Book Review: Methods of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice
| Author | David Biles |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588401700307 |
| Published date | 01 September 1984 |
| Date | 01 September 1984 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
182
BOOK
REVIEWS (1984) 17
ANZJ
Crim
expense of consulting works by Manning, Rubenstein, Chatterton and others. What
remains significant is the accessibility of some important themes and options in
contemporary policing. In contrast to many academic treatises, these issues are
simply expressed, as is evidenced by the relatively few footnotes relied upon in each
chapter. The authors are to be commended not only for rendering these important
issues accessible to a wider audience but for also, as lawyers, locating the police
powers debate within its broader organizational and political contexts.
ANDREW
GOLDSMITH
Toronto, Canada
Methods of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arnold Binder and
Gilbert Geis, McGraw-Hill, New York (1983) 272 pp.
Text books designed for undergraduate students, especially those covering such
dry subjects as research methodology, cannot be expected to make compelling
reading. This book is in that class and, while not exactly rivetting, is certainly
readable and usefully instructive. In fact, in the judgment of this reviewer it is easily
the best book on criminological research that has yet appeared.
Binder and Geis both hold senior professorial positions with the Program in
Social Ecology, University of California at Irvine. They come from quite different
backgrounds, mathematical psychology and journalism respectively, but they have
been able to blend their talents to produce a text which is both precise and didactic
and yet lively because of the extensive use of examples of good and bad research.
The book opens with a chapter on research methodology as a way to minimize
human error and that simple message is the foundation for much of the later
discussion. In essence the writers repeatedly urge their readers to be careful, define
terms precisely, ensure validity and reliability of data, and be aware of alternative
plausible hypotheses. Following the introduction there is a chapter devoted to ethics
in criminological research which draws particularly on the Stanford experiments
with simulated prison environments.
Elsewhere in the book consideration is given to various techniques for avoiding
errors, the classification of research, victimization surveys, crime statistics and
program evaluation. There is even a brief section which contains straightforward
advice on how to conduct aliterature review without wasting weeks or months of
time. The book concludes with three chapters dealing with the types of statistical
techniques used by researchers: central tendency and variability, correlation, and
probability and probability distributions.
Overall this is a sensible, well conceived and well presented volume of advice and
guidance to the fledgling researcher in criminology. It is inevitably Ajnerican in its
orientation and use of examples, but the lessons it contains are as applicable to
Australia and New Zealand as they are to its country of origin. Unlike many
American texts this one mercifully does not include the lists of vacuous review
questions that are frequently to be found at the end of each chapter in similar books
prepared for undergraduates. Any teacher of research methods to criminology
students will find this book invaluable, as would those engaged in research in
criminal justice agencies.
DAVID
BILES
Canberra
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