Reflective Writing Assignment
Description: This assignment will evaluate your understanding of course material as well as your
ability to critically evaluate, analyze, and apply the knowledge gleaned from the course to real-
world criminal justice situations. Due Date: See Course Syllabus. Late assignments will not
be accepted and will automatically result in a grade 0. Please be sure to devote meaningful
time and effort to this assignment, as it is worth 20% of your final grade!
Assignments must be submitted through Turnitin in Canvas, the University's plagiarism
check. Plagiarism of any nature will not be tolerated and will automatically result in a
grade 0 [see the Course Syllabus for more information].
Instructions:
Type and save your work in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx., or .rtf) format. Your total response
should be approximately 2500 – 3000 words. Use proper capitalization, punctuation, and
grammar. Please also include the following headings in your assignment [Question 1, Question
2, Question 3, Question 4, and Question 5], and your appropriate answers listed under each
heading for the assignment questions listed below.
Purpose: As a researcher, you are faced with a number of methodological decisions to make
during the study design and data collection portions of a research project. These decisions must
be made with great care because they influence the types of analyses that can be conducted with
the data, the degree to which the findings may be generalized to the population, and provide
context for policy recommendations and future research. This assignment is intended to give
you a glimpse at one small piece of the methodological decision-making process.
Question 1: Select a criminal justice related topic and use the UNF Library to find one
qualitative article and one quantitative article on this topic. Ensure that these are peer-
reviewed journal articles. Introduce your topic and state why it is important.
Question 2: Provide APA reference information for each of the two articles (one qualitative,
one quantitative). For information about APA format visit the website below or see
information described under the “UNF Library Services” heading on the next page:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Question 3: In your own words, provide a summary of the methodology, findings, and
limitations of each of the two articles. Each summary of methodology should include
information such as the sample size, sampling method, description of the subjects included
in the sample, where the study took place, if the study is cross-sectional or longitudinal, and
how the data were collected.
Question 4: Generally speaking, describe the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative
research. Next, describe the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative research.
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Question 5: Finally, if you were going to conduct your own research study on this topic,
which methodological approach (qualitative or quantitative) would you choose? Justify
your response. Your justification should take into account information such as time,
resources, the population you are trying to describe, validity, generalizability, and how your
study would contribute to the existing literature on this topic.