Cj490 - Unit #2 Assignment

Purposes of Research

Jesse L. Michaud

Kaplan University

Abstract

In researching criminal justice in any given area for any given time it’s important to understand the basics as is the case with anything in life that you learn. There are four purposes to research which must be understood fairly well and we will go over them together.

Four Purposes of Research

The four purposes of research as they relate to criminal justice are exploration, description, explanation, and application (Maxfield & Babbie, 2006/​2009). Let’s take some time to discuss each.

First we have exploration. Exploration research is utilized when you are trying to gather more information about a specific problem. The information that you are gathering could be info that is not known, not known well, or simply more information needed to make a more informed decision about a particular problem. An example of this could be the death rates as a result of speeding on a small town road in your community. It is known that this particular road is conducive to folks being able to travel at a high rate of speed but why that is no one has bothered to investigate before. Is it because it is too flat, is it because it is infrequently patrolled by officers, or is because of the age of people that live and drive that particular road the majority of the time? This among other questions are asked in order to explore and gather more information about the problem of deaths due to speed on this road.

Next we have description. Description research is when you have gone through the exploration stage of researching and now you are describing what you have learned through the questions you’ve asked. For example, in the scenario I provided above you have come to learn that the road is in fact 8 miles of almost straight as an arrow road which you can visibly see almost the entire road, you’ve also learned that the road is patrolled maybe once a day and usually around noon-time, and finally you’ve...