The Sampson and Byron Groves, Essay Example

After reading the sampson and Byron Groves article on testing social disorganization theory I have found atleast two legitimate threats to the validity of the research study which concerns me.

The first threat to the validity of the research relates to the key indicator of the unsupervised teenage peer groups questionare. The respondents of the study were asked by the researchers about groups of teenagers who caused nuisences of themselves in the community. Although most of the victimization rates refered to quite serious crimes such as robbery, stranger violence, burglary, it is none the less possible that many of the respondents used these crimes as the critierioin for defining nuisences caused by groups of teens. I am concerened that many of the respondents all had there own different ideas of what constitutes a nuisance. Some respondents may consider loud music being played on the street corner to be a nuisance while other respondents might consider gun violence to be a nuisance. I believe the researchers should have given the respondents a list of what they (the researchers consider to be a nuisance) and have the respondents respond by using that method.

The second concern I have deals with the macro  level indicator of local friendship networks. The researchers asked the survey question “how many personel friends reside in the area that you live in ( a 15 minute walk from each other) from none to all. I find this survey question to be unreliable because a respondent with only one personel friend would respond to the researcher by concluding all, which would result in the respondent having very strong local ties in his or her community, which would be very misleading. On the other hand, a respondent with an unusually high number of friends could be defined as having weak local community ties even if they had several friends living in the community. I believe that this survey question is flawed. The researchers could have gotten more accurate results if they had general rules set in place for what respondents were included in the test. A three friend limit and a twelve friend max could have been a more accurate way to calculate the results more accurately. Its unfortanate to have to leave some people out of the research but that may increase the accuracy of this particular question. I believe this question is too flawed in general, for example a 92 year old women may not have any personal friends in the community because they might be all dead from old age. I am very skeptical about the results of this question. Perhaps there is a more accurate way to conduct this research question but honestly as a social scientist its better to admit that I do not know than to lie and say I have the answer!

The post of Hayes is thoughtful indeed because the problem with closed-ended questionnaires is always the same – they may not give enough freedom for the respondents to voice their opinions, attitudes, and peculiarities of their own situation. Thus, the researchers should have conducted a preliminary pilot testing for the sake of clarifying the extent to which the questions they designed are able to give full answers to the intended question. If some questions are revealed to be incomplete or inadequate, the researchers should have attributed additional work for analyzing the flaws of their questionnaire and designing it in a better and fuller way.

I fully agreed with Hayes in terms of the inability of adequate, objective judgment on the youth gangs and groups in the neighborhood, since every person has his or her own understanding about youth crime and delinquency, and mild misdemeanors typical for youth may be considered a grave crime by some conservative, elderly population members. Youth problems may exist in any neighborhood, even the most prestigious, peaceful, and respectable one; hence, specifying the types of crime that can be really indicative of social disorganization is vital for the success of the study.

I can also admit the flaws with the calculation of social ties and friendships in the community as a sure way of understanding the social organization level in a certain community. To co-exist peacefully, people do not necessarily have to be friends. There are many peaceful, law-obedient families with friends living far from them; however, having no friends in the community does not mean that the community is bad. It may mean that people are too busy at work, and prefer to travel 20 miles to visit their old friends than making friends in their neighborhood. Hence, I also consider this variables a not highly reliable one.