Research question: Did Tennessee’s 2014 legal change to allow unlicensed individuals to carry firearms in their vehicle lead to an increase in gun thefts from vehicle?

1.Unit of analysis

Since gun laws are typically passed at the state-level, the units of analysis in this study are states.

2. Identify the main variables, operational definition, level of measurements, and address threats to reliability and validity of the measures:

Your dependent variable,

At least one independent variable, possibly more if appropriate.

Dependent variable:

Gun thefts from vehicles

Operational definition: The number of incidents reported to the police that involve theft of property inside a vehicle where at least one firearm was stolen.

Level of measurement: The dependent variable will be a ratio variable because the distances between the attributes of the variable is meaningful and a value of zero on this variable is meaningful (it indicates the absence of gun thefts from vehicles).

Threats to measurement validity:

Face validity: This measure has face validity because it provides a logical representation to measure gun thefts from vehicles.

Criterion-related validity: This measure is an official measure of gun thefts from vehicles and therefore is generally accepted as a valid measure of the construct from theft from vehicles. Therefore, our dependent variable has criterion-related validity.

Multiple measures: One way to examine whether the variable captures changes in gun thefts from vehicles may be to compare it the number of insurance claims filed for stolen firearms. If the two measures are correlated, we can expect that our measure has construct validity.

Threats to measurement reliability:

In order to address reliability, we have to make sure that the recording practices of the thefts from vehicles does not change over time. Official crime statistics may change over time because of these recording practices or other legal changes.

Independent variables:

Implementation of a law to carry a gun inside vehicles without a permit

Operational definition: A state passes and implements a law that allows citizens to carry a weapon in their vehicles even when they are not allowed to carry guns in public.

Level of measurement: This independent variable is a nominal variable because it labels each state as having this type of law or not.

Threats to measurement validity:

Criterion-related validity: There may be a concern that even though the law is passed, it takes time for law enforcement to adjust to the change, which would mean that the introduction of the law is not best measure of when people are actually allowed to carry guns in their vehicles. To make sure that our measure is valid, we will compare the timing of the law with the change in the number of arrests for illegal gun carrying in vehicles. If our measure is valid, we should see that arrests for gun possessions in vehicles decrease substantially after the law is passed.

Threat to measurement reliability:

It is possible that our measurement of the independent variable lacks reliability, especially in states that did not pass the specific law that was passed in Tennessee. Other states might have passed laws that are similar but not exactly worded the same. To ensure that our measure is reliable, we will have several researchers to review the legal codes of the states included in our study and test the interrater reliability between the researchers. If they agree on which states have the specific laws and which states does not, we will ensure that the measurement is reliable.

Urban settings (only for research design #2)

3.Describe two potential research designs to answer your question. For each research design, you will need to…

Research design #1

Describe the design, the groups, and the assignment to the groups: The first potential research design for this study is an interrupted time-series design with a non-equivalent comparison group (see Figure 1). The treatment group will be the state of Tennessee, which is the only State implementing the law in 2014. The comparison group will be other States that did not change their laws at any point in the period before or after the Tennessee law was passed in 2014. The comparison group will be made of 13 other states that did not change their laws during the study period and had a comparable way of measuring the dependent variable. Many states did not report sufficient information about gun thefts from vehicles to the FBI, and therefore they were not included in the study. Comparison states were comparable to the treatment state in the restrictiveness of their gun laws. In this study, it is impossible to randomly assign States to the treatment which makes this design a quasi-experimental design.

Describe how and when data will be collected: For the treatment group, we will measure the dependent variable every month for several years before and several after the introduction of the independent variable (the implementation of the law). The measurement process will occur at the same time and over the same time period for the comparison group. For both groups, we will measure the dependent variable each month from January 2009 to January 2018.

Describe how the independent variable is introduced: The independent variable is introduced only in Tennessee by the implementation of the gun carrying law in July of 2014. The independent variable will be measured by coding the legal codes of all the states included in the study and assess whether the state implemented the gun carrying law and the exact month the law was implemented.

Threats to internal validity (three addressed by the design):

History: The threat to internal validity called history might lead researchers to wrongly conclude that their independent variable is causing a change in their dependent variable. In fact, the change is due to an event of social or historical significance occurring at the same time outside the experimental setting. For example, in this study, gun thefts may increase in Tennessee because of a national tragedy such as the Sandy Hook mass shooting that occurred during the study, leading people to be desperate to acquire guns for protection. In this study, we are guarding against this threat to internal validity by including a comparison group. We will still be able to test the effect of the law on gun theft in the treatment group even if such an event occurs because the event should influence both the comparison and treatment group equally. The remaining difference in the groups after the intervention could still be attributed to the change in the law.

Instrumentation: The threat to internal validity called instrumentation might lead researchers to come up with the wrong conclusion regarding the causal relationship between their two variables because the change in the dependent variable is due to a change in the way it is measured before and after the independent variable is introduced. In this study, this treat to internal validity may occur if either the law enforcement or the FBI changes the way gun thefts from vehicles are reported. While it is impossible to know for sure that all agencies recorded thefts from vehicles consistently over the study period, we know that the FBI did not modify their rules and regulations related to these types of crime during the study period.

Ambiguous causal time order: The ambiguous causal time order threat to internal validity occurs when the causal order is reversed meaning that a change in the dependent variable is actually causing the change in the independent variable. While it is technically possible that the increase in gun thefts from vehicles actually caused Tennessee law makers to pass a law allowing civilians to carry guns in their cars, there is no evidence that this was a reason motivating the passage of the law. Even if that was the case, the multiple pretest measures of the dependent variable guard against this potential threat to internal validity.

One threat to internal validity that might be still an issue:

Testing: The threat to internal validity called testing might lead researchers to be wrong about their conclusion of a causal relationship because the change in the independent variable itself may lead to a change in the way the dependent variable is measured before and after the treatment. In this study, this threat to internal validity may occur because making it legal to carry guns in a vehicle might make people more likely to report a stolen gun after the law compared to before the law. Before the law, reporting a stolen gun from your vehicle might have been perceived by victims as essentially admitting that they were illegally carrying a weapon in their cars. Therefore, it is possible that the law causes and increase in thefts from vehicle simply because citizens feel more comfortable to declare that a gun was stolen now that the practice is legalized. In this case, it is difficult to completely rule out this alternative explanation.

External validity: Threats to external validity are possible in this study. For instance, because the law was passed in only one state, it is unclear whether a similar law would have the same effect in other states. Tennessee is a state that is not very restrictive in terms of gun laws, which means that guns may be more easily available than in a more restrictive state. It is possible that allowing guns in cars in a state with more restrictive gun laws, or with more urban centers, might see an even greater increase in gun thefts from vehicles.

Figure: see Figure 1.

Repeat all steps necessary to describe Research design #2 (at least steps 1 through 7 under research design #1, but maybe you need to modify your variables or add an independent variable)

Best design and ethics: The interrupted time-series design with nonequivalent comparison group will be the better design for this study. While there are threats to external validity associated with the design, the interrupted time-series design with nonequivalent comparison group does provide protection against several threats to internal validity such as ambiguous causal time order, history, and instrumentation.

In this study, concerns associated with revealing the identity of participants are minimal, since the unit of analysis is at the state level. Nevertheless, while crime incident statistics are anonymous, looking at such a specific type of crime may accidentally reveal the identity of victims for those who are aware of the circumstances of the crime. To ensure that this is not possible, we will not report data on any time period where less than 10 incidents are reported to the police.

No consent or deception is necessary in this study because we are not engaging in human subject research.

The only potential violation of ethics in this study would be related to analysis and reporting. Since we will be using publicly available data in this study, it will be possible for independent researchers to replicate our study. We will make our calculations and analyses publicly available to ensure that our research is fully transparent and that the researchers involved did not manipulate the data or make up the results.

Appendix

Figure 1. Interrupted time-series design with nonequivalent comparison groups

OO…OOXO O…OO

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OO…OOOO…OO

t1t2…t66t67 t68t69t114t115

O = Monthly number of gun thefts from vehicles

X = Implementation of the Tennessee law

tn =Time before and after the law

Running Head: RESEACH PAPER ON CORRELATION BETWEEN SUBSTANCE DEPENDENCE AND TRAUMA

 

 

Name:

 

Number:

 

University:

 

Tutor:

 

Date:

 

RESEACH PAPER ON CORRELATION BETWEEN SUBSTANCE DEPENDENCE AND TRAUMA

Research Question

What is the correlation between substance dependence and trauma?

Objectives

There have been many case reported of resulting to substance use after personally experiencing trauma or witnessing a traumatic experience happening to someone else. Others have been reported where trauma is experienced after use of hard drugs or alcohol mostly in people who are already aIDicts. Different people react differently when they face certain traumatic situations either through withdrawal from the public, depression, stress or substance use. All these are different reactions to trauma experiences. Other individuals are able to hold the trauma and withstand its effects by not reacting in a negative way. Due to the abundance of such reports we sought to find out why individuals who have had traumatic experience seek result to substance abuse.

Traumatic cases are many and can result from victimization in family, bullying in schools, car accidents, sexual abuse like rape, neglect, physical abuse, divorce, and separation from parents or friends in form of death, disappointment serious illness, falls or surgery. We also wanted to know what kind of traumatic experiences would most likely predispose individuals to substance dependence. Research has also indicated that substance abuse and dependence can make an individual prone to post trauma disorders. This has been the case in many adolescents and youth. In America it is estimated tat at least 80 percent of individuals have experimented on drugs. This basically translates to more people being predisposed to experience trauma.

With these facts we wanted to find out the correlation between substance dependence and trauma by finding out why people result to substance abuse after traumatic experiences and how many cases of trauma are due to substance abuse or dependence.

Introduction

According to Giaconia, Reinherz, Paradis and Stashwick (2003), researchers have tried to explain the relationship between substance abuse and trauma in so many ways but what stands out in these researches is that trauma predisposes an individual to substance abuse and substance abuse increases the risk of experiencing trauma. How does this happen? Traumatic experiences are usually a painful reminder to many and they cause deep emotional experiences. In order to try and escape this individuals turn to self medicating them using drugs like alcohol and other psychotic drugs to try and numb themselves.

Substance dependence follows soon after trauma exposure. The associated traumatic stress makes it even hard to quit substance abuse as even reminders create cravings with people on transition in treating the trauma and drug dependence. Previous studies have established a link between alcohol and risky behavior engagement which expose the youth to traumatic experiences like driving under influence of alcohol, walking in neighborhoods that are not safe and hitchhiking. People who are already hooked to substance abuse are also less able to handle traumatic experiences due to functional destructions. This is because people with dependence on substances do not have the skills to cope with trauma, (Ford, Hawke, Alessi, Ledgerwood % Petry, 2007).  Research has also tried to figure out whether individual personality is important to figure out vulnerability to substance dependence and trauma. When exactly does a person experience trauma? After multiple exposures to traumatic experiences or one time is enough to cause trauma? Also what is it that triggers individuals to result to substance abuse which leads to dependence? Anti social behavior is the bridge way between trauma and substance dependence, (Livesly, 2001).

Most males than females are mostly the ones who result to substance abuse after traumatic experience. This has been explained to be caused by superiority complex. Males have a tendency to act as if everything is fine so as not to admit an emotional weakness or defeat. Because they never speak out or seek help, their problems keep piling up and the only way out becomes drugs. This resort is so that they can feel at the top of the situation or so that they can forget the traumatic experiences by numbing their brains and nerves. Females have however shown vulnerability to experience trauma if they are dependent on substances. This likely hood is because generally female species is weak emotionally and the fact that drugs increase this vulnerability, a situation can lead to trauma experience.

Sample population

Selection method

In this research we incorporated survey research as our method of selection. There are two types of survey research methods, interviews and questionnaires. Interviews will be completed by the group members based on how the interviewee responded to the questions asked. The questionnaire consisted of a set of written questions that were distributed among the respondents and were collected after some time, (Trochim, 2006). The survey method will involve random selection techniques since people with trauma and substance dependence are many.

Size

This research involved a hundred respondents who were randomly picked in rehabilitation centers.

Composition

The respondent population involved mixed gender of 23 females and 77 males. There was also a variation in ages of respondents involved. People suffering from both trauma and substance abuse or those who have experienced such are from different categories. Most were adolescents and youth that made up 75 percent of the respondents. The rest were children, 17 percent and adults, 8 percent.

Incentives

To speed up the process of data collection we had to give something to the respondents. We distributed key holders and hats and promised to give a copy of the final report to the respondents so as to actively involve the participants in this project.

Ethical considerations

This being a research involving human beings we had to observe several ethical codes stipulated for research. The first process was to seek permission from the administration of the rehabilitation centers to use their patients as our subjects. We also had to be granted permission by school administration ethics committee to ensure that we followed the code of ethics in conducting our research.

After obtaining permission to go ahead with the research, we approached several individuals in the rehabilitation centers seeking their participation. Before they agreed to be respondents we had to inform them several things so that participation was at free will.

One of the things that we had to inform potential subjects was the objectives of the study. Why we were conducting this research and what we hoped to achieve. They were informed of the potential benefits and risks of the study. Benefits included enlightening the students on the relationship between trauma and substance abuse and ways to cope with trauma without having to rely on hard drugs or alcohol. Potential risks could emerge from exposure of their condition to the public because this data was going to be stored in both written form and on computers. Nowadays, there many versions of computer hacking software available used in retrieving stored data. Papers also could get misplaced before we had the opportunity to destroy them.

To ensure confidentiality of our respondents, names were excluded from questionnaires and interviews. Instead, we used numbers and alphabets to differentiate between respondents. We assured the respondents that any information disclosed would be kept confidential by destroying all questionnaires after data analysis and not including names in the final report unless written permission was obtained from the respondents.

No threats were issued but we felt we had to use incentives to make the respondents feel part of the research. The participants were also informed that they could pull out of the research if they felt like even in the miIDle of answering questionnaires or interview. We acknowledged that we were dealing with sensitive individuals therefore we did not want to run the risk of relapse. Certain questions would require personal answers and we know that reminders of trauma experienced could trigger cravings for drugs or lead to violent behavior. We ensured that all our participants were aware of their rights before they agreed to be involved in this research.

To ensure full application of research code of ethics, the conclusions and discussions in this report are entirely based on the information collected from the respondents. Objectivity is the key to accurate research.

 

REFERENCES

Giaconia, R. M., Reinherz, H. Z, Paradis, A. D and Stashwick, C.K. (2003), Co morbidity of substance use disorders and post traumatic stress disorder in adolescents, Washington DC, American Psychological association, 227-242.

Ford, J. D, Hawke, J., Alessi, S., Ledgerwood, D., and Petry, N. (2007), Behavior research and therapy, 45(10), University of Connecticut school of Medicine Psychiatry, 2417-2431. Doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2007.04.001.

Livesly, J. (2001), Handbook of Personality disorders: Theory, research and treatment, Guildford Press, 94-96.

Trochim, W. M. K, (2006), Survey research, Research Methods Knowledge Base. Retrieved on February 10, 2011 from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/survey.php.