Unit 9– Seminar Analyzing Content: Historical, Secondary, and Content Analysis and Crime Mapping Professor Chris Lim, MA, Ph.D.(ABD) Undergraduate School of Criminal Justice

Secondary Data Analysis Uses pre-existing data in a different way or to answer a different research question than intended by those who collected the data Four major types used in social science research  Surveys  Official Statistics  Official Records  Historical Documents Most common sources  Social science survey data collected in studies funded by federal and state governments  Official records maintained by government agencies for administrative, rather than research, purposes Very few sources of qualitative data are available for secondary analysis

Sources of Secondary Data With the advent of modern computers and, even more importantly, the Internet, secondary data analysis has become an increasingly accessible social research method. The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) is the major source of secondary data in crime and criminal justice is All data sets housed at NACJD are free and can be downloaded from the website

Advantages of Using Secondary Data Allow analyses of social processes in other inaccessible settings Saves time and money Allows the researcher to avoid data collection problems Depending on the specific data set and topic  May facilitate comparison with other samples  May allow inclusion of many more variables and a more diverse sample than otherwise would be feasible  May allow data from multiple studies to be combined  May allow longitudinal analysis

Limitations of Secondary Data May not be possible for a researcher to focus on the specific research question of original interest because  …use of existing data does not allow the progression from formulating a research question to designing, testing, and refining specific methods that are best suited to answer that question  …the study that produced the data may not have used most appropriate sampling or measurement approach Secondary analyst is ‘victim’ of whatever problems exist in the data  Errors  Poor sampling techniques  Poor response rate  Poor validity in measurements

Historical Events Research Cross-sectional examination of something that occurred in the past May be a case study of important event to examine its potential long-term importance

Comparative Methods Usually examine phenomena across societies  May study several countries - “cross-national research”  May study different social groups within a single country Focus on research questions that are more general in nature Limitations of single-society studies  Generalization  Controlled comparison  Causal inference  Mediation and intervening variables  Methodological uncertainty

Content Analysis Systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of message characteristics Identifying a population of documents or other textual sources Analysis of the content of communication from sources, including  Books  Newspapers  Magazines  TV  Movies  Videos  Websites  Historical documents  Video games  Songs  Speeches  Advertisements  Conversations  Graffiti

Identify Population of Sources Generally from list of items on previous slide (books, magazines, etc.) Source must be appropriate to research question  Must be able to find communications about your topic in the source(s) you select

Determine Unit(s) of Analysis All or portion of source?  Entire newspaper or only editorial page?  Only first communication (in book, speech, etc.) or all instances? How many?  Years of publication/place of publication

Select a Sample of Units Sample should be as statistically representative as possible Will depend on  Research questions  Resources (time, money, staff)

Design and Refine Content Coding Procedures Determine what unit of text to code (words, sentences, themes, ideas, paragraphs) Categories for codes Refine after coding a few “cases”

Analyze Content Data Use your codes to define items to analyze Count occurrences of particular items (ideas, words, etc.) Create form to record codes and their meaning General Procedures  Select a few “cases” (stories, articles)  “Read” the narrative (may be listen, view)  Look for all types of things that are described  Develop codes for these things  Determine how best to identify the types of things you are particularly interested in  As you “read” more, identify themes

Crime Mapping Purpose is to illuminate relationship between some category of crime and corresponding characteristics such as poverty and disorganization across given locations

Ethical Issues in Secondary Data Analysis Generally, confidentiality is not an issue because existing data from research studies is usually in public use files  identifiers have been removed and file has been created so that any researcher can access it without violating confidentiality Confidentiality may be an issue in historical records and official agency records IRB determines whether review is necessary