Research Process and Terminology Paper
In criminal justice there are multiple methods of conducting research. There is also many different key terms that a person must thoroughly understand before beginning the research process. But most research methods in criminal justice have a very similar format. It begins with first creating a hypothesis generated from previous knowledge and little research on the topic. The next step in the research process is to collect data. The data you collect is all based on the research question that was created in the first step. You must also indicate what type of research you are going to be utilizing. You need to clarify if the data used is either qualitative or quantitative. And you must also clarify where you will be getting your information for example, if your information is coming from journals created by different study groups or if you are personally retrieving data from your own personal experiments. Then comes the analysis of the data and the sorting of the information that was gathered in the process. Once the analysis is complete and the results have been confirmed, then the researcher is ready to begin summarizing the conclusion. The conclusion will clarify the findings that were retrieved from the data and present them in a manner in which he or she decides.
When creating a hypothesis, the individual must first think about what topic or idea he or she wants to discuss specifically. He or she must first examine the topic they are going to use and decide whether it is too broad or narrow. Typically the writer would be recommended to narrow down the topic in which he or she is examining in order to simplify the data that the individual will need to locate. If the research question is too broad then that individual might encounter difficulties by researching a wide variety of topics and obtain no solid or credible data. When the hypothesis and research question has been established and verified then they can continue to the next step in the researching process.
Data collection is the next step in the research process and one of the most important as well. If a person bases their results of their paper on unsustainable data then the entire research paper loses its credibility. The information that the individual should look for must be in direct relation to the question created in the hypothesis. The information being researched should be accurate and relative to the topic of research. A person can take the initiative and create his or her own experiment in which they decide what the dependent and controlled variables should be according to the topic. In this method of data collecting the person designs his or her own experiment and reports the results after the experiment is completed. Another option the researcher has is to look through various web pages or journals/articles and retrieve data from previously recorded studies. In this method the person will be required to analyze the different articles or web pages and decide what information can be retrieved out of multiple sources. The most difficult part of this method is indicating what information is valid and what sources are credible.
Once a person decides that the data retrieved from the
