research What, in your own words, is the self selection problem?
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.
ARNOLD: Look at the first equation she describes starting Yij = ....   ; explain how the terms in that equation are different from those you would see in an ordinary regression.

2/2/04
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?

2/9/04
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?
COVINGTON&TAYLOR (1991). Do we see any effects of collective efficacy on fear of crime? Describe. What do the results show about the relative impact of neighborhood vs. individual predictors on the outcome?  Is this an ecological or a contextual analysis?

2/16/04
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.

2/23/04
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"

3/1/04
Quiz prep

3/8/04
Break

3/15/04
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?
 

3/22/04
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?

3/29/04
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

4/5/04
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.

4/12/04
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.)

4/19/04
AUSTIN ET AL Describe the limitations of Austin et al.'s analysis, and describe the ways their analysis may have generated misleading results