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Methods in Context

1. Suicide

   • Victim not available for interview
     • Survivors could be interviwed
   • Sensitive and traumatic topic
     • Rapport must be created
   • Personal documents are difficult to access
     • Unrepresentative
     • Available from coroners court
   • Official statistics lack validity and reliability
     • Number of deaths recorded as suicide
     • No ethical concerns
     • Easy access

2. Victims of Crime

   • Often there is no clear victim
     • E.g. drug dealing
   • Victim may have started the offence
     • Self-defence in a violent partner attack
   • Victims of corporate crime may be unaware they are a victim
   • Reluctance to call themselves victims
     • Weakness
   • Many victims are hidden
     • E.g. domestic violence and child abuse
   • Unstructured interviews
     • Victims are vulnerable
       • Rapport
   • Relies on the victims memory
     • Lack validity

3. Young Offenders

   • Lower levels of literacy
     • Truancy and underachievement at school
       • Interviews and questionnaires carefully constructed
   • Perception of researches
     • Police in disguise
       • Problem with overt participant observation
     • Rapport
   • Covert participant observations difficult
     • Due to age and class differences between researcher and group
   • Sampling frame difficult
     • Not found on voting register due to age

4. Societal Reaction

   • Lots of media reports
     • Time consuming
   • Media reports are distorted by the value of it's owners
   • People may not be aware that their fears of crime have been created by the media
     • They may have been influenced by real-life experiences
   • The researches interpretations of the meaning of the report may be different to the audience's