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QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH IN CRIMINOLOGY : Examination Summary : CMY3709
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- University Of South Africa (Unisa)
Summaries of 10 Mark Questions for examination purposes.
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CMY3709EXAM PREP / ESSAY TYPE
EXAMINATION PERIOD: OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
10 MARK QUESTIONS
3. DISCUSS THE FOUR PILLARS IN RESEARCH ETHICS (15 mark also)
Pillar 1: Voluntary participation
Social research of any kinddisrupts the lives of the respondent. Filling in
aquestionnaire and taking part in interviews are activities a respondent did not ask
for,and can be time-consuming. Research throws the regular activities of the
respondent in disarray. The researcher may intrude into the private lives of
respondents by askingvery personal questions. Social research often requires very
personal information aboutrespondents. It can be so personal that those close to the
respondent, for example, friends and family do not know about the information
disclosed to the researcher and yet in some cases, social research requires that this
information be revealed to total strangers. Hence, social researchers agree that an
ethical requirement for responsible social research is the voluntary participation of
the respondents.
Pillar 2: No harm to the participation
Whether or not the respondents volunteered for the study, they should never be
harmed inany way by social research. In practice this means that no information
should bereleased that could embarrass them including information about any
unpopularattitudes, demeaning characteristics or even deviant behaviour. Social
research has thepotential to harm respondents psychologically, and the researcher
must be extremelycareful. The most important aspect concerning voluntary
participation is informed consent which means that the respondent must understand
all the risks involved in participating in the research before the individual actually
participates in the research study.
Pillar 3: Anonymity and confidentiality
Guaranteeing a respondent's anonymity means making sure that no-one
canassociate a given response with a given respondent. Guaranteeing
confidentialitymeans that the researcher is able to identify a given person's
response, but promises not to do so in public. Anonymity makes it difficult to trace
who has and who has not returned questionnaires.To ensure anonymity and
confidentiality, researchers can remove all identifyinginformation from the
questionnaires the moment it is no longer required. Similarly,once all follow-up
interviews have been conducted with respondents, their details canbe removed.
Pillar 4: No cheating of colleagues
Pillars 1 to 3 related to the ethical responsibilities of the researcher toward
therespondents. This one relates to the researcher's responsibility to the scientific
, CMY3709
EXAM PREP / ESSAY TYPE
EXAMINATION PERIOD: OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020
community. Researchers themselves know what the limitations and failures of a
particular research project were.Researchers are under obligation to make these
known to their readers. Evennegative findings should be reported, because these too
are related to the research.Generally speaking, social science grows through
honesty and openness. Deceptionretards its growth. When researchers do not cheat
their colleagues, they may savethem from making the mistakes they themselves
made.
4. DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE PREMISES OF RATIONALISM AND
EMPIRICISM
Rationalism
Rationalism is a broad philosophical approach. It is based on Plato's thinking and
hasimplications for the idea of science. The underlying philosophy of 17th and 18th
century rationalism- idealism - tried to explain the world in terms of ideas
andthoughts and to identify some sort of spiritual basis for all existing things. To
arrive attrue knowledge, for example, scientists had to turn to the abstract level.
”Abstract” isthe opposite of concrete, and so refers tothings that cannot be perceived
directly through the human senses and things that do not relate to the visible world.
We can state this differently, and say that true understanding of any phenomenon
isnot a matter of its physical form, but the form it assumes in the human mind.
Theactual truth of anything that we perceive exists only in the abstract. What we
seeand experience, then, is not truth, but mere objects of perception, like shadows
on thewall. As a result, all the emphasis was placed on human reason.
With regard to the origin of knowledge, the rationalists believed that knowledge
camefrom both sensory observation and intellect, but that only intellect could
produce true,reliable and valid knowledge. Knowledge obtained via the senses was
viewed asunclear, questionable and only relatively valid. Human reason was seen as
theprimary source of knowledge. In explaining human behaviour, rationalism held
thatbehaviour is the outcome of logical, conscious decisions by an individual rather
than aproduct of irrational, unconscious forces.Rationalism is alsoderived from the
anti-naturalist tradition. This anti-naturalist tradition gave rise to anti-positivism or
humanism.
Empiricism
Empiricism is another broad philosophical approach that grew from Aristotle's
realism.The empiricist axiom is that objects exist independently of the human mind
and can beknown by the human mind. Like rationalism, the principles of empiricism
haveimplications for the philosophy of science and specifically for the scientific idea.
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