Would I Answer Honestly If I Was Participating in a National Crime Survey?

Relationship satisfaction is an important part of romantic relationships. A lack of satisfaction can lead to consequences in other areas of life and eventually, the destruction of the relationship. For example, job performance is heavily influenced by romantic relationship satisfaction. In a study by Greenhaus and Beutell (1985), they argued that poor satisfaction leads to poor job performance and vice versa. They stated this was to because these two spheres are “interdependent.” Satisfaction can also influence quality of health. Conflict in a marital relationship is associated with higher heart rates and blood pressure (Broadwell & Light, 1999; Ewart, Taylor, Kaemer & Agras, 1991; Flor, Breitenstein, Birbaumer & Furst 1995; Frankish & Linden, 1996; Kiecolt-Glaser, 1993; Mayne, O’Leary, McCrady, Contrada & Labouvie, 1997; Morell & Apple, 1990; Shwartz, Slater & Birchler, 1994; Thomsen & Gilbert, 1998). It is also strongly associated with depression and depressed syndromes (Beach, Fincham & Katz, 1998; Fincham & Beach, 1999). This relationship between marital conflict and depression seems to be bidirectional meaning depression is not only a result of conflict but also is caused by the conflict (Beach, et. al., 1998; Fincham & Beach, 1999). Because a lack of relationship satisfaction can negatively affect so many important areas of life, it is important to understand what influences the level of satisfaction held in romantic relationships.

The Extent to Which Sociologists Agree that Official Criminal Statistics Do Not Give an Accurate Picture of the Extent in Terms of Crime

There are many various risk prediction scales that are being use to assess offenders. By using these risk assessments on offenders we are able to determine whether the offender is a high, medium, or low risk to the society. The Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) is an assessment that consists of a series of questions that are answered by the offender. LSI-R uses all of the following factors “criminal history, education/employment, financial, family, accommodation, leisure, companions, alcohol/drug problems, emotional/personal, and attitudes” (LSI-R, 2015) when assessing an offender. With the score generated from the LSI-R and opinions from correction professional we can determine whether the offender risk of recidivism is high,

(Vandiver, 2008). In my opinion, the research goal was explained pretty vaguely which could be the reason only nine respondents volunteered to participate in the interviews. “The cover letter for a mailed questionnaire and the introductory statement read by interviewers in telephone or in- person interviews are critical to the survey’s success”. (Bachman & Schutt, 2004 p.213). The mailed letter in this case lacked the characteristics of credibility, personalization, interest, and responsibility. After experiencing much negative stigma from their offenses, the respondent most likely would not have agreed to take part in the research without being informed of some sense of confidentiality they would receive. Personalization of the letter to each offender and credibility of the researcher would have possibly struck interest in the respondent and in return they may be inclined to participate. The reason for research could have been a bit more detailed and could have focused on the fact that the researcher wants to know the effects on the offender after being registered, putting the offenders best interest at hand may have persuaded them to take part in the research. ‘Without a personalized approach, the rate of response will be lower, and answers will be less thoughtful and potentially less valid’.

Through my understanding, I don’t believe that the Uniform Crime Report and the National Crime Victimization Survey report at the same rate. The UCR takes data that is reported from local law enforcement agencies, sent to the FBI and compiles a summary that is released for public viewing. The NCVS sends out surveys that allows individuals to report crimes, that they may have not, otherwise. While there is a likelihood that many victims will not report their crimes, overall, the majority do report, allowing for a greater number of accurate reports being delivered.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), every year a survey called the National Crime Victimization Survey collects data on non-fatal crimes (BJS, 2015). The BJS conduct this survey every year to find out how many personal crimes are being committed and how many of those crimes are being reported or not reported. Personal crimes can range from rape to robbery to burglary to larceny. The last important thing to note here is that the survey gathers information about the offender, this includes sex, race, and age. Some discrepancy that my come up is that the information that this survey gathers is from a sample of only 90,000 household and approximately 160,000 people. One question to ask would be where were the houses chosen from,

Questions involving the nature of crimes, injury, and weapons are asked. The victim’s and offender’s age, sex, race, and relationship are disclosed along with the victim’s marital status, and education level. All crimes even the unreported are asked along with details to help understand the situation. The NCVS is the only survey that can manage to handle crimes which were not reported.

Through the research, the results stated that “immigrants are especially prone to hide their criminal behavior,” supporting that they value the criminal justice system. The study had a group of immigrants take a survey to see is they would underreport their offenses. The contestants were tracked for a 7 year period to attain accurate information. Bersani and Piquero compared the data and came to the conclusion that the immigrants reported accurate information. Although Bersani and Piquero failed to really provide with several numerical facts and statistics their objective to have the reader understand went through. Everyone has to agree at one point that crime is bad and based on the information, immigrants don’t bring the majority of the crime to the

The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and National Crime Victims Survey (NCVS) are both measurements that track crime in United States. The UCR is run by the FBI and collects data on all crime known to the police. Sometimes this is detrimental because police stations can decide what crime that want report and how they want to report them. Each police station can report statistics for the same crime, yet have them be very different because one can report all crimes that had an arrest, while another can report any crime that happened. On the other hand, the NCVS is run by the University of Michigan and gathers statistics of all crimes. The negative side of this is the NCVS does not report victimless crimes. Both are reputable, yet have drastically

There are methodological problems with how this survey is conducted, this then has a knock on effect of the original sky news media report. As this survey is sampled and not censes, it does appear to create sampling issues which are resulted in the data. This appears when respondents do not recall an incident, recalled crimes which were not within the time frame of the survey, crimes which haven’t been recorded to the police or simply incidents which have been miscoded when entered.

Upon consent, the participants will be subjected to a series of interviews detailing personal aspects of their life that may be uncomfortable or difficult to discuss. For example, participants may be reluctant to respond to questions related to personal information such as relationships with their family, drug use, or inappropriate thoughts or behaviors. For this reason, it is vital to consider the participant's privacy and rights, as they could potentially feel coerced to participate or fear that their information will be shared with others. To reduce such concerns, the research team will establish a positive rapport with the participants to earn their trust and respect over a period of one semi-structured interview and two structured interviews conducted in private without the presence of correctional officers or any other law-enforcement official. In addition, we will reassure the participants that our research team is not associated with the correctional system and that the data will not be shared or made public.

During this essay, I will be discussing recorded crime statistics and victimisation surveys as they are our primary techniques of measuring levels and trends of crime. After briefly explaining what is meant by these terms, I will seek to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in order to question the extent to which they are reliable resources that provide us with accurate information.

Data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) from 2013/2014 have been used. The CSEW is a face-to-face survey asking households about their perception and experience of crime in the 12 months preceding the interview. The information at my disposal are part of a special unrestricted access teaching dataset produced by the UK Data Archive. Out of a sample of 35,371 households chosen in England and Wales for the actual survey, I had access to a 25% sample of 8,843 households. Representative of households were chosen through the Postcode Address File which excludes aggregative accommodation such as residential halls and prisons.

An earlier generation of scholars assumed that wives' employment and income are risk factors for divorce. More recent evidence, however, is mixed about the strength and even the direction of this association (Rogers, 2004; Sayer & Bianchi, 2000; Schoen, Rogers, & Amato, 2006). On the basis of research from the last decade, several conclusions seem likely. First, wives' employment has the potential to generate tension between spouses over the household division of labor. Frisco and Williams (2003) found that perceived unfairness in the division of household labor was associated with decreased marital happiness among spouses and an increased likelihood of divorce. Similarly, Amato, Booth, Johnson, and Rogers (2007) found that wives' hours of employment tended to increase spouses' perceptions of marital problems. The authors also found, however, that wives' earned income improved other dimensions of marital quality

There are many different methods of dispersing and accumulating data from subject self-reports, but for the purpose of this research proposal we have elected to adopt a method used in relatively recent study published by the Journal of Drug Issues entitled: “Substance Use, Drug Treatment, and Crime: An Examination of Intra-Individual Variation in a Drug Court Population”.