Criminal Behavior: A Qualitative Analysis

Criminal behaviour has always been a great concern to any developing society. While majority of the population conform with the Laws of the Land therein set to govern them, a minority group of people fail to adhere hence breaking the rules. Overwhelmingly, indications suggest that there are several sociological factors that attributes to the causation of crime for example, drugs and unstable relationships. Consequently, various scholars including criminologist and criminal psychologists have tried to work out why people engage in delinquent behaviour.

This report will give a general outline of the qualitative analysis of 3 (three) interviews, carried out on three individuals who had engaged themselves with criminality behaviour. The report

Upon completion of this qualitative analysis, a clear picture of range of behaviours of people who associate with drugs and criminal activities will emerge. The analysis will also give an insight on how influential relationships (may it be intimate or otherwise) are when it comes to making decisions. Analysis process will follow the key aspects of contemporary social research which includes both theoretical and empirical concepts. In theoretical concepts, ideas are developed and tested to gain knowledge of how the world operates. The empirical concepts on the other hand, is based on the observations and measurements of reality (Bryman 2012, p.23). Empiricism therefore relies on assumptions that we all use our senses in the same way for example, people’s perception of an occurrence should be similar if they all witnessed it together. There are however, many limitations that accompany the strategy of qualitative research. Some of the disadvantages includes, (i) inflexibility of the research may proof hard to demonstrate and maintain, (ii) the magnitude of data can cause prolonged delays, (iii) the ability to make people see the sense of why the research is been

The interviewer most preferable method was qualitative research. Qualitative research designs are created with the aim of revealing the reasons behind why people behave the way they do, as well as helping understand how they perceive the world around them. “As a research strategy, qualitative research is broadly inductivist, constructionist and interpretivist, but qualitative researchers do not always subscribe to all three of these features’’ (Bryman, 2012, p.380). There are several methodological approaches that can be used to collect qualitative data. These methods include the ethnography/participant observation, conducting interviews, focus group, case studies, conversation analysis and action research. In this report, the form of research paradigm is both subjective and interpretivist. Bryman (1988a: 4) defines a paradigm as “a cluster of beliefs and dictates which for scientists in a particular discipline influence what should be studied, how research should be done, and how results should be interpreted” (Bryman, 2012, p.630). In this context, ontology ‘which questions the nature of existence’ is the ‘subjectivism’ while epistemology ‘which deals how we determine the true nature of the world around us’ is the ‘interpretivism’. Because the aim of the interview was to get as much information as possible, the interviewee opted for a semi-structured style.