Criminologists assignment

Article Summary

http://paulzandbergen.com/PUBLICATIONS_files/Zandbergen_JRP_2006.pdf

The purpose of the article summary is to make you familiar with how peer-reviewed journals are set up, and how criminologists typically report their research findings. The assignment that you were given started with identifying a peer-reviewed journal article that discusses empirical research. That is, it offers a research question, proper methods used in addressing the proposed research question, identifying a hypothesis about what they expect to find, and presenting data to test the hypothesis.

Once a proper article is chosen, you will be asked to write a 2-page summary about what the article was about. The flow of the summary should be as follows:

1. Summary of the literature review -- What has already been researched on the topic by other authors according to the article you chose?

2. Research questions -- Here, you will identify what the author of the journal article was trying to answer. Such as, “Does police contact lead to higher rates of offending.” Also included in this section are the proposed hypotheses. Such as, “increased police contact leads to higher rates of violent offending.” As you can see, the research question and hypotheses can be very similar. One is a broad question; the other offers a direction of the relationship.

3. Methods -- How did the author answer the questions they proposed? For example, “the authors interviewed 62 respondents about their experience with police interactions.”

4. Conclusion -- What did the authors find? Was the proposed hypotheses validated? Were results consistent with what prior research found?

Format:

· Papers must be typed, about 2 pages in length, double-spaced. 12-font Times New Roman, with one-inch margins.

· Use headings within the paper (i.e., summary of literature review, research question, methods used, conclusion)

· Papers should be written in a scholarly tone, grammatically correct, and free of spelling errors.

· Make sure to include proper citation (APA format) of the article at the end of the paper.