criminal justice research project proposal

Term Paper Assignment

CRIJ 3300 Applied Research and Methods

9 Pages

Introduction

In the American Criminal Justice System, many young adults commit delinquency acts. In this paper, the goal of this research is to find out if the use of any controlled substance or any illegal drug incite male juveniles in high school delinquency. I hypothesize that if male juveniles that attend high school consume any controlled substances or illegal drug, then their crime commission or delinquency rates will increase. If male juveniles that attend high school commit crime or delinquency acts, and they do not consume controlled substances or illegal drugs, their crime rates will go down or remain the same.

Population of Interest

For this research, the population of interest will be male juveniles of American nationality who attend a public high school in Chicago, Illinois.

Unit of Analysis

The unit of analysis proposed to analyze for this research will be individuals. Individual students who get studied in a research can be less likely to be influenced by peers or any outside source.

Variables of Interest

Attributes of the variables are important in this research. The male juveniles chosen will be between the ages of 12 to 17. The ethnicity or race of the juveniles are not important to this research, because it is not quantitative. It might be important for a research that is looking to know how many juveniles from certain race commit delinquent acts, but in this research, the goal is to find out if the consumption of any controlled substance or illegal drug alter juvenile delinquency rates. A controlled substance is any substance or medication that people use to get high. An illegal drug, is any substance that cannot be used under a certain age, or that cannot be used at all in the United States. These definitions bring us to the meaning of juvenile delinquency, which is any deviant behavior or delinquent act that juveniles commit during the course of adolescence or at a certain age that is between twelve and seventeen. This definition relates to the questions in the survey that ask about the juvenile committing any delinquent acts or deviant behaviors. The independent variable in this research is the drug or illegal substance that the juvenile consumes before the commission of a delinquent act. The dependent variable is the delinquent act itself depending on the consumption of illegal drugs or controlled substances. It is the dependent variable because as we hypothesized, if the juvenile does not take drugs or if he does not use controlled substances then the delinquency rate will probably go down. The control variable is the situations that happen to the juvenile when he is outside of school. Problems at home, child abuse, child neglect, being a victim of bullying, parents that abuse illegal substances, parents or family members that abuse alcohol in front of the juvenile amongst other, are examples of what could be considered the control variable. The control variables are included in this research because it may affect the results of our study. It is a very important part to consider because the outside sources that may affect the juvenile’s life can be a reason for the juvenile to commit delinquent acts.

Prior Research/Rationale and Background

Research has been made regarding juvenile delinquency and substance abuse and many of the studies have found that child neglect is a factor that leads juveniles to commit delinquent acts. A study conducted on 2011 by Chenn and colleagues, states that “Children who were neglected during at a young age were found to have a significantly higher tendency to be involved in risky health behaviors such as violence perpetration, drug and alcohol abuse, and other behaviors during adolescence, and many extend these behaviors well into their adulthood” (pp. 275). This study claims that children who are abused or neglected tend to commit more delinquent acts.

But is it only child neglect that can lead to juvenile delinquency? There are many things that can make juvenile commit delinquent acts. Various studies done suggest that delinquency is caused by social interactions or things that happen to the juvenile and biological factors. One of those factors can be alienation, which is “an emotional state brought by environmental and/or economic conditions and has long been used by social scientists to explain deviant behavior (Calabrese, 1990 Abstract). Accordingly, juvenile delinquency can be provoked by alienation. These deviant behaviors are a cause of social factors, and lead them to substance abuse, drug consumption and avoidance of goal accomplishments. Since these studies suggest reasons for juvenile drug abuse and delinquency, our research will try to find out if drugs or substance abuse themselves can be a reason for juveniles to commit delinquent acts. This study is worth conducting because many researchers have found various factors that can encourage juvenile deviant behaviors, but the studies do not really explain or mention that drugs are a factor for juvenile delinquency. In the studies, doing drugs is seen as the delinquent act that juveniles commit, not as the factor that causes them to commit delinquent acts.

According to a study that was conducted in Spain, the percentage of juveniles who use drugs according to DeSouza and colleagues (2009), they have different drawbacks like physical abandonment, emotional and vulnerable trajectories convergent with exclusion.

“Las tasas de prevalencia tienden a ser mayores entre los adolescentes que, según De Souza, Sewell y Ranganathan (2009, 413), soportan diferentes carencias (abandono físico, emocional, trayectorias vulnerables convergentes con la exclusión).” (DeSouza, Sewell, Rangathan 2009), quoted in (Xavier, Navarro-Perez, & Cosin, 2016).

It might be the same for American juveniles or it might be different, but many of the factors that lead to juvenile delinquency are similar in many ways. The explanation of these reasons come in different results of certain studies, but the purpose of this research is to see if drugs alter the delinquency rates in juveniles. Since using drugs and abusing controlled substances is a deviant or delinquent behavior, research does not focus on if it alters the delinquency rates when juveniles consume drugs or controlled substances. Research only support that drugs are a part of deviant behavior in teenagers, and that “individual drug use shows a consistent relationship with many criminal behaviors, including violent and property crime” (Phillips, 2017, pp. 134).

Sampling Strategy

The sampling strategy proposed to use in this research is Simple Random Sampling (SRS). In SRS, we sample a part of the population of interest. This sample should help us to be able to generalize. Also, “each member of the population has a known probability(chance) of being selected” (Dickinson, 2018). Our sample population is all male juveniles who are of American nationality and attend a public high school in Chicago, Illinois. The sample that we collected was chosen by randomization, where each member has a chance of being picked without bias or prejudice. The sample must be representative of the population that we want to study, meaning that the “aggregate characteristics of the sample should closely resemble the characteristics of the aggregate population” (Dickinson, 2018).

Even though it may not result in a perfectly representative sample, we will use the Equal Probability of Selection Method to do it where everyone has an equal chance of being selected for the study. Two of the benefits of random selection is that it “serves as a bias check and it can help us estimate our accuracy and population parameters” (Dickinson, 2018). The individuals in this study were selected randomly by randomly picking public high schools in Chicago. After randomly selecting the high schools, we got our sample frame, which was a list of the male juveniles that attended the high schools selected. Then, out of the lists, we picked random male students who were American citizens which were 1000. Those randomly selected students will be the represent the population in our study. One of the benefits of this sampling strategy is that it “enables statistical probabilities” (Dickinson, 2018). But as it can be beneficial it can also have disadvantages like “requiring a complete list of the population to be sampled, large samples make process tedious, and representativeness is not guaranteed” (Dickinson, 2018).

Threats to Validity

Respectively, this research can have several threats to validity. One of the internal validity threats that this study can have is maturation. If we present a pre-test and posttest, many of the juveniles will mature in the time that we handle the study. Time goes by and their opinions and ways of seeing things might change affecting the study in them changing their answers or lying in the surveys just to look good to others. Another threat that this research can face is instrumentation. If we change from survey to interviews just because the information required for this study cannot be provided through a survey, then it will probably make the juveniles uncomfortable, parents will not give consent to interview their children, or they may not want to participate in the study any further. Also, many of the results can change from answering a survey to answering questions in person, which can give a different outcome to the research.

Not very likely but probable that can threaten the validity of this research is testing. If we conduct surveys on these juveniles several times after certain time, then they might feel like just changing their answers, or like lying in the survey since they have already filled one out. Maybe they will be lazy to fill out a survey again and they will put down random answers, or they will not even want to answer further questions.

Ethical and Practical Issues

Just like this research can have validity threats, it can also have ethical and practical issues. One of the ethical issues that this study can have is that it might be a little unethical to give out information to strangers about their parents, or their own delinquent/deviant acts. The adolescent can feel scared to answer questions about their parents and might not answer the questions. Making juveniles feel scared though a survey might be a little unethical for the research to continue.

To fix or manage this issue, maybe we can only ask questions about them in the survey, even though it is important to know a little about their backgrounds, their personal lives at home and their social lives, to avoid an ethical issue we could just narrow down the survey to only ask questions about their personal experiences and not about anyone else. Another ethical issue that this study might face is the consent of the parents to be in the research. For some parents it would be unethical for someone to be asking their children about drugs, and crime or delinquent acts. To manage this issue, a consent form is made for the juvenile and one for the parent. If the parent does not give permission for the child to be part of this study, we can eliminate the juvenile and randomly select another student.

Another ethical issue is that the children are underage, and it could affect in a certain way. Minors would be telling us about their criminal history or delinquent acts and sometimes it is necessary to report those issues. Eventually the juvenile would feel uncomfortable confessing to a crime. To deal with this issue, it is applied a confidentiality part in the consent form, as well as it states that being a part of this research is completely voluntary. As of practical issues, I do not think that there would be any. Having enough staff to pass out the surveys at their schools, get in touch with the school for permission to conduct research and taking a little of their time for them to answer the survey should not be a problem if the correct person gets advised about the goal of this research.

Limitations

One of the shortcomings that this research may have, would probably be the sample population we will give the survey to. If there are 219,202 students in public high schools and 102,036 are males, surveying 1,000 students will be a little too small for the sample. Lack of staff and sources to move around the city can also be a shortcoming that can affect us because if the research takes long and the surveys are given out at different times, maybe the responses of the juveniles are different.

Another shortcoming that this research may have is the generalizability issue. The population chosen in this study does not represent all male juveniles in the United States. This research would only be applicable to the male juveniles in Chicago, and not to everyone around this area. This limits our findings because they are not applicable to population as a whole.

Reference List

Calabrese, R., & Adams, J. (1990). Alienation: A cause of juvenile delinquency. Adolescence, 25(98), 435.

Chen, W., Propp, J., deLara, E., & Corvo, K. (2011). Child Neglect and Its Association with Subsequent Juvenile Drug and Alcohol Offense. Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal, 28(4), 273-290.

Phillips, M. (2017). A Factor Analytic Model of Drug-Related Behavior in Adolescence and Its Impact on Arrests at Multiple Stages of the Life Course. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 33(1), 131-155.

Xavier Uceda-Maza, F., Navarro-Perez, J., & Vicente Perez-Cosin, J. (2016). Adolescentes y drogas: si relación con delincuencia. Revista de Estudios Sociales, (58), 63-75.

Research Survey for Juveniles

Instructions: Please answer the following questions honestly and to the best of your knowledge. Remember you have the right to refrain from answering any questions that make you feel uncomfortable or that you do NOT want to answer.

1. What is your age? ________

2. Do you attend High School on a regular basis?

A) Yes B) No

3. Do you like school?

A) Yes B) No

4. What grade are you in?

A) 9th B) 10th C) 11th D) 12th

5. Have you ever consumed any controlled substance or illegal drug?

A) Yes, if you answered yes to this question, please answer questions 4, 5, 6 and 7. B) No, if you answered no to this question, please skip questions 4, 5, 6 and 7.

6. How long ago did you consume any controlled substance or illegal drug? ________________________________________________________________________

7. What kind of controlled substance(s) or illegal drug(s) did you consume?________________________________________________________________

8. How did you feel when you consumed the drug or illegal substance? Circle one. Very Bad Bad No Feelings Good Very Good

9. How many doses of the controlled substance or illegal drug did you consume? ________________________________________________________________________

10. What crime do you think young people are more likely to be involved in?

A) Theft (shoplifting or stealing other people’s property) B) Disorderly conduct (swearing loudly in public, causing fights in public, etc.)

C) Destruction of private or public property (breaking windows)

D) Vandalism

E) Drugs

F) Alcohol

G) Other (please specify) ___________________________________________________

11. Have you or anyone you know that has taken part in juvenile delinquency? (i.e. vandalism, destruction of private/public property, stealing, shoplifting, trespassing, etc.)

A) Yes, if you answered yes please answer questions 12 & 13.

B) No, if you answered no please skip questions 12 & 13.

12. Prior to the delinquent act, had you or the person you know that committed a youth crime taken any illegal drug or controlled substance? A) Yes B) No

13. What do you think leads young people to commit crimes? Why? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

14. Do your parents live together? A) Yes B) No

15. If your parents live together, does one of them or both of them have substance abuse issues, or alcohol abuse issues? A) Yes B) No

16. If you answered yes to question #15 please provide the substance(s) your parent(s) abuse. _____________________________________________________________________

17. Have you ever been a victim of another student or person around the age of 12-17? A) Yes B) No

18. If so, what was it that the juvenile did to you? ________________________________________________________________________

In this section, please read the statements and circle one of the numbers to which you answer pertains. Circle one number only to provide your response.

	Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
19. I take notice of what goes on around me.	1	2	3	4	5
20. Youth crime is a huge problem in our community.	1	2	3	4	5
21. I have been a victim, or a witness of a youth crime.	1	2	3	4	5
22. I am not afraid to give my opinion if I feel strongly about something.	1	2	3	4	5

References

Sabo, M. (2017). Young People Survey. Retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/miroslavsabo/young-people-survey

No Author (n.d.) Questionnaire on Youth Crime. Retrieved from https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PN6FMD7