Texas Tuesday Vol. 5: Work

**Nerd alert…if you have no interest in criminal justice research then skip this post…you have been warned**

I don’t usually talk about my work, ever. Not because it is super important and I’d have to kill you if I told you (wouldn’t that be cool!), but more because I realize that it’s not very exciting to a lot of people and I HATE it when people talk to you about stuff they find fascinating, never stopping to realize that you may think it is as boring as watching paint dry.

So in order to avoid those situations, I just never talk about it. Not even to Britney. Whenever she asks what I’m doing, I just tell her work and she leaves it at that (she would totally listen to me go on for hours about it, but that’s not fair to her, so don’t think that she doesn’t care about what I do, because she is VERY supportive).

BUT for the very first time today, and for today only, I’ll give you lucky reader(s) a glimpse in to my other world: criminal justice research.

Currently I’m working on a few publications projects (or research papers that will eventually end up as submissions for publications).

Here is a taste of what I’m working on in the form of their abstracts (a really short summary of the research and its findings):

Piece #1: Taken from my Master’s Thesis

During recent decades, sentencing patterns of offenders based on gender have been the topic of criminological and sociological research. There has been particular attention given to the lenient sentencing of female offenders compared to male offenders. Several research studies have found that gender affects the sentencing process in ways that are advantageous to female offenders, such as lower incarceration rates and shorter prison sentences. Despite the existing research on gender and sentencing, there are still several specific areas that need to be studied regarding this topic, such as property crimes and rural areas. The current research adds to the existing literature by using data collected from five rural counties in Iowa to test the chivalry theory on gender differences in property crime sentences in rural areas. Results of the statistical analysis found the gender of the offender had no effect on sentencing as predicted. Other variables that failed to have an effect on sentencing included the age of the offender, education level, employment status and family status. Based on these findings, there was no support for the chivalry theory.

Piece #2: Co-authored with my thesis chair

Research on cross-national homicide has increased in the last decade. Since LaFree’s (1999) meta-evaluation of 34 studies, over 30 empirical studies have been published assessing a wide-range of variables associated with cross-national homicide rates. The current meta-evaluation updates previous patterns found in researching cross-national homicide by looking at theories, methods, independent, control and dependent variables, and conclusions of the 31 cross national homicide articles published since 1997. Similar to previous research, economic based theories, particularly the institutional anomie theory, and variables (e.g., economic inequality, Gross Domestic Product per capita) are prevalent in most of the studies, and using ordinary least squares regression models was the preferred method of analysis. In addition, there has been a new theory introduced based on economic variables, the social support theory which yielded successful results.

Piece #3: Is a piece I just started…like last week. I’m working with another classmate and this is our assistantship work. So there is no abstract, but the general idea is to research how the quality of supervision, participation in decision making, integration and peer support can affect the likelihood of stress and turnover and overall job satisfaction of probation officers.

Semi-piece #4: aka a piece on the backburner: a meta-analysis stemming from the lit review of my master’s thesis, analyzing articles that examined the relationship of gender and sentencing discrepancies to determine which variables best explain the sentencing discrepancies between male and female offenders.

Semi-piece #5: aka a piece on the backburner: working with my old boss from Cedar Falls to determine if over the phone quitline counseling mixed with nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) results in higher tobacco cessation rates when compared to just the phone counseling or just the NRT.

Semi-piece #6: aka a piece on the backburner (but soon to be moved to the front): working with a professor at SHSU on research concerning gender and guns. This is at the very beginning stages so I’ll share more when I know more.

If you have any questions about what this means in plain English, just let me know…I am fluent in English and Academicese.

So. There you have it. That is what I do when I’m not training or in class. And that is basically what I want to do if I grow up.

Ok, you can wake up now from you nap…your normally scheduled, semi interesting blogging will resume now!

 

Check ya later!