Research Process and Terminology Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Process and Terminology - Research Paper Example Hence, correctional personnel, the police forces, judges, and other legal practitioners use qualitative and quantitative research to improve in their service delivery. The role that research methods plays in criminal justice cannot be overemphasized. With many research methods available in the field of research methods, the terminologies involved are crucial when applied to the field of criminal justice. This expose elucidates on the whole issue of criminal justice while focusing on new terminologies learnt, how failure to understand the terminologies used affects individuals conducting research in criminal justice, and the importance of knowing these terminologies as assets to individuals evaluating and analyzing studies or data in criminal research. One key word in criminal justice research is conceptualization. Simply put, a concept is the mental image an individual forms that summarizes a position on their ideas, feelings, or their observations. Case in point, a concept such as t hat involving substance-free housing necessitates a precise definition since there is a lack of certainty whether all readers share the same definition. Therefore, the meaning of concepts is usually under dispute from the experts in a certain field ultimately not benefitting those not familiar with the concepts. Nevertheless, in order to carry out sufficient research, conceptualizing the research matter in criminal justice is crucial to distinguish inner characteristics of a concept. Thus, conceptualization becomes the process of specifying the meaning of a term in a research study. Hence, conceptualization in deductive research becomes useful in translating parts of an intangible premise or theory into a hypothesize involving a variety of variables tested in the research study. On the other hand, conceptualization in inductive research is crucial to making sense of observations with related or similar evident features (Bachmann & Schutt, 2010). Effectively, without conceptualizatio n research in criminal justice would prove to be completely different and incomplete. In this case, if a researcher never understood the meaning of conceptualization, understanding the concept under study becomes challenging to them. Effectively, since they will lack the ability of defining the concept, identifying the variable of the study in criminal justice research becomes a challenge. Failure to identify clearly the variable of research influences the research findings with researchers embarking on study of the wrong variables. Eventually, the conclusions and findings becomes nothing more than a misinformation adversely affecting the case presented and its outcomes. Another crucial term in criminal justice research is casual. Casual, in criminal justice research parlance, does not mean the approach to doing things or carrying out research work. Casual implies that criminal justice research should concentrate in researching the cause-and-effect relationship of variables in the r esearch study (Hagan, 2005). In effect, this clearly illustrates that studies should simply carry out the observatory role. Case in point, a research study might seek to express the proportion of people holding a particular attitude. In this regard, most research in criminal justice and other social sciences explore relationships. Effectively, this makes such studies use descriptive and correlation studies as the major components of the studies. Thus, the failure to understand the term casual makes an individual