Crim Experimental Methods Assignment

Start Time: 9:58 AM

Research Question: Does priming individuals to “believe victims” affect trust in eyewitness evidence and jury verdicts in sexual assault cases?

Sample

For this study, I will recruit students from introductory courses in psychology, in sociology, and in criminology at Pennsylvania State University in a single semester. This is a sample of convenience, though college students are regularly participants in studies of jury decision making (you would include example citations). I will choose a total of three courses in each discipline. Based on the course sizes, the sampling frame includes approximately 1,000 students. Students will be offered extra credit in their course in exchange for participating in the study. I will send students a recruitment email with a link to the study. I will send a reminder email approximatelay one month after the first email. Students who are in multiple courses will only be allowed to participate in the study one time, but they can earn credit for each of those courses.

Methods

This study will utilize a 2 (priming to believe victims: reading an article about the importance of believing victims or reading an article about why people should not always believe victims) x 3 (strength of eyewitness evidence: weak, moderate, strong) factorial design. Students will be randomly assigned to one of the six possible conditions. The primary dependent variables in this study are how much participants trust the victim eyewitness and their decision to acquit or convict a hypothetical defendant.

After consenting to participate in the study, participants will complete a brief questionnaire that gathers demographic data such as their gender, age, race, major, and political orientation. Next, participants will be assigned to one of two priming conditions (for practical purposes priming means putting something in a person’s mind). Half the participants will read the article “Why and How You MUST #BelieveSurivors” (Solani & Pundir, 2018). This is an article about believing stories of victims (survivors) of sexual assault. The authors note that the article explains “not just ‘why’ you need to believe the survivors, but also about how your belief need not conflict with the idea of justice.” The other half of participants will read the article, “When ‘Believe the Victim’ Backfires” (Justman, 2018). The article refers to a rape case at the University of Montana, which ultimately led to the acquittal of a football player accused of sexual assault, along with a detailed analysis of American legal principles related to innocent until proven guilty concepts.

Upon reading the article, participants will answer three short questions about the article itself. They will be multiple-choice questions about conclusions from the article and would be easy if the participant read the article in question. This is to assure that the participants did not just skip the article. Participants who miss this question will be removed from the study for purposes of subsequent analysis. (This is called a manipulation check; the other way to do this would be to analyze the data with and without these participants and see if the results are similar)

Next, participants will read a three-page summary of an alleged sexual assault that took place on a college campus. The alleged facts are the same throughout the case. The alleged victim, a female college student, testifies that she was walking into her apartment when a man that she did not know started flirting with her at the door. She tried to close the door, but he forced his way in and groped her then tried to force her onto the ground before someone in the hallway yelled and the man ran away. A police officer describes seeing grainy security footage that would support the woman’s story, but the footage was not suitable for identifying the offender. According to the testimony, a man was arrested after an anonymous tipster said he admitted to the crime. The defendant denies being at the apartment on the night of the crime but later admits to being there to visit a friend. He says he initially lied about being at the apartment because he was scared but swears that he did not commit the crime. A neighbor testifies to seeing someone run out of the apartment, but the neighbor admits they were intoxicated at the time and only saw the person briefly. They are not sure if the defendant was the person they saw.

In the weak evidence condition, participants read the following facts or testimony:

· The victim says “I did not get a great look at him, but I think this is him.”

· The police officer is asked about the lineup and says, “he was the only person in the lineup with brown hair, like she described, but people can always dye their hair.”

· The defendant is able to show that he sent a text approximately ten seconds after the time that the sexual assault allegedly occurred and that it read, “Why isn’t there more beer? Someone grab some.”

· The victim says, “I was about 60% sure he was the guy who attacked me when I looked at the lineup, but now I am 80% sure.”

In the moderate evidence condition, participants read the following facts or testimony:

· The victim says, “I think I got a pretty good look at him, but it happened quickly. I am sure this is him.”

· The police officer is asked about the lineup and says, “he was the only person in the lineup with an earring, but it was small.”

· The defendant is able to show that he sent a text approximately one minute after the time that the sexual assault allegedly occurred and that it read, “I’m trying to find Jessie, just wait in the apartment.”

· The victim says, “I was about 75% sure he was the guy who attacked me when I looked at the lineup, but now I am 90% sure.”

In the strong evidence condition, participants read the following facts or testimony:

· The victim says, “I got a really good look at him even though it happened quickly. I can tell this is him.”

· The police officer is asked about the lineup and says, “we used mugshots to create a lineup where no individual stood out in any way, including the defendant.”

· The defendant is able to show that he sent a text approximately ten minutes after the time that the sexual assault allegedly occurred and that it read, “I was tired and decided to go home.”

· The victim says, “I was 100% sure he was the guy who attacked me when I looked at the lineup, and I am still 100% sure right now.”

After reading the transcript the participants will complete a questionnaire that asks them if they think that the defendant is “guilty” or “not guilty” of sexual assault. They will rate their confidence in their verdict on a scale of 1 (not at all sure) to 7 (very sure). They will also rate the credibility of the witness, the neighbor, the police officer, and the defendant on a scale of 1 (not at all credible) to 7 (very credible).

Upon completion of this part of the study, participants will submit their answers and receive an on-screen message thanking them for their participation.

Part II

1. This is a 2x3 factorial design, an experimental study. I chose an experimental study because there was not an ethical way to study this through a quasi-experimental design. I also wanted to demonstrate a causal relationship, and it was feasible to do so through an experimental design.

2. Threats:

· Selection-Mortality Threat: This is potentially a threat because we are dropping participants who do not answer all three comprehension questions correctly. One of the articles might be tougher to read than the other. For example, people with strong feelings about believing victims might be disgusted by the Justman article and not want to read it. By analyzing the data with and without these participants, we can examine if this might have some effect. (This is minimization by

· Selection-Testing Effect: This is not a concern because there is no pretest. The dependent variables of interest are the verdicts and ratings of credibility. We cannot ask those questions prior to participants reading the case—a pretest would be illogical in this study.

· Selection-Instrumentation Effect: The dependent variable is measured the same across each of the conditions, so this is not a threat. There would be no reason to have different dependent variable measures.

· Selection-History Threat: The study is short in duration, so history threat should not be an issue here. Perhaps we could time how long participants take to complete the study. Those who take an extended period of time might have been distracted in some way during the study, so maybe we would be concerned with history effects there, but that is not likely.

· Selection-Maturity Threat: This is not a concern because the study is too short in duration.

One potential internal validity concern is that participants are completing this study anywhere they choose. They might be at home, work, in the car, on the bus, or somewhere else. While there is no reason to suspect that these types of distractions might vary across experimental conditions, we should consider the possibility of it being a problem nonetheless.

Some might disagree with this interpretation of the strength of evidence. Some participants might not see this as any different, while researchers might disagree with the use of eyewitness confidence as a demonstration of strong evidence since confidence and accuracy are not strongly correlated (I know this from reading the literature—if you did not read the literature that you found, you might find this assignment difficult). We argue that the average person does equate these two things, so for that it would work for the study.

3. The concerns about generalizability here are that these are students, so they might not generalize to all jurors. I understand this criticism, but some studies have found that students make decisions that do not typically differ from non-students in these types of studies (I would cite this). We could increase generalizability by finding someone way to include nonstudents in the study, though that might be expensive or challenging.

The study probably lacks ecological validity because reading about a court case is different than actually being a juror.

End 11:01 AM