CRIM315 GMU Research Methods and Analysis in Criminology Project 1. TITLE: Title should be a descriptive statement of the project (Example: Enablers and B

CRIM315 GMU Research Methods and Analysis in Criminology Project 1. TITLE: Title should be a descriptive statement of the project (Example: Enablers and

Barriers of Refugees’ Safe, Voluntary, and Sustained Returns: Taking Stock of Return

Efforts in Western Balkans, Burundi, and Ukraine)

2. SHORT COVER LETTER : A personal statement summarizing the proposed

project and your personal goals and expectations. Why are you interested in this

project?

3. INTRODUCTION : Explain your scholarly question and provide a

rationale for your project. Include a narrative review of appropriate literature with intext

citations. What is your research question and why is it significant?

4. PROCESS : Describe your project design and methods. Include a

description of materials and equipment necessary to complete the project (if any).

What will you do to answer your research question?

5. TIMELINE : Provide a detailed plan for your time considering you have

144 hours to complete the project. How will you schedule your time if this research

proposal gets funding?

6. EXPECTED OUTCOMES : Describe the anticipated outcomes, products

and/or results of your project and its contribution to the scholarly community. What

will you produce? How will your results be disseminated in the field?

7. BUDGET : Standard allocation is up to $1000 for students; you may

budget funds according to your project needs. How will these funds be sp Research Proposal
1. The Role Perception of School Resource Officers: A Way to Limit the
School to Prison Pipeline?
2. Short Cover Letter
One high school afternoon, myself and some other students were stopped by metal gates
when we attempted to go through the front hallway of the building. We were bewildered; we
were heading back to class after lunch, and the hallway had unexpectedly closed. When we
finally did get back to the classroom, teachers informed us that the hallway had been cordoned
off because the school resource officer had pepper-sprayed an uncooperative student in the
library. They’d blocked off that part of the building to ‘safely’ air it out. At the time, the incident
made for a great story. Students quickly spread rumors that the girl who’d been sprayed had tried
to choke the officer, that she’d thrown a desk, that they’d knocked each other to the floor. It
made for a bit of entertainment on an otherwise boring day. Now, however, I look back and think
of how it encapsulates issues like excessive force, hostile student-officer relationships, and issues
of over-policing.
My overall goals for this project are directly related to those issues. This project is
focused on how school resource officers (SROs) perceive their role in the school building; do
they see themselves as primarily law enforcers or counselors? Further, how does this role
perception impact their interactions with disruptive or otherwise rule-breaking students? The
existing literature does not make this connection, but it is an important link to understand;
potentially, changing the role perceptions of SROs can limit the influence of the school to prison
pipeline. Completing this project will allow me to better understand the process of trying to
evaluate whether a particular policy recommendation might be successful. In this case, I will
Research Proposal
attempt to determine whether a new training program for school resource officers might
successfully limit the criminalization of students, by testing the validity of the link between role
perception and action.
3. Introduction
SROs make up just one aspect of the much larger phenomena known as the school to
prison pipeline. This is the process of funneling children out of the school system and into the
criminal justice system by issuing severe punishments for school infractions (Martinez-Prather et
al., 2016). Following the tough-on-crime movement of the 1990s, schools shifted to a
criminalization of minor behavioral problems. Broken rules often result in involvement with law
enforcement and the court system (Schlosser, 2014). An important part of this process is the
school resource officer (SRO). SROs are police officers assigned to schools in order to ensure
student and staff safety. However, they have been labeled the “conductors” of the school to
prison pipeline for their role in the suspension, expulsion, and arrest of students (Edelman, 2017,
p. 122).
Schlosser’s study highlights the role conflict faced by SROs; their responsibilities include
being a law enforcer, counselor, and teacher all at once. As a law enforcer, the officer performs a
traditional police role; investigating crimes, writing offense reports for the courts, arresting or
transporting students to the police station, etc. As a counselor, a SRO is responsible for
discussing problematic behavior with students. They give advice rather than take punitive
actions, and they work to create a positive rapport between themselves and the students (2014).
The teacher role is described as a function of the DARE program, but I will not discuss this role
as DARE has been largely discontinued. His conclusion was that SROs prioritize the law
Research Proposal
enforcement role: “the SRO spent 14% of his time counseling… and 70% in the role of law
enforcer” (Schlosser, 2014, p. 142).
While this is a valuable starting point, the study has several flaws. First, he exclusively
looked at elementary and middle schools (Schlosser, 2014). SROs are present at all levels of the
school system, and are actually concentrated in schools with the higher grade levels. SROs are
employed in over half of America’s high schools, versus 25% of elementary schools (Edelman,
2017). I will focus my own study on the high school level. Additionally, he reached most of his
conclusions by shadowing a SRO and writing down whether he believed an action was law
enforcement, counselor, or teacher. I’m more interested in how the officer perceives his or her
role, and how this impacts what disciplinary actions are taken.
Another study, Martinez-Prather et al., highlights that there’s little training available to
officers entering a school assignment for the first time; 39% of responding SROs had never been
trained. They explain that “only 12 states mandate that police officers working in schools receive
some sort of pre-service training” (2016, p. 479). This is significant because they found that
SROs with no training are more likely to use law enforcement interventions than guidanceoriented ones (2016).
However, this study was conducted in private schools that employed their officers, rather
than public schools that were assigned their officers (Martinez-Prather et al. 2016). This is an
issue because the vast majority of SROs are employed in public schools (Edelman, 2017).
Private schools also only capture a very specific type of students: usually wealthy white children.
I will use public schools in my project.
Research Proposal
The proposed research project will fill this gap in the literature by answering the
following research question: “Could SRO training reflecting a counselor-oriented role reduce
excessive disciplinary actions?”
4. Process
For the purposes of this study, “a counselor-oriented role” will be defined as the use of
advice, guidance, and relationship-building rather than punitive measures to alter disruptive
student behaviors. “Excessive disciplinary actions” are those that contribute to the school to
prison pipeline, as described earlier (suspension, expulsion, arrests, citations etc.).
Counselor roles will be measured by surveying SROs; their answers to the questions will
determine whether the individual primarily perceives their duty as being a counselor or a law
enforcer. Excessive disciplinary actions will be measured by school-based arrests. I will focus
my evaluation on arrests because a SRO is the only actor within the school building who can
take such action (whereas an expulsion, for example, does not require the involvement of SRO).
Arrests therefore reflect solely the actions of the SRO, and will not be confounded by the actions
of administrators. These will be counted by an evaluation of school records.
First, however, I will meet with at least two SROs in person to conduct interviews. The
information from these interviews will serve to guide what questions I ask in my surveys. These
interviews are just meant to allow me to get a better on-the-ground understanding of the job and
a baseline for the ways SROs think about their roles in the school building. This will allow me to
come up with some general themes and direction for the questions on my survey.
For the survey, I will use close-ended questions; I am comparing overall role perception
(either counselor or law enforcer) to the number of school-based arrests. The questions will ask
the SRO which of several actions he/she would take in a particular situation. The provided
Research Proposal
answers will be written as either counselor or enforcer-oriented, allowing me to average them
together and determine which overall role the officer perceives himself to have. This final data
will be compared to the number of school-based arrests he/she made over the course of the most
recently completed school semester.
My hypothesis is that if a counselor-oriented role does reduce the number of excessive
disciplinary actions taken, we should expect to see a corresponding relationship between number
of arrests made and survey results. For example, the record should show less arrests made by an
officer who reports a counselor orientation. The opposite should also be true; an officer who
reports a law enforcer orientation should have made a higher number of arrests.
I will recruit participants through a connection I have with an administrator at a local
high school. I can use my connection to her to find schools that would be willing to give me data
on how many arrests are made. I would be able to use their trust and relationship with her to get
my foot in the door; they may not be willing to help an unconnected stranger. I will survey the
SROs from those schools.
Regarding choosing which schools to use, I would like to get a sample of both higher and
lower-income schools, to prevent the data from being skewed by the socioeconomic status of the
communities they draw students from. Given that this is a small study, I would ideally be able to
gather data from about 5 schools. As explained earlier, I will focus on high schools because they
have the most SROs and therefore will be the most strongly impacted by disciplinary decisions
made by those officers.
The materials and equipment I would use are primarily technology-based. For the inperson interviews, I would take notes on my laptop. The surveys would be done online, using a
free online service such as SurveyMonkey. I would email the links to the survey to SROs by
Research Proposal
finding their email addresses on the school websites. I imagine the arrest records provided by the
school would be online as well. Finally, I will use computer programs to create the statistical
comparisons.
5. Timeline
I will allocate 15 hours to meeting with my faculty advisor. 10 hours will go towards
IRB approval. The literature review will get 15 hours. Getting in touch with and planning with
my contact with VB Schools will get 3 hours, and reaching out to her suggested schools will get
2 hours.
Data collection will revive the following amount of time. The design and conduction of
initial interviews will receive 20 hours, the survey creation will receive 15 hours, and getting
arrest records from the schools will receive 10 hours (as I may have to go and pick up paper
documents, which would involve commute, traffic, and waiting once I’ve arrived at the schools).
I will allocate 1 hour to actually emailing out the surveys.
Data analysis will receive slightly less time than collection. Compiling survey data will
receive 10 hours, compiling arrest records will receive 10 hours, and comparing the survey data
to arrest data (and forming the resulting conclusions) will get 15 hours.
Finally, to disseminate the result of my research, I will create an article and a poster,
taking a combined 18 hours.
6. Expected Outcomes
When I have my results, I will create an article and a poster. The article will be published
online to reach the largest possible audience. I can use the poster to present my findings at
Research Proposal
different conferences and workshops (such as a GMU undergraduate research symposium). By
doing two different formats, I can potentially reach multiple audiences and ensure my results are
accessible to as many people as possible.
I anticipate my findings will confirm the existence of a relationship between the SRO’s
role perception and the way he/she deals with unruly students. This project addresses a gap in the
literature; existing studies do not explicitly connect the role perception of SROs to the
disciplinary tactics they use with the student body. I suspect that should a SRO focus on a
counseling role rather than a law enforcement role, they will have less reliance on excessive
disciplinary actions. If the results of this study should confirm my hypothesis, then instituting
training programs for SROs that encourage a counselor role would likely limit these officer’s
contributions to the school to prison pipeline.
7. Budget
My mentor will receive $500 dollars of the award for their participation in my project. I
will likely want to purchase a statistics software program to help me analyze my surveys, which
will cost around $50. I will incentivize participation in my surveys by offering gift cards of $15
each (with 5 participating schools, this would amount to about $75). I anticipate travel will cost
me about $100. Should the schools only provide paper copies of their records, I will likely need
to pay for them. I will set aside $20 for each school ($100). Poster printing will cost around $75.
The remaining $600 I will set aside as my stipend.
Research Proposal
Bibliography
Edelman, P. B. (2017). Not a crime to be poor: the criminalization of poverty in America. New
York: New Press.
Lynch, C., Gainey, R., & Chappell, A. (2016). The effects of social and educational disadvantage
on the roles and functions of school resource officers. Policing: An International Journal
of Police Strategies & Management, 39(3), 521–535.
Martinez-Prather, K., McKenna, J., & Bowman, S. (2016). The impact of training on discipline
outcomes in school-based policing. Policing: An International Journal of Police
Strategies & Management, 39(3), 478–490.
Schlosser, M. (2014). Multiple roles and potential role conflict of a school resource officer: A
case study of the Midwest Police Department’s School Resource Officer Program in the
United States. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 9(1), 131–142.
Wilson, H. (2014). Turning off the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Reclaiming Children and Youth,
23(1).
CRIM 315-002: FINAL PROJECT GUIDELINES
FINAL
PROJECT
GUIDELINES
CRIM 315-002
RESEARCH METHODS AND ANALYSIS
IN CRIMINOLOGY
CRIM 315-002: FINAL PROJECT GUIDELINES
2
ABOUT THIS FINAL PROJECT
For your final project, you will work on a research proposal on a social/criminal
justice topic of your choosing. You will have the option to prepare the research
proposal in one of the following formats:
(1) A research proposal written in accordance with the guidelines for writing research proposals
by the GMU Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP)
OR
(2) A research proposal poster prepared and presented in accordance with the
research poster preparation and presentation guidelines explained in this document
KEY OBJECTIVES OF
THIS FINAL PROJECT
This final project will help you to:
*Develop your skills in thinking about and designing
a comprehensive research study;
*Learn how to conduct a comprehensive review of
the literature to ensure a research problem has not
already been answered [or you may determine the
problem has been answered ineffectively] and, in so
doing, become better at locating scholarship related
to your topic;
*Improve your general research and writing skills;
Practice identifying the logical steps that must be
taken to accomplish one’s research goals;
*Critically review, examine, and consider the use of
different methods for gathering and analyzing data
related to the research problem; and,
*Nurture a sense of inquisitiveness within yourself
and to help you see yourself as an active participant
in the process of doing scholarly research.
CRIM 315-002: FINAL PROJECT GUIDELINES
OPTION #1
How to Prepare a Research Proposal According
to the URSP Guidelines?
3
CRIM 315-002: FINAL PROJECT GUIDELINES
OVERVIEW
The research proposal, which is worth 40 points of your final grade from this course, will
be prepared in accordance with GMU OSCAR’s URSP guidelines described in the following
pages of this document.
Do I need to apply for URSP funding to write this research proposal?
The short answer is NO. However, even if you do not apply for it, you will follow
the URSP guidelines to prepare your research proposal (including proposing
a hypothetical budget and timeline). Students who are not graduating in
Summer 2020 or Fall 2020 and who have the time and interest to turn their
proposals to a real research project are encouraged to apply to OSCAR for
the Summer 2020 URSP funding (Deadline: February 19, 2020) or Fall 2020
URSP funding (Deadline: May 27, 2020). If you plan to apply to this opportunity,
please let me know asap since we need to run your project idea by our
Institutional Review Board via e-mail and I want to match you with a professor as
your supervisor (this can be me or somebody else that does work on your
research area of interest).
Can I use this proposal for applying for consideration for an
independent study (CRIM498: Research Practicum)? If you fulfill the
requirements,* YES. CRIM498 provides supervised research experience with
a professor in a non-classroom setting. Students are required to work 45
hours (across the semester) per credit. 45 hours for each credit might seem too
much in the first instance. Think about how many hours you spend for class
prep, exam prep, assignments, commute, and attending the class. You can use this
opportunity to prep for something you have a true interest in, with one-onone guidance from an instructor who have expertise in this area and/or an
instructor you have previous classroom experience with.
*Open to majors in CRIM with 60 credits and permission of instructor and department. May be
repeated within the term for a maximum 6 credits.
4
CRIM 315-002: FINAL PROJECT GUIDELINES
OVERVIEW
SECTIONS OF THE PROPOSAL:
1. TITLE: Title should be a descriptive statement of the project (Example: Enablers and
Barriers of Refugees’ Safe, Voluntary, and Sustained Returns: Taking Stock of Return
Efforts in Western Balkans, Burundi, and Ukraine)
2. SHORT COVER LETTER (5 points): A personal statement summarizing the proposed
project and your personal goals and expectations. Why are you interested in this
project?
3. INTRODUCTION (10 points): Explain your scholarly question and provide a
rationale for your project. Include a narrative review of appropriate literature with intext citations. What is your research question and why is it significant?
4. PROCESS (10 points): Describe your project design and methods. Include a
description of materials and equipment necessary to complete the project (if any).
What will you do to answer your research question?
5. TIMELINE (5 points): Provide a detailed plan for your time considering you have
144 hours to complete the project. How will you schedule your time if this research
proposal gets funding?
6. EXPECTED OUTCOMES (5 points): Describe the anticipated outcomes, products
and/or results of your project and its contribution to the scholarly community. What
will you produce? How will your results be disseminated in the field?
7. BUDGET (5 points): Standard allocation is up to $1000 for students; you may
budget funds according to your project needs. How will these funds be spent?
5
CRIM 315-002: FINAL PROJECT GUIDELINES
6
GENERAL GUIDELINES
URSP application is for a competitive grant. Always use complete sentences and a
professional tone. You do not have any page limitations or formatting requirements
for this research proposal, just make sure that: (1) you write the proposal in a Word
document, (2) you have a title page with the project title and your name, (3) you stay
under the maximum character limit (with spaces) indicated for each section (you
don’t need to max each section, use as many characters as you need), (4) you
complete a thorough read of the proposal at the end running a spell check and ask a
second person (a friend/family member) to read your proposal to catch typos and
incomplete or unclear sentences).
Your audience is the Student Scholarly Activities subcommittee, an interdisciplinary
group with faculty and student representatives from across campus (even if you
decide not to go forward with this application, you will write the proposal thinking
they are your audience).
Be sure to explain concepts and define acronyms clearly that will not be familiar to a
general collegiate audience.
All applicants are expected to stay within the character limits of the following
application f…
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