Study Questions

Case Assignment 1 RES601

Introduction

On several occasions, the news media headlines riveted national attention to the tragic incident of school shootings. The events entailed of a shooting on the south side of Chicago in which one youth was killed and two wounded. Another story would read a shooting into a prayer group at a Kentucky high school in which three students were killed. In addition, the killing of four students and a teacher and the wounding of ten others at an Arkansas middle school would later occur. These dramatic examples have signaled an implicit and growing fear that these types of events will continue to occur and even escalate in scale and severity in the future (Moore, Petrie, Braga, & McLaughlin, 2003).

The complex world concerning the relationship between weapons and violence is demanding knowledge of the point of possible causes and suggestions as to where interventions may be most effective. This case assignment is designed to examine behavioral science experimentation and the debate associated with the interaction of weapons and violence. The second section will explore some the major issue associated with behavior science to understand the nature of experimental and non-experimental approaches. The third section explains the data analysis strategies involved in experimental design, including the distinction between the different types of variables. The fourth section will examine the statistical techniques that are usually employed and the circumstances under which they are most appropriate. The final section will briefly discuss the case moral and what significant lessons were learned from the case assignment.

Violence in the nation has reach record proportions. Everyone has been touched directly or indirect by some form of violence. Policy makers and school officials have raise they level of commitment to understanding and curtailing the escalating trend of violent acts committed. The goal of behavioral science is to develop a body of knowledge that offers explanations for violent behavior and to obtain a valid, reliable explanation for the tragedy of the school shootings and prevalent violence in this nation and to possibility draw objective conclusions for intervention.

Behavioral science

The principle method for acquiring knowledge and uncovering causes of violent behavior is research. The nation has identified a major problem and it has a social responsibility to provide a scientifically acceptable explanation that advances behavioral theory development, future research and proven interventions. To perform this task, policy makers and school officials must abandon the low quality, informal, unsystematically, uninformative approaches to explaining violent behavior. They must focus on the effective use of more credible approaches that have proven ability to discover answers that have great power and generality to judge both the cause and effect of violence and the different control policies available. Scientific explanation has the ability to systematically study the weapon and violence phenomenon and identify most of the factors that are crucial to developing an answer to explain the phenomenon.

Scientific explanations and the progression of understanding violent behavior are the hallmark of experimentation (Bordens, & Abbott, 1999). The great strength of explanation is its ability to identify and describe causal relationships (Bordens et al, 1999). Experimentation can determine whether the changes in the ability of weapons actually produced a change in the level of violent behavior, if the researchers can control all the variables. Despite the enormous power to identify causal relationships, experimentation has limitations that restrict its uses under certain conditions. These limitations makes it an incomplete solution to the behavioral sciences, because it diminishes it capacity to fully identify and explain the interaction between weapons and violence.

Weapons and violence

Considerable debates surrounding the validity of the weapons effect on aggressive behavior is well noted in the literature. The first study published more than 30 years ago demonstrated that the mere presence of a weapon increased aggressive behavior (Berkowitz, & LePage, 1967; Anderson, Benjamin, & Bartholow, 1998). Decades later it was shown that the simple memorization of aggressive words increased later aggressive behavior (Turner, & Layton, 1976; Anderson et al., 1998). It was also observed with pictures of weapons as well as real weapons, in field settings and psychological laboratories, a link between weapons and aggressive behavior (Anderson et al., 1998). Further research on the effects of viewing television violence have yielded substantial links to subsequent aggressive behavior (Huesmann, & Miller, 1994; Anderson et al., 1998). According to decades of research the presence of a weapon can make people behave more aggressively. In essence, the gun helps pull the trigger (Anderson et al., 1998). Has this phenomenon been proven by Anderson and his colleagues and successfully reported in their article? One would think not. The fact that the participants demonstrated that simply identifying weapons increased the accessibility of aggressive thoughts is not evidence that weapons caused the aggression. All that was shown by the study is that under the conditions tested, the weapon evoked aggressive thoughts. It did not identify the cause. The behavioral sciences are such an incredibly complex science that most phenomenon never have a simple, linear causal explanation. In fact, several plausible alternatives could be offered. There is never a completely right answer. Weapons and violence and why the interaction appears can have an infinite number of explanations depending on background information, location, time and context (Bordens et al, 1999).

Experimental and non-experimental approaches

Although experimentation can effectively identify the factors causing a given behavior, the behavioral scientists may be unable to constantly use this method and formulae to explain such complex phenomenon. There is not always a simplistic and purely objective procedure, which provides a precise cause of the weapon and violence interaction. When carefully controlled experiments can not answers all the important questions, alternative methods become necessary. Non-experimental methods are rooted deeply in a broad base of theoretical grounds and is therefore even more essential to the proper study of a full range of human behavior and experiences (David, 2005). Non-experimental research has importance even when the interest is in studying cause and effect relationships (Johnson, 2001).

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