Applied Research
Scientific study that aims to solve practical problems.
Confounding Effects
A rival explanation, or competing hypothesis, that is a threat to the internal or external validity of a research design.
Control Group
In an experiment, a group that serves as a standard of comparison with another group to which the control group is identical except for one factor.
Controlled Experiment
An experiment that tests only one factor at a time by using a comparison of a control group with an experimental group.
Data Confidentiality
The ethical requirement of social scientific research to protect the confidentiality of individual research participants, while simultaneously preserving justified research access to the information participants provide.
Descriptive Statistics
Statistical procedures used to describe, summarize, or highlight characteristics and responses of groups of subjects.
Evidence-based
That which is built on scientific findings; and especially practices and policies founded upon the results of randomized controlled experiments.
Experimental Criminology
A form of contemporary criminology that makes use of rigorous social scientific techniques, especially randomized controlled experiments and the systematic review of research results.
External Validity
The ability to generalize research findings to other settings.
Hypothesis
Possible explanation for a set of observations or possible answer to a scientific question.
Inferential Statistics
Set of mathematical procedures that help researchers learn if their research data reflects a true relationship or could be due to random chance.
Informed Consent
The ethical requirement of social scientific research that research subjects be informed as to the nature of the research about to be conducted, their anticipated role in it, and the uses to which the data they provide will be put.
Internal Validity
The certainty that experimental interventions did indeed cause the changes observed in the study group.
Inter Subjectivity
Begin with a different understanding, end with a shared understanding.
Meta-Analysis
A procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies.
Operationalization
The process of assigning a precise method for measuring a term being examined for use in a particular study.
Participant Observation
A research method in which investigators systematically observe people while joining them in their routine activities.
Primary Research
Research characterized by original and direct investigation.
Pure Research
Research undertaken simply for the sake of advancing scientific knowledge.
Qualitative Method
A research technique that produces subjective results, or results that are difficult to quantify.
Quantitative Method
A research technique that produces measurable results.
Quasi-Experimental Design
Ab approach to research that, although less powerful than experimental designs, is deemed worthy of use when better designs are not feasible.
Randomization
The process whereby individuals are assigned to study groups without biases or differences resulting from selection.
Replicability
A scientific principle in which valid observations made at one time can be made again at a later time if all other conditions are the same.
Research
The use of standardized, systematic procedures in the search for knowledge.
Research Design
The logic and structure inherent in an approach to data gathering.
Secondary Research
New evaluations of existing information that had been collected by other researchers.
Survey Research
A social science data-gathering technique that involves the use of questionnaires.
Test of Significance
A statistical technique intended to provide researchers with confidence that their results are, in fact, true and not the result of sampling error.
Theory
A series of interrelated propositions that attempt to describe, explain, predict, and ultimately to control some class of events.
Variable
A concept that can undergo measurable changes.
Verstehen" (German)
To understand.