Research Methods for Criminal Justice Students
The textbook covers most areas of research methods in the field of criminology and criminal justice. Like other textbooks, each chapter identifies the learning objectives and showed it in the beginning. At the end of each chapter, there are several discussion questions for students. Each chapter is comfortable to follow and addresses all the learning objectives to provide a straightforward response to the discussion questions. In addition, each chapter covers ideas of the subject appropriately and provides an effective index, key terms, and glossary.
Content is accurate and it is easy to read and follow.
Each chapter addresses fundamental concepts and techniques that students should know about research methods in social sciences. The book is published in 2022, indicating that content is up-to-date.
The text is simple and well-written, and content is informative and straight-forward.
The text is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework. The author did a great job in providing summary at the end of the chapter that tied along with the learning objectives that are provided at the beginning of the chapter.
There are five parts in the textbook and each part is easily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned at different points within the course (please see the Table of Contents). Personally, chapter 4 and 5 covers relevant information, but they could have gone more in depth when describing the different techniques along with a variety of research examples.
The topics in the text are presented in a logical and clear fashion. The logical organization carries students through the sequence of the research process. As an instructor, I like the organization that is flexible and helps students better understand the fundamental research skills in criminal justice.
Personally, I would suggest the author to add more photos/images/charts to give examples of what each objective talk about on each chapter. It would help the reader to figure out some methodological techniques with a visual representation. Nonetheless, the text is free of significant interface issues, including navigation problems and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.
There are no typos or technical/grammatical errors that I am aware of in the textbook.
The text is not culturally insensitive and offensive as the text discuss mainly about research methods. Some examples in the textbooks are children and family.
Overall, this book contains information that could help students understand the knowledge about methodological terms and skills. This book would be suitable for undergraduate methods courses in most social sciences.