Evaluation Proposal

Research Methodology

Research Methodology

In this section, the research will entail looking at the processes that will enable the study bear the most honest and reliable data for the analysis and recommendations. The following terms will be used in this research paper as well as in the survey questions and their respective meanings are also explained as follows;

Terms used in the paper

Participants - this refers to the people the researchers intend to get responses from. For this study, they are the ex-convicts.

Materials- refers to the item that will be used to conduct the survey which will contain the questionnaire.

Procedure- refers to the step by step process that the researchers will rely on to carry out the research activities of gathering data.

Awareness of the problem refers to the process through which the participants and the research assistants get in-depth insights into the problem and the desired process that the problem is addressing.

Suggestion- this refers to the opinions of the participants in regards to a research question based on personal experience.

Recommendations- refer to the opinions of the researchers based on the research findings.

Evaluation – this refers to the examination of the specific item contained in research finding and their likely effects on the results.

Plaintiff or persecutor or claimant- this refers to the party that initiates a case before the court of law. Here the claimant is the person who presented a case that led to the conviction of the participants.

The defendant or the accused refers to the party that was responsible for answering the plaintiff claims and here we refer to the ex-convict at the time they were attending to the court cases. We have two types that is a civil defendant or criminal defendant.

Evidence- this is defined as “any matter of fact, the effect, tendency or design of which is to produce in the mind a persuasion of the existence or nonexistence of some other matter of fact” (Twining, 1994)

Relevance- this is the relationship between the evidence presented and the fact that is under scrutiny.

Weight- this refers to the degree of the relevance of the evidence

Participants

Participants will include 300 ex-convicts, they will include those that had been wrongfully convicted of offenses and that they feel that the courts did not rely on the desired evidence and thus this led to their wrongful conviction. Thus they will be required to take place in a survey that will consist of teams that will test on their opinions about the whole case and their expectations just in case proper evidence would be presented. The participation will consist of the ex-convict who has been outside the jail for the last four years. This is an appropriate period since most of them will adequately remember everything about their past detention experience.

Materials

The questionnaire has been designed with questions that will require their personal opinions. Thus we have not restricted them to specific answers due to the vastness of criminal cases. The participants will, however, be required to state their opinions on what they find to be the best way of storing the evidence so that it may be free from tampering or alteration before they are presented to the court.

Procedure

We shall conduct an initial meeting with the identified and willing participants so that we can make them aware of the research. We shall schedule the meetings at different times and different locations to provide enough privacy of the respective ex-convicts so that they may not meet at one place and develop mixed reactions after meeting.

We shall then take the participants through a counseling process to make them be free and comfortable telling information about his or her criminal history. We shall then select the most eligible participants who will be between 20 and 50 years of age both genders. We shall then evaluate their academic so that we may pick on the ones that we find that they can easily handle the survey questions.

After carefully selecting the participants, they will take part in a survey that will have 20 questions that are all open-ended. After they have filled the questions without revealing their identities, we shall then evaluate qualitatively the responses and upgrade the responses separately to award different degrees of relevance based on the research question.

The survey will be conducted in multiple locations near the ex-convicts locality so that they may feel safe and not subjected to an exercise that exposes them in a bad way. After the survey analysis will be conducted.

Evaluability and measures for the effectiveness of the policy

The policy will be continuously be evaluated and measured for its effectiveness. If it will be found that indeed electronic storage of evidence can be reliable, then there shall be recommendations that the method is studied further on ways of ensuring that it remains the most secure backup of evidence. To be able to evaluate the policy, there will be the establishment of the policies themselves as well as measures of how the evaluation would be done, then the expected results. If there are possible ways to measure the effectiveness of the policy then, the policy is valuable. And if there will be an increased number of acquittals after the presentation of digital evidence for wrongly accused persons, then the policy shall be deemed efficient (Taylor, Haggerty, Gresty & Hegarty, 2010).

Impact of political or ethical issues that might be associated with the measures

Political forces may have adverse interference with the adoption of the policy. This is because of self-interest that the political class has. Cases in the courts of law have largely involved the politicians who have a huge financial muscle. Thus whenever they are accused by the common citizens, they use their financial muscle to destroy the evidence. Give that the courts work on the principle of relation with the existing evidence. Thus the policy will be rendered ineffective if at all the political class will able to access the evidence. Secondly is that the political class have the mandate of changing the laws to suit their interests. Also if they may repel the powers that allow the court to accept the digitally preserved evidence, then the measures put in place will be ineffective and rendered useless.

References

Beebe, N., & Clark, J. (2005). A hierarchical, objectives-based framework for the digital investigations process. Digital Investigation, 2(2), 147-167. doi: 10.1016/j.diin.2005.04.002

Garfinkel, S. (2010). Digital forensics research: The next 10 years. Digital Investigation, 7, S64-S73. doi: 10.1016/j.diin.2010.05.009

Garfinkel, S., Farrell, P., Roussev, V., & Dinolt, G. (2009). Bringing science to digital forensics with standardized forensic corpora. Digital Investigation, 6, S2-S11. doi: 10.1016/j.diin.2009.06.016

Stockmann, R. (2008). Evaluation and quality development: Principles of impact based quality management. Frankfurt, M: Lang.

Taylor, M., Haggerty, J., Gresty, D., & Hegarty, R. (2010). Digital evidence in cloud computing systems. Computer Law & Security Review, 26(3), 304-308. doi: 10.1016/j.clsr.2010.03.002

Twining, W. (1994). Rethinking evidence: Exploratory essays. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press.