Research Decision and Rationale
• Restate research questions exactly as described in chapter 1
RQ1: What are underlying implications that guide the decision of law enforcement officers during a sexual assault investigation?
RQ2: How does training, police sub-culture, and other factors shape/influence police perceptions of victims of sexual assault?
• State and define central concept(s) / phenomenon (a) of the study. (Qualitative)
• Identify the research tradition.
• Provide rationale for the chosen tradition.
Role of the Researcher
FYI- I was a sexual assault investigator and majority of the people that will be interviewed are people that I have worked with or had some form of interaction with at the agency (Albany Police Dept.) that I was employed with. As a police officer, I have interview and interrogations in a daily routine. I have completed several hours of training for interviews and interrogations through Georgia Public Safety Training Counsel.
• Define and explain your role as observer, participant, or observer participant.
• Reveal any personal and professional relationships researcher may have with participants, with emphasis on supervisory or instructor relationships involving power over the participants.
• State how any researcher biases and / or power relationships are or will be managed.
• Other ethical issues as applicable (these could include doing a study within one’s own work environment, conflict of interest or power differentials, and justification for use of incentives) and the plan for addressing these issues.
Methodology
FYI- A vignette-based design using scenarios depicting rape shown to law enforcement officers completed by an online survey to explore and understand how law enforcement officers investigate sexual assault crimes. The target population within the study includes law enforcement officers with a minimum work experience of one year. The project will embrace the purposeful sampling technique to select the participants. This study will involve law enforcement officers in Dougherty County, Georgia. The agencies consist of the Albany Police Department, Dougherty County School System, Dougherty Count Police, and Dougherty County Sheriff’s Department (all agencies located in Albany, GA).
Participant Selection Logic
• Identify the population (if appropriate).
• Identify and justify the sampling strategy.
• State the criterion/a on which participant selection is based.
• Establish how participants are known to meet the criterion/a.
• State number of participants / cases and the rationale for that number.
• Explain specific procedures for how participants will be identified, contacted, and recruited.
• Describe the relationship between saturation and sample size.
Instrumentation
• Identify each data collection instrument and source (observation sheet, interview protocol, focus group protocol, video-tape, audio-tape, artifacts, archived data, and other kinds of data collection instruments).
• Identify source for each data collection instrument (published or researcher produced).
• If historical or legal documents are used as a source of data, demonstrate the reputability of the sources and justify why they represent the best source of data.
• Establish sufficiency of data collection instruments to answer research questions
For published data collection instrument
• Who developed the instrument and what is the date of publication?
• Where and with which participant group has it been used previously?
• How appropriate is it for current study (that is, context and cultural specificity of protocols/instrumentation) and whether modifications will be or were needed?
• Describe how content validity will be or was established.
• Address any context- and culture-specific issues specific to the population while developing the instrument.
For researcher-developed instruments
• Basis for instrument development (Literature sources, other bases (such as pilot study).
• Describe how content validity will be / was established.
• Establish sufficiency of data collection instruments to answer the research questions
Procedures For Pilot Studies (as appropriate)
• Include all procedures for recruitment, participation, and data collection associated with the pilot study and the main study
• Describe the relationship of the pilot study to the main study (e.g., what is the purpose of the pilot study?)
• Include the IRB approval number (completed dissertation).
Procedures for Recruitment, Participation, and Data Collection (for students collecting their own data)
For each data collection instrument and research question, provide details of data collection. Also please address that face to face interviews may not be possible due to COVID-19.
• From where data will be collected?
• Who will collect the data?
• Frequency of data collection events.
• Duration of data collection events.
• How data will be recorded?
• Follow-up plan if recruitment results in too few participants
• Explain how participants exit the study (for example, debriefing procedures).
• Describe any follow-up procedures (such as requirements to return for follow-up interviews).
Data Analysis Plan
For each type of data collected identify:
Connection of data to a specific research question.
Type of and procedure for coding.
Any software used for analysis.
Manner of treatment of discrepant cases.
Issues of Trustworthiness
• Credibility (internal validity): Describe appropriate strategies to establish credibility, such as triangulation, prolonged contact, member checks, saturation, reflexivity, and peer review.
• Transferability (external validity): Describe appropriate strategies to establish transferability, such as thick description and variation in participant selection.
• Dependability (the qualitative counterpart to reliability): Describe appropriate strategies to establish dependability, such as audit trails and triangulation.
• Confirmability (the qualitative counterpart to objectivity): Describe appropriate strategies to establish confirmability, such as reflexivity.
• Intra- and intercoder reliability (where applicable).
Ethical Procedures
• Agreements to gain access to participants or data (include actual documents in the IRB application).
• Describe the treatment of human participants including the following (include actual documents in the Institutional Review Board (IRB) application):
• Institutional permissions, including IRB approvals that are needed (proposal) or were obtained (for the completed dissertation, include relevant IRB approval numbers).
• Ethical concerns related to recruitment materials and processes and a plan to address them.
• Ethical concerns related to data collection/intervention activities (these could include participants refusing participation or early withdrawal from the study and response to any predicable adverse events) and a plan to address them.
• Describe treatment of data (including archival data), including issues of:
• Whether data are anonymous or confidential and any concerns related to each.
• Protections for confidential data (data storage procedures, data dissemination, who will have access to the data, and when data will be destroyed).
• Other ethical issues as applicable (these issues could include doing a study within one’s own work environment; conflict of interest or power differentials; and justification for use of incentives).
Summary
• Summary of main points of the chapter.
• Transition to chapter 4.
