Assignment

Operational Definition

Name

Institution

Operational Definition

Describe the statement of purpose (or the main idea) of the study conducted by Ngo and Piquero.

Authors intended to explore the correlation between poor self control and various forms of victimization such as offending, harassment and stalking victimization within the Asian American population. This is because in the past, researchers paid much attention to study this phenomenon within majority groups and limited consideration was given to study the linkage between these factors within Asian American ethic minority.

What is the research question of this study? What is/are the hypothesis/hypotheses of this study?

The research question of this study is clearly linked to the purpose of study; what is the difference between the mean scores of Asian-American men and women with respect to self control, harassment and stalking victimization? Hypotheses include Asian American men has poor self control as compared to the Asian American women; Asian American women suffer more stalking victimization as compared to the Asian American Men and Asian American women suffer more harassment as compared to the Asian American Men.

Is there any prior literature related to the hypothesis/hypotheses? If yes, discuss the prior literature.

Yes, authors have presented various literature pieces to support the link between poor self control, harassment and stalking victimization but no particular evidence was found about this link with respect to the Asian American population; more research was done on Anglo population. A literature gap was indentified here therefore authors attempted to study the correlation between these factors among Asian American men and women of 18 years who encounter other majority groups in the colleges, universities or workplaces.

What methods are used to support the hypothesis/research question?

In order to verify the hypotheses and research questions of the study, authors designed self-report questionnaires and executed them online through internet. Sample was selected through convenient sampling and approximately 242 subjects were selected in total out of which 91 were females whereas the rest were males belonging to China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Filipino, Korea, Japan, Cambodia and Vietnam. After administering the survey, data was analyzed using appropriate data analysis tools such as SPSS version 21.

Is this a quantitative or qualitative study?

It is purely a quantitative study because data was collected using objective tools such as survey questionnaires and was analyzed using credible statistical tools. It is said to be quantitative because data obtained from the subjects is encoded in numbers and is inserted into statistical tools where we can get the results in numbers. Quantitative study is having the minimal risk of subjection to the reliability and validity issues. For example, in this study t-test and correlational analysis was run on the data to study the mean difference between men and women with respect to self control, harassment and stalking and relationship between these variables in general.

What are the findings/results of the study?

This study found that Asian American men has poor self control as compared to the Asian American women; Asian American women suffer more stalking victimization as compared to the Asian American Men and Asian American women suffer more harassment as compared to the Asian American Men. Hence, this study served the purpose mentioned in the study objective quite satisfactorily and valuable information was contributed to the preexisting literature of crime studies with respect to the ethnic minorities.