reliability and validity in social term paper
Excerpt via Term Paper:
8. Number of individuals in substance abuse clinics and treatment reporting income below the poverty line (nominal): This may show a direct correlation between poverty and substance abuse
9. Number of individuals in substance abuse clinics and/or treatment reporting they can be homeless and have come to panhandling (nominal): This might show an immediate correlation between homelessness, panhandling and substance abuse.
10. Amount of people stopped pertaining to panhandling by the police: As the police tend not to arrest people for panhandling, police wood logs of individuals who have are penalized for doing this, and under what instances (if the individual’s instances indicated homelessness or material abuse) can relevant if the pervasive routine could be shown of the practice on a large scale.
11. Normal of individuals in private substance abuse clinics or publically-supported treatment (ordinal): This would paint a portrait of how income may generate a different sort of standard of care for the wealthy.
12. Number of individuals at private vs . government-funded drug abuse clinics who have been arrested to get drug-related criminal offenses: It is suggested that individuals who have ‘means’ and abuse drugs frequently are less harshly penalized by legal system. The disparity between the two figures would suggest if there is a difference in terms of treatment, that might conversely impact the lives of poorer defendants in a adverse fashion (making it harder to get a work, for example).
Reliability of measurements concerning drug abuse is always a challenge, considering that individuals of most income amounts are often quite secretive regarding the practice. Measuring the homeless human population is also challenging, given that desolate people generally hide coming from authorities, intended for fear of having to enter a pet shelter. And panhandling, because it is unlawful, yet the law is against panhandling hardly ever enforced, can be a difficult criminal offenses to track. Simply by determining a variety of figures can a portrait of homelessness, drug abuse, poverty plus the means people deploy to outlive be discovered. The picture can be not likely to become complete but statistics should be validated with cross-referencing of other research, preferably larger studies executed longitudinally simply by nonpartisan sources.
References
Across the country trends. (2010). National Company of Drug Abuse. Retrieved 06 19, 2010 at http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/nationtrends.html
Morales, I actually. Number of destitute down, nevertheless homeless people up. (2010, June 16). AP Media.
Retrieved 06 19, 2010 at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100617/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_hud_homelessness
What is the difference between categorical, ordinal, and interval factors? (2010). UCLA.
Retrieved 06 19, 2010 at http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/mult_pkg/whatstat/nominal_ordinal_interval.htm
