Sampling Strategies

Abstract

Researchers in the social sciences are most frequently looking for answers with respect to human behavior and society's response to that behavior. In the criminal justice field, such research is conducted for some of the following reasons: to test hypotheses, to look for correlations, to discover causality, to track trends in crime rates and locations, and to evaluate programs and public policies. Depending on the type of research method that is being used, or the reason for the research, sampling takes on special importance.