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Chapter 12:

Agency Records, Content Analysis, and Secondary Data

Learning Objectives

• Recognize that public organizations produce statistics and data that are often useful for criminal justice researchers

• Provide examples of nonpublic agency records that can serve as data for criminal justice research

• Understand why the units of analysis represented by agency data may be confusing for researchers

• Explain why researchers must be attentive to reliability and validity problems that might stem from agency records

• Summarize why “follow the paper trail” and “expect the expected” are useful maxims to follow when using agency records in research

Learning Objectives, cont.

• Summarize content analysis as a research method appropriate for studying communications

• Describe examples of coding to transform raw data into a standardized, quantitative form

• Summarize how secondary analysis refers to the analysis of data collected by another researcher for some other purpose

• Be able to access archives of criminal justice data that are maintained by the ICPSR and the NACJD

• Understand how the advantages and disadvantages of secondary data are similar to those for agency records

Introduction

• 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 criminal justice data

• Secondary analysis: Analyzing data previously collected

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

Agency Records Topics

• Most commonly used in descriptive or exploratory studies

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

Discussion Question 1

What if you were asked to pick a research topic that dealt with all of the following: communication, perceptions of crime problems, individual behavior, and criminal justice policy? Can you think of a clear research idea that would implicate all four?

Types of Agency Records

• Published Statistics

• Nonpublic Agency Records

• New Data Collected by Agency Staff

Published Statistics

• 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

Nonpublic Agency Records

• 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, and 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”

New Data Collected

• 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

Units of Analysis and Sampling

• 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

Units of Analysis in Criminal Justice Data• Criminal Activity

– Incidents – Crimes violated – Victims – Offenders

• Court Activity – Defendants – Filings – Charges and Counts – Cases – Appearances – Dispositions – Sentences

• Apprehension – Arrests – Offenders – Charges – Counts

• Corrections – Offenders – Admissions – Returns – Discharges

Reliability and Validity Problems

• 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 record-keeping

• 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

Discussion Question 2

In which are you more interested: cases or patterns? Explain.

Content Analysis • 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, and listen to, and 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

Coding in Content Analysis

• 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 and specificity of understanding: – Manifest content: Visible, surface content—similar to

using closed-ended survey questions – Latent content: Underlying meaning

Coding in Content Analysis, cont.

• Reminders: – Remember operational definition of variables, and

their mutually exclusive and exhaustive attributes – Pretest coding scheme – Assess coding reliability via inter-coder reliability

method and test-retest method

Global Terrorism Database (GTD)

• Broad screening criteria result in 400,000 possible articles per month

• Content analysis software winnows them down to 16,000 monthly articles

• Six teams of coders review for further screening and coding

Violence in Video Games

• Thompson and 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, sexual behavior, weapon use, explicit music

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

Classifying Gang-Related Homicides

• 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

Secondary Analysis

• 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

Discussion Question 3

Have you ever worked with secondary data? Explain your experience?