A Few Technical Sources
(a work in progress)
“Cites for”
If you are trying to write top notch graduate papers, or to write a manuscript for publication, you have to get used to making the effort to find the right source, not just the most convenient one. In one typical example, you might read something in which the author talks about someone else’s theory or research, and you want to discuss the “source within a source” in your paper. You end up with something like: “Jones (2022) quotes Hirschi (1969) as saying that…” This may be OK in an undergrad paper, and you might get away with it in a graduate paper, but if you are working toward publishing your work, get in the habit of using the original source when required. Look it up in the references, go get it, read it for yourself.
When publishing empirical research, you may learn techniques in class, but when you want to publish, you can’t just cite your professor’s lecture. So we recommend that you make it a habit to acquire, and keep track of, trusted sources that can be cited for methodological choices or statistical techniques. How many respondents do you need for your survey? How do you measure “reliability”? What on earth do I do if I have tons of missing data? It is very difficult to do a “cold” search and find these answers. Ask your professors, find and read articles where the authors have used the technique, and dig up the sources they used. Then keep a file! So that three years from now, you can remember what you cite when you want to do a factor analysis, or impute missing data, or justify your analysis.
Measuring crime
Criminal justice students in all programs should learn the basic national crime measures in undergraduate classes. When you want to use UCR data, or NCVS data for a publishable manuscript, you should know more about the limitations of those data. There are many publications that address these. Many undergraduate textbooks will cite them.
Note: The summary reporting system of the Uniform Crime Reports has been discontinued. Police departments will now submit incident-level data (NIBRS). The FBI now provides an online “Crime Data Tool” to quickly look up information. Watch for problems with 2020 data (COVID) and 2021 data (new NIBRS system). Look for changes in the publication of index crimes; they are likely to use more categories of some crimes such as homicide (e.g., vehicular homicide). They may abandon the “aggravated assault” category in favor of more carefully categorized criminal actions. Here are a few sources that can help you understand these data.
Lurigio, A.J. & Staton, M.D. (2020). The measurement and prevalence of violent crime in the United States. Journal of Crime and Justice, 43(3), 282-306.
Lynch, J.P., & Addington, L.A. (Eds.). Understanding crime statistics: Revisiting the divergence of the NCVS and UCR. Cambridge University Press.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2016). Modernizing crime statistics–Report 1: Defining and classifying crime. Washington DC: The National Academies Press. Doi:10.17226/23492. (Also see Report 2 and their 2003 Measurement problems in criminal justice research: Workshop summary). (If you plan to use recent UCR data in your research, you should consult this volume)
Savage, J. (2023). Measuring violence. In H. Pontell (Ed.), The Oxford Research Handbook of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
Mass Incarceration
Travis, J., & Western, B. (2014). The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences
There are many who authors who provide data on mass incarceration. This volume was produced by the Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration of the National Research Council. Short of compiling the data and presenting it yourself, you cannot do better in terms of citing a source of information in a class paper or manuscript that you hope to publish.
Methods, General
There are many technical books that explain methods. We aim to include those that will be most understandable to grad students.
Osborne, J.W. (Ed.). Best Practices in Quantitative Methods
This edited volume includes topics such as interrater reliability, factor analysis, mixed methods research, data cleaning, effect sizes and confidence intervals, analysis of variance, count data, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) etc. Chapter authors are good about citing seminal works and providing vocabulary that might help you find additional sources.
Piquero, A., & Weisburd, D. (Eds.). The Handbook of Quantitative Criminology
This volume has chapters on crime mapping, group-based trajectory modeling, visualizing data, mixed methods, cost benefit analysis, measuring treatment effects etc. Many of the authors are top names in these specializations.
Osborne, J.W. (Ed.). Best practices in data cleaning.
Clean your data.
Meta-Analysis
Lipsey, M. & Wilson, D. Practical Meta-Analysis.
Many books about meta-analysis are very difficult to follow. This one is not easy but it comes closest to a “how to”. Very helpful to those who are new to meta-analysis.
Hunter, J.E., & Schmidt, F.L. Methods of Meta-Analysis: Correcting Error and Bias in Research Findings.
Another excellent source, more understandable than most.