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Agency Records, Content Analysis, and Secondary Data

•Agency records, secondary data, and content analysis do not require direct interaction with research subjects

•Data from agency records – Agencies collect a vast amount of crime and CJ data

•Secondary analysis – Analyzing data previously collected

•Content analysis – Researchers examine a class of social artifacts (typically written documents)

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•Most commonly used in descriptive or exploratory

•Topics appropriate to research using content analysis center on the important links between communication, perceptions of crime problems, individual behavior, and criminal justice policy

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•Published Statistics

•Nonpublic Agency Records

•New Data Collected by Agency Staff

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•Government organizations routinely collect and publish compilations of data

•FBI, Census Bureau, BJS, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Administrative Office of US Courts

•Often available in libraries and online

•Ted Robert Gurr (1989)

•Used published statistics on violent crime dating back to thirteenth-century England to examine how social and political events affected patterns of homicide through 1984

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•Agencies produce data not routinely released

•Police departments, courthouses, correctional facilities, BJS: Correctional Population in the US, National Center for State Courts: Court Caseload Statistics

•Child Abuse, Delinquency & Adult Arrests

•Crime Hot Spots: Geographic areas and times of day that signal concentrations of various types of crime

•Agency Records as Measures of Decision Making

•“Expect the Expected”

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•Collected for specific research purposes

•Less costly, more control

•“Hybrid" source: Combines the collection of new data—through observation or interviews—with day-to-day criminal justice agency activities

•Need to obtain the cooperation of organizations and staff

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•If you use agency records, be attentive to match or mismatch between units of analysis appropriate for research question and units of analysis represented in aggregate form

•You can go from individual to aggregate, but not aggregate to individual

•Sampling: Taking subsets of agency records is relatively simple and quite useful

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Criminal Activity•Incidents•Crimes violated•Victims•OffendersCourt Activity•Defendants•Filings•Charges and Counts•Cases•Appearances•Dispositions•Sentences

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Apprehension•Arrests•Offenders•Charges•CountsCorrections•Offenders•Admissions•Returns•Discharges

•Virtually all CJ record keeping is a social process – “social production of data”

•Records reflect decisions made by CJ personnel as well as actual behavior by juveniles and adults

•Discretion factors in to recordkeeping

•CJ organizations are more interested in keeping track of individual cases than in examining patterns

•Potential for clerical errors increases with the volume of data

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•Systematic study of messages – can be applied to virtually any form of communication

•Decide on operational definitions of key variables

•Decide what to watch, read, listen to & time frame

•Analyze collected data

•As a mode of observation, content analysis requires a considered handling of the what, and the analysis of data collected in this mode, as in others, addresses the why and with what effect

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•First establish your universe, then your units of analysis and sampling frame, then sample

•Communications need to be coded according to some conceptual framework

•Choice between depth & specificity of understanding:

•Manifest content: Visible, surface content – similar to using closed-ended survey questions

•Latent content: Underlying meaning

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•Reminders:

•Remember operational definition of variables, and their mutually exclusive & exhaustive attributes

•Pretest coding scheme

•Assess coding reliability via intercoder reliability method and test-retest method

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•Chermak (1998) sampled all crime stories from every 5th day in first 6 months of 1990 – 1,557

•Sought to see how content determines allotment of space and prominence of place (inches of coverage in paper, where stories were placed, size of headlines)

•Also coded offense type, # of crimes, weapon usage, location, offender/victim characteristics

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•Thompson & Haninger (2001) sampled 55 of over 600 E-rated games

•Experienced undergrad gamer played for 90 minutes or until game reached natural conclusion

•Experienced gamer/researcher and undergrad gamer reviewed videotape of videogaming session

•Coded: # of violent incidents, # of deaths, drugs/alcohol/tobacco, profanity and sexual behavior, weapon use, explicit music

•Measured duration of violent acts and # of deaths to length of game playing for standardized measures

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•Rosenfeld, Bray, and Egley (1999): how gang membership might facilitate homicide in different ways

•Content analysis of police case files for homicides in St. Louis over a 10-year period

•Gang-motivated killings: Resulted from gang behavior or relationships, such as an initiation ritual, the ‘throwing' of gang signs, or a gang fight

•Gang-affiliated homicides: Involves a gang member as victim or offender, but with no indication of specific gang activity

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•Data collected by other researchers are often used to address new research questions

•Sources: websites (BJS, NCVS, ICPSR, NACJD), libraries

•Advantages – cheaper, faster, benefit from work of skilled researchers

•Disadvantages – data may not be appropriate to your research question; least useful for evaluation studies (which are designed to answer specific questions about specific programs), validity

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