Semester One Examinations

Summative Assignment

You are required to write one essay selected from the titles below of up to 1500 words.

Do not write your name on any part of the essay On the front page include: your Student Number the module number essay question title a word count (not including the bibliography) Word process your essay:- set the text at one and a half spaces format paragraphs clearly, leaving a space after each paragraph c number the pages Reference your essay using the Harvard System Include a correctly set out bibliography Include the correct coversheet Students who fail to follow these guidelines may lose marks. Instructions for submitting coursework can be found on Blackboard.

Use the CSEW 2011-12 data set and SPSS software to complete all the following tasks. The numbers in brackets refer to the variable numbers in the data set.

Describe the univariate distribution of the CSEW respondents in terms of each of the following variables:

Worry about being victim of a crime (v31) Full-time student at college or university (v10) EITHER: Employment status (v9) OR Educational level (v7)

Analyse the relationship between being a full-time student (v10) and having experience of crime in the past 12 months (v13). Are students more or less likely to be victims of crime? What is the size of the difference?

Describe the relationship between religious affiliation (v6) and one variable relating to feelings of safety (v16-18).

Present your findings using both percentages and frequencies and explain why both types of data must be considered in the interpretation of the results. Create a table that includes the data for all groups but compare the results for TWO religious group only.

Examine the relationship between ONE of the ‘worry’ variables (v19-22) and respondents’ employment status (v9).

Using both observed and expected counts, present the results for all groups in table but describe how you would interpret the results for ONE employment status only.

Use appropriate techniques to examine the relationship between employment status (v9) and worry about being a victim of crime (v31). Compare and contrast the level of fear between any TWO groups.

Examine the relationship between sex (v2) and confidence in the police in respondents’ neighbourhood (v34).

Use an appropriate technique to judge the size of the difference.

To what extent is age (v3) related to views on EITHER: Fairness of the criminal justice system (v33) OR Effectiveness of the criminal justice system (v32) Provide as full an account of this relationship as possible.

Information on the Summative Assessment

In order to complete the summative assessment you will need to download the following SPSS file from Blackboard:

SY2008 Summative Assessment Data Set (CSEW 2011-12) This data set is a simplified version of the 2011-12 Crime Survey for England and Wales data set. It contains 46,031 cases and 37 variables. You do not need to know any background information about the Crime Survey for England and Wales and should not discuss the survey or its methods in the assignment. For the purposes of the assessment the variables should be considered to belong to the following groups:

Assignment Do’s and Don’ts

Do: Treat the data set as population data. You don’t need to discuss sampling or overall response rates. You should keep an eye on missing data for individual questions, though.

Do: Use only as many analytic strategies as you are comfortable with. You do not need to use all the techniques covered in the module to achieve a passing mark. However, students correctly using a greater number of techniques will gain credit for doing so.

Do: Be selective in your choice of analytic strategies and methods of presenting your results. You will be assessed on your ability to choose the appropriate statistical techniques and methods of presentation. Use tables, graphs and charts where this is helpful but use them thoughtfully and selectively.

Do: Be concise where possible. Avoid repetition and duplication when presenting your results.

Don’t: Discuss concerns about how the data might have been collected or highlight issues with respondent bias, dishonesty or other related issues. In this assignment you should concentrate only on the process of analysis.

Don’t: Present your results using tables cut and pasted from SPSS. SPSS tables often contain irrelevant information and are not particularly user-friendly. Create your own tables and include only the relevant information. Use graphs only when necessary and only use those generated by SPSS when you cannot create them in Microsoft Word.

Don’t: Work closely with others on this assessment. The assessment is designed with a sufficient number of options to ensure that it is extremely unlikely that two students conduct exactly the same analyses. Any such ‘coincidences’ that occur will be examined very closely.

Don’t: Cite sources or provide references. You report will be judged entirely in terms of the appropriateness of analysis and the clarity of presentation. You do not need to cite any methods texts or other resources.

Don’t: Make links to the substantive literature. While some of you may have learned lots about experience and fear of crime you should not discuss relevant theories or other research findings in this assignment. Nor should you speculate about possible explanations or causes of your results.

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