Longitudinal Studies In Prisons

I would choose to study a cohort of fifty, 30-year-old inmates of both genders who would be released after 15 years during the study. A longitudinal study would allow me to be able to visit and converse with them, get information about how they live their lives behind bars and also study how they would cope with their return to society. According to Novak, 2012 “Longitudinal studies look at age cohorts or individuals over time” (p. 41).
With how fast technology has been improving and growing in recent years it would be interesting to see how they adapt and learn to use and handle the new technology (cell phones, internet etc.). Would they use the advance technology as an advantage or a disadvantage to perform criminal activities?
I imagine …show more content…
Even if I did a study comparing persons released from prison in the 1980’s with those released in the 2000’s it would be hard because “cross sectional studies can lead to errors in interpretation. They confound aging and cohort effect” (p. 41) and because society, the environment, people, technology have constantly been changing and evolving, even words have created such as “selfie”. Therefore there would be many different things that persons today would have to learn and adapt to which would cause different methods used, emotions and experiences faced with readjusting to society. I am of the opinion the research method chosen is dependent on the information that one is seeking if you want to do a comparison then it would be wiser to do a cross-sectional study while if you want to really focus on a particular topic or group and how it develops and function across time then longitudinal study it is. “Longitudinal studies of intelligence, for example, help untangle the effects of background and environment (cohort effects) from changes due to age (p.