By:

GREGORY DUNAWAY, FRANCIS T. CULLEN, VELMER S. BURTON JR., T. DAVID EVANS

In their article they realize that many empirical research questions conclude that crime is highest in the lower class.  They emphasize that empirical literature is “plagued” by limited measures of social class or of crime and that they fail to study the systematic effects of social class on crime in the general adult population. Their work was crafted in an attempt to correct much of the inadequacies of class-crime research. They collected reports of acts, behaviors, and events from a general population of adults that reside in a large Midwestern city and analyzed the data to assess the effects of a wide range of class measures on crime measures.  They sampled 555 adults who demonstrated that regardless of how class or crime was measured, social class always exerted little direct influence on adult criminality in the general population.  What they found was consistent with research findings from “non-self-report” studies that say social class is related to criminal involvement for nonwhites.  I appreciate their research as it is in effort to show that crime rates are not necessarily higher in lower classes but they covered more negatively in media.  Many people research to find out why the lower class is infested with crime instead of how does the middle to upper class avoid getting caught or publicized.

By: Arch G. Woodside and Randolph J. Trappey

Woodside and Trappey hypothesized that the most accessible attitudes that are associate with a given store, with evaluative store attributes are highly predictive of primary store choice. The two looked at principal grocery shoppers of 301 households that responded to a survey assessing 7 possible determinant attributes reflecting J. A. Howard’s 3 key dimensions of retail store image. Those three dimensions are: convenience of the store location, the price of the store’s products, and the information the store provides about its products. Their findings suggested that the attitude accessibility of competing stores and brands in relation to the primacy of responses to evaluative attributes, is useful for accurately predicting primary choices.

Woodside and Trappey article used surveys and public and private records to give answers to stores and brands wondering why people shop at their place or for their brand. Their article discussed how if your store is easier to travel to be it walking, driving, public transportation, appeals to people more because of its close proximity to the targeted customers. Store’s that are cheaper tend to attract poorer families as well as some of the remaining families to be considered middle class. However, these stores are probably located in poorer areas. Stores located in more wealthy areas can raise the price for products. Finally, customers appreciate more descriptions about stores’ products so people actually know what they are getting and where it is coming from.

The types of data that could be used for their research would be survey, public and private records, and interviews but that would be stretching it. Woodside and Trappey used surveys and private and public records to collect their data and pose the research question of: Why do people shop at grocery stores? They mostly used qualitative data with little quantitative.

The book set looks at international sources from the 1950s to the present day to provide an outlook on retailing. This article mentions the structural spatial relationships in the spread of hypermarket and the personality of the retail store.  Stores use a multiple-item scale for measuring consumers to see what they want/prefer.  Findlay analyzes the oligopolistic behavior in the market as well as clarifying the difference between manufacturers’ brands. The role of brands in European marketing is compared to the role of brands in American marketing.  Findlay touches on some problems that stores face such as economic factors that affect the spending of consumers and their customers.  Findlay raises a question during the collect:  Are store brands perceived to be just another brand?

The topic of this book set is to understand the personality of stores and who they are trying to appeal to while taking into account economic concerns as well as the structure of the American marketing system.  They used in-depth interviews, expert knowledge, as well as public and private records to gather their data.  I think they did a good job with their research as well as comparing it to another market system.  This topic was interesting in the fact that they consider stores and the market system to have human characteristics.  I think it would be an interesting read for my classmates to see how their favorite stores prove or disprove their results.

Crime & Delinquency: “Schools, Neighborhood Risk Factors, and Crime.” By Dale, Willits, Lisa Broidy, and Kristine Denman.

Their research question is: Do schools contribute to neighborhood crime rates? The data types they used were demographic data, organizational data, and deeply held opinions and attitudes. The data collection methods they used were in depth interviews and public and private records. They came together find if schools contribute to the crime rates in neighborhoods. They were not funded and did everything themselves. They conducted three slightly different hypotheses and found research to be not very convincing. They found that higher level block groups meaning those with either a high or low disadvantaged and instability situation had higher crime rates than those categorized with a lower block level. Their results supported a few different conclusions but the main one is that is somewhat supported their first hypothesis meaning that schools have some influence on crime rates in neighborhoods.

As they also said in their conclusion, this study lacked control in opinions. There has been very few studies previously on this question which leave a decent room for error. Their hypotheses’ were only partially supported which does not look good in my opinion. For the one or two classmates of mine that are doing something related to crime, I think this is something to look into if examining influence on crime rates or causes.

Crime & Delinquency: Volume 60, Number 1

By: Ji Hyon Kang and James P. Lynch

This article examines the impact of victim—offender relationships on the willingness of the victim to call the police in situations pertaining to family violence and whether or not those rates are different depending on the life stage of the victim. The article puts the victim and offenders in three categories: children (adult or young), spouse, and parent. The roles that each family member plays may affect their willingness to call the police because some hold more power, experience and authority than others as well as different cognition patterns. They found that the relationship and age does affect reporting decision. If the offender is the spouse or child, the likelihood of the victim reporting family violence is higher. However, the results showed that reporting rates are not significant different the three age groups. However the results were inconsistent with their three hypotheses.

The articles research question was: Does victim – offender relationships and life stages affect the willingness to call the police in incidents of family violence? The type of data they used was reports of acts, behavior, or events and the data collection methods were surveys and

public and private records. I liked their research and think they did a good job because they touched on family abuse from different angles than what people usually hear about. However, all three of their hypotheses were not true which is interesting. I think my classmates would like

to hear about the rates of the less talked about family abuse relationships.