TO: Students in CJ 160

FROM: R. B. Taylor

DATE: 2-23-99

RE: Assignment for Paper 2; Instructions for Lab 2-25-99

 

This memo contains the paper assignment, followed by step-by-step instructions on how to locate the information you need on the web or on the CDROM followed by extra resource pages. Try and read this before the lab on 2-25

 

PAPER ASSIGNMENT

BEFORE YOU GET STARTED WRITING YOUR PAPER YOU WILL NEED THE FOLLOWING:

1. Frequency distributions from class assessment data for the following items:

Q28

Q29

Q38

Q39

These appear at the end of the handout. Be sure you understand what is happening with these variables.

 

2. The actual assessment questionnaire itself, so you can refer to the exact wording of the questions.

3. If you are working on computers at school, be sure to take 2 blank, formatted floppies with you so you can store tables.

4. To have carefully read the material in RMCJ about survey questions and response formats AND the pages about interpreting crosstab tables.

5. TIME TO READ THIS ASSIGNMENT IN ITS ENTIRETY, VERY CAREFULLY, SO THAT YOU ARE CLEAR ABOUT THE RESOURCES PROVIDED, AND THE STEPS REQUIRED.

 

PURPOSES

This assignment serves the following purposes.

THE ASSIGNMENT

Look up data from the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics for a recent year, preferably 1995 or later, for at least 3 of the above four questions. You can do your lookup in one of three ways: go to the appropriate volume in the library, run the CDROM you purchased, or access the Sourcebook over the web. I give you some hints on the search strategies you want to use when using each of these sources.

PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS POINT BECAUSE I AM SURE THAT SOME OF YOU ARE GOING TO MISS THIS: The data I want you to recover from the national polls is for College Graduate. I am presuming since our group is mixed on age, mixed on race, mixed on city/suburban, that the most appropriate comparison group is college graduates. I am sure you all will be graduating in a timely fashion from our August institution.

 

STEP 1: look up the data you need. Save the information.

 

STEP 2: For each outcome, construct the data table comparing how you answered the question to how national college graduates answered it. For the class data you are entering the number from "valid percent" for each category. Note further for two tables you are going to need to collapse the data for the two categories "A Great Deal" and "Quite a Lot." You will enter the appropriate percentages from the national sample (ww, xx, yy, zz) from the data you look up. Note further that in the none category there are no data from 160, because this was not offered as a response category. In the national sample it was a "volunteered" response - enough people offered it so the surveyor put it in. So we just put in 0 here. (1 point for correctly constructing each table: 3 total)

 

STEP 3. Interpret each data table. Do you see "major differences" between the national sample of college graduates and the 160 results? If so describe the specific difference you see. See FAQs for more on what is a "major difference" (1 point for correctly interpreting each table: 3 total)

 

For example, in the case of Question 28 the table would look like this:

 

PUT THE QUESTION HERE

CJ 160 1999

College Graduates Nationally BE SURE TO PUT THE YEAR HERE

None

0%

ww%

Very Little

6.8%

xx%

Some

39%

yy%

Quite a lot AND

A great deal

54.3%

z.%

100%100%

 

You will have at least 3 tables like this.

 

STEP 4. When you add all these results together, are there any general statements you can make about how your group differs from college graduates nationally? I hope this section will be thoughtful. It should run at least a half a page. This is where you synthesize and think about the differences/lack of differences you have seen. (3 points).

 

STEP 5. Pick one of the four items used and criticize either its format, or its response categories. Be specific. Tie your criticism in to the guidelines in RMCJ for questions and response categories. (1 point).

 

EXTRA CREDIT. If you want to go ahead and get national data for all four questions, and interpret that table, you can get 2 extra points. HINT: this fourth table will not be available over the web; you will need to use either the Sourcebook in the library or the CDROM.

 

SPECIFICS

All the usual paper guidelines apply. See the syllabus. Your papers should be typed, doublespaced with ONLY your SSN at the top of each page. You will lose points if your name appears anywhere on the paper. You can lose points for mis-spelled words and grammatical mistakes. Your paper should be no longer than four pages; I reserve the right to stop reading at that point unless it is really interesting. BE SURE TO ATTACH THE XEROX OR PDF PRINTOUTS FOR EACH PAGE OF DATA YOU DISCUSS.

DUE: 3-16-99 by class time.

FAQs

WHAT IS THE SOURCEBOOK OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE STATISTICS?

The Sourcebook is a yearly publication compiling a range of information about the criminal justice system, crime, and people's attitudes toward crime and the criminal justice system. It is compiled by the Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics.

 

HOW DO I GET TO THE SOURCEBOOK?

You have three options.

1) You can go to the library and dig out the bound yearly volume, and look up specific tables. If you look at the questionnaire you will see that particular attitude items have numbers after them. These numbers refer to table numbers. These numbers are specific only to the year noted in Footnote 1 on p. 4 of the questionnaire. The same table may not appear from year to year. The same table may appear with a different number in different years. Tables in the Sourcebook are ordered sequentially. So it should be easy to find the table you need.

2) You can start up the CDROM you purchased in the bookstore for $11.50. You will need to be working at a computer where you can write to the hard disk drive.

3) You can access the sourcebook over the www, using computers at campus or any computer where you have a browser and can get to the web.

 

WHAT ARE THE DISADVANTAGES AND ADVANTAGES OF EACH APPROACH

The web only has a subset of information that has appeared in previous years. The CDROM has complete data for three earlier years: 1994, 1995, and 1996. But you cannot run the CDROM on campus computers. You can access the web Sourcebook on the campus computers.

 

WHAT IS A MAJOR DIFFERENCE?

In thinking about differences between CJ160 students and a national sample of college graduates, you need to decide on how much should the difference be before I get excited. This is really a complicated question that takes into account poll sampling error. For more details, see Appendix 6 in the CD-ROM or library version of the 1996 Sourcebook. For our purposes here, a difference is a major difference if it is 5 or more percentage points away from the national results.

 



HOW DO I RUN THE CDROM?

Background

Where

You can run this from any computer that allows you to write to a hard disk.

 

It does not appear, after testing, that you can run the CDROM from a computer in a lab, because the CDROM wants to install an icon on the hard drive, and this is forbidden. Even though it looks like there is an option allowing you to run the program from the CDROM

 

Starting

Start the CDROM by inserting it into the cdrom drive. It should start automatically. If it does not, start up Windows Explorer, go to the CD drive, and click on setup. You will have the option of running it from the cd rom, or installing Adobe Acrobat on the hard drive.

 

Look First

Look first at the extensive orientation to the CDROM in the welcome section. Those pages help you find your way around the Sourcebook, and orient you to the tools that are there. Pay particular attention the different ways you can find information.

*You can look at the list of tables

* You can search on specific words

 

What you are looking for

All the material you are looking for is in section 2, Attitudes toward the criminal justice system.

In Acrobat reader

* CLICK TOOLS

* CLICK FIND

enter the following

For Q28: search for confidence in the police or Table 2.11in the 1995 volume

For Q29: search for confidence in the criminal justice system or Table 2.12 in the 1995 volume

For Q38: search for Table 2.45 in the 1995 volume

For Q39: go to Table 2.82 in the 1995 volume (DO NOT use table 2.81)

When you are looking by table number go to "Figure and Table list", scroll to the table you want, click on it, it will take you there.

 

You either will need to save your files, or print them out. If you plan on printing them out later, you will need to have Adobe Acrobat on your computer. You are saving PDF files, which are a format proprietary to

 



ON THE WEB

1. Get your web browser started

2. Enter the following address in the url box up top:

 

http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/

 

3. Hit enter and you will go there

4. Scroll down and click on SEARCH BY KEYWORDS

5. Click on SEARCH THE INDEX

6. In the box up top "search for a keyword" enter the following:

Q28confidence AND police

7. Click on VIEW MATCHES

8. You have the choice of looking at 1996 or 1998 data. go for what is more current. Click on ACROBAT FILE.

9. Table should come up. Either print it out or save it to a file to print later.

 

REPEAT STEPS 6 THROUGH 9 FOR THE OTHER TABLES.

 

Other search hints for other tables:

 

Q29 confidence AND criminal AND justice

Q38not available on www

Q39You will need to search the list of tables in section 2 under GUN CONTROL POLICIES. There are several possibilities here - be sure you have the table that exactly matches what you are looking for.

Click on TABLE AND FIGURE LIST

Click on SECTION 2

Scroll down to GUN CONTROL POSSIBILITIES

Check out the two tables you see there; get the correct one. NOTE - this 1996 table will have a different number than the one listed in the questionnaire for 1995.

Q28 POLICE

 



Valid Cum

Value Label Value Frequency Percent Percent Percent

 

VERY LITTLE 0 4 6.7 6.8 6.8

SOME 1 23 38.3 39.0 45.8

QUITE A LOT 2 26 43.3 44.1 89.8

GREAT DEAL 3 6 10.0 10.2 100.0

. 1 1.7 Missing

------- ------- -------

Total 60 100.0 100.0

 

Valid cases 59 Missing cases 1

 



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Q29 CJ SYSTEM

 



Valid Cum

Value Label Value Frequency Percent Percent Percent

 

VERY LITTLE 0 6 10.0 10.2 10.2

SOME 1 23 38.3 39.0 49.2

QUITE A LOT 2 22 36.7 37.3 86.4

GREAT DEAL 3 8 13.3 13.6 100.0

. 1 1.7 Missing

------- ------- -------

Total 60 100.0 100.0

 

Valid cases 59 Missing cases 1

 



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Q38 STRICTER GUN CONTROL

 



Valid Cum

Value Label Value Frequency Percent Percent Percent

 

NOT AT ALL 0 8 13.3 15.1 15.1

LITTLE 1 18 30.0 34.0 49.1

A LOT 2 27 45.0 50.9 100.0

. 1 1.7 Missing

DON 3 6 10.0 Missing

------- ------- -------

Total 60 100.0 100.0

 

Valid cases 53 Missing cases 7

 



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Q39 FIREARM LAWS

 



Valid Cum

Value Label Value Frequency Percent Percent Percent

 

MADE LESS STRICT 0 2 3.3 3.6 3.6

KEPT AS THEY ARE NOW 1 19 31.7 33.9 37.5

MADE MORE STRICT 2 35 58.3 62.5 100.0

. 3 5.0 Missing

3 1 1.7 Missing

------- ------- -------

Total 60 100.0 100.0