Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research Quiz

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research

• Qualitative: Provides rich, detailed information about experiences and insights. Uses methods like case studies, interviews, and observations. Less expensive, more in-depth, and needs fewer participants, but findings can't be generalized, and reliability is lower.
• Quantitative: Focuses on factual data (like statistics) to test theories or hypotheses. Methods include experiments, surveys, and content analysis. High in reliability and reproducibility, offers variety in sample sizes, and allows generalization, but can be expensive and may contain biases.

Anomie Theory

• Core Concept: Crime occurs when individuals are pressured to achieve societal goals (wealth, power) but lack the legitimate means (education, opportunity) to do so.
• Criticisms: Shows class bias (only focuses on lower socioeconomic classes), assumes a single cultural goal, and doesn't explain all types of crime (e.g., violent crime, white-collar crime).
• Adaptations to Strain: Different ways of responding to the gap between goals and means.
• Conformist: Accepts goals and means.
• Ritualist: Accepts means but rejects goals.
• Rebellion: Rejects both goals and means.
• Innovation: Rejects means but accepts goals, often leading to crime.
• Retreatist: Rejects both goals and means.

Institutional Anomie Theory

• Core Concept: Crime in the U.S. is caused by pressure to achieve the "American Dream" (material success, open competition), which prioritizes material wealth.
• Criticism: Doesn't fully account for other factors and assumes a single cultural goal.

General Strain Theory

• Core Concept: Crime results from strain caused by negative relationships with others. Strain leads to anger, frustration, and delinquency.
• Types of Strain:
• Prevents/threatens achievement of goals.
• Removes/threatens to remove positive stimuli.
• Presents/threatens negative stimuli.
• Strain to Delinquency: Lack of coping strategies, lowered threshold for adversity, hostile attitudes and negative arousal.
• Coping Strategies: Cognitive (minimizing adversity, maximizing positives), behavioral (maximizing positives, minimizing negatives), and emotional (e.g., drugs, exercise, meditation).

Social Disorganization Theory

• Core Concept: Crime in communities with weak social cohesion and informal social controls.
• Social Organization: Social order arises from internal social cohesion, which binds individuals, institutions, and communities.
• Factors Affecting Social Organization: Social change, economic deprivation, population instability, heterogeneity, and weak social control.

Collective Efficacy

• Core Concept: A community's shared belief and ability to regulate itself and intervene in local problems. Based on trust, shared expectations, and neighborhood ties.

Labeling Theory

• Core Concept: Deviance is not inherent in the act but in the label and punishment associated with it.
• Primary Deviance: Deviant acts with minimal consequences.
• Secondary Deviance: Deviant acts with applied labels and negative consequences, impacting social roles.
• Criticisms: Doesn't explain why an act is committed in the first place.

Critical Criminology/Conflict Theory

• Core Concept: Crime stems from inherent societal conflicts and power imbalances, particularly between classes.
• Marxist Explanation of Crime: Crime serves the interests of the ruling class to maintain the existing power structure.
• Conflict Theory: Focuses on class struggle between the bourgeoisie (owners of production) and the proletariat.

Feminist Thought

• Core Concept: Focuses on gender as a central factor in understanding crime and social institutions.
• Liberal Feminism: Crime differences based on gender differences.
• Marxist Feminism: Women committing crimes due to capitalist exploitation.
• Radical Feminism: Patriarchy precedes capitalism in causing crime.
• Socialist Feminism: Equally important factors of gender and patriarchy.

Intersectionality

• Core Concept: Identities are interconnected, impacting experiences of power and oppression.

Race-Based/Stratification Theories

• Critical Race Theory: Racism is ingrained and ordinary.
• Concentrated Disadvantage: Urban underclass phenomenon due to poverty, racial and residential segregation.
• Code of the Street: Social organization and control in deprived communities where formal systems are ineffective.

Test your knowledge on qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. This quiz covers their characteristics, advantages, and limitations. Delve into research types and the Anomie Theory to see how they interconnect.