This course introduces undergraduate students to the methods of social science research, with an emphasis on crime and criminal justice topics. First, this course will explain the concepts and vocabulary needed to understand social science research. Students will learn about different types of research methods, including: experiments, surveys, secondary data analysis, interviewing, and more. Second, the course will provide students with practical experience in reading, understanding, and writing research. The course will cover a variety of design issues, methodological issues and analytic techniques. The techniques provide a springboard for the discussion of important methodological issues: the relationship between theory and data, the logic of inference, causality, data collection, model specification, standardized versus un-standardized data and many others.
Core Courses are courses that fulfill lower-level requirements and apply to any transfer path major where they appear. Research Methods is universal course description, which maps to specific courses on SUNY campuses. Approved SUNY Transfer Path Core Courses are guaranteed to transfer to fulfill requirements in the major and/or required cognates (not just as electives) at all SUNY campuses if the course is completed with a grade of C or better.1 You may Search for Core Course equivalents using the Transfer Navigator.
1 While a grade of C or better is guaranteed, campuses can have different policies where they accept a passing grade lower than C. Pass/Fail courses may be accepted at the discretion of the campus, but transfer is not guaranteed.