Research Methods for Criminal Justice Review

Criminal Justice
Question 1
The bond created when one socializes with a person and acknowledges his points of view are known as rapport, and a qualitative interview is where data collection requires personal interaction. A qualitative interview comprises an interviewer and a respondent where a particular set of questions regarding a certain topic needs to be answered in a certain order. Therefore, an interviewer needs to appropriately create a mutual connection and rapport to gain the respondent’s trust. To establish an appropriate rapport with county jail inmates, one should be honest and manifest respect for the inmates as individuals.
Honesty is a key tool in establishing a rapport when conducting qualitative interviews with county jail inmates.(Maxfield, 2015) The researcher should be transparent with the intentions of data collection, honesty creates a sense of trust with the inmates, and hence the researcher is likely to collect accurate data. The researcher can create a sense of honesty by disclosing their name to the inmates and even sharing a life experience.
Lastly, the researcher should also respect the inmates regardless of their crimes. The researcher should view the inmates as individuals rather than prisoners; this makes the inmates share fluently and frankly personal issues and creates a social bond with the interviewer. Once the researcher establishes respect and embraces the inmates as a person, resourceful data is collected and recorded.
Question 2
Field observation is gaining a view of the characters being observed in their respective environments that the researcher watches where the specific actions are and record theobservations. It is also associated with the appropriate qualitative technique where researchers go where something is happening to know what is happening.(Maxfield, 2015)In order to determine the amount of illegal drug use on campus, a researcher needs to design a field observation project by making direct observations and asking appropriate questions.
A field observation research project to identify the amount of illegal drug use on campus can be established through the direct observation method. The researcher needs to avail him/herself of the places where students purchase illegal drugs and observe the number of students buying the drugs in a day. This enables the researcher to get a clear number of students buying the drugs daily and helps to determine the average amount used daily.
The researcher might also ask appropriate questions on what makes the drug be purchased regularly. The questions the researcher might ask include the price of the drug, which determines the students’ purchasing power, and the supply of the illegal drug to the campus. (Maxfield, 2015)Using these questions, the researcher can get valid results on the number of illegal drugs used on campus.
In conclusion, the collection of qualitative data method gives the researcher a comprehensive perspective of the phenomenon under research. Physical or social settings, behaviors, and events are generally obtained through field observations. These observations are to produce appropriate analysis. A rapport is created based on trust, which forms a strong foundation for conducting a qualitative interview. In field observations, the researcher goes where the action is happening and records the data to gather reliable and accurate data; a researcher should establish and develop trust, closeness, and harmony built through intercommunication and self-knowledge between the researchers and their respondents.

References
Maxfield, M. G. (2015). Basics of Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology. In Google Books. Cengage Learning. https://books.google.co.ke/books/about/Basics_of_Research_Methods_for_Criminal.html?id=sDd-BAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y