NCJ Number
174728
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Education Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Dated: Fall 1997 Pages: 201-214
Date Published
1997
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This article addresses the complicated relationship between information finding and the overall research process and specifically focuses on ways in which electronic and other information-based skills can be taught critically in criminal justice doctoral education courses that emphasize the primacy of research design.
Abstract
The article is based on efforts of one criminal justice doctoral program to integrate needed electronic access skills into the curriculum without compromising intellectual integrity and on one faculty member's experience in implementing these efforts in a required research design course. The article supports the view that curriculums required of social scientists in training generally neglect the related topics of information finding and the identification of appropriate primary data collection methods. These topics are clearly related to the overall research design process, and students need to understand how to calculate standard statistical measures and to interpret results, particularly because electronic databases must be searched using tools that enable finely tuned searches on very narrow topics. Undergraduate students who do not always need to conduct very specific and multiconcept searches are not always served by the electronic world and need to learn about other ways of finding and selecting information. 23 references and 3 footnotes