Criminology Assignment: Hypothesis Testing and Violence Against Women

This assignment examines the role of hypothesis testing in advancing criminology and shaping criminal justice policy. The student explores the significance of hypothesis testing in analyzing crime rates and identifying factors contributing to criminal behavior. The assignment focuses on violence against women as an area of interest, identifying awareness of women's rights as the independent variable and the frequency of violence as the dependent variable. The student found a 2019 published article which tested the relationship between these two variables, along with other independent variables such as vicarious victimization, defensive and avoidant behaviors, direct victimization and socio-demographic attributes. The article's findings highlighted the association between public awareness campaigns and a reduction in violence against women. The assignment demonstrates how hypothesis testing provides empirical evidence for policy recommendations and interventions aimed at reducing crime and improving public safety.

Statistics
Student Name:
University Name:
2nd August 2019

How does the testing of hypotheses derived from theory contribute to advances in the fields
of criminology and criminal justice policy?
Hypothesis testing is important in the field of criminology as it aids in the analysis of various
factors, for instance, if a person who was punished for a particular crime ends up doing the same
or a more violent crime or not. The hypothesis also aids in testing whether the crime rate has
increased or decreased in a particular region. In view of these, hypothesis testing is of great
importance when it comes to validating whether rate of crimes in a given area or region have
improved over the years or if the crime rate has gotten worse over the years. The policy makers
can use the results of the hypothesis test to make policies. For instance, when the study results
shows that a given area is prone to some form of crime, the policy could recommend certain
intervention measures aimed at curbing or reducing the crime rate. This is only possible based on
the empirical evidence obtained from the data through hypothesis testing. A study through
hypothesis test could also point to crime as a result young people being engaged in crime. The
reason could be as a result of idleness of the youths hence divulging into crimes, through the
hypothesis test, the policy makers could be advised to come up interventions that would see the
youths get involved in some meaningful activities that might make them busy and not get into
crime related activities.
The specific examples could be as follows;
1. Testing whether crime rate in a given area or region is associated with gender or age.
2. Testing whether the crime rates (kidnapping, murder, burglary, rape) in a given region
have increased or decreased.
3. Testing whether awareness among the women on their rights has anything to do with the
perceptions of crimes in an area or region.

Area of interest
The chosen area of interest is the violence against women. I am interested in understanding
causes of violence against the women. This area is of great importance based on the weight it
carries. Everyday across the globe several incidents of violence against women is reported and a
result of this I would be interested in understanding how best to tackle this issue of great concern
(Alfredsson , Ask , & Von Borgstede, 2016).
Identify an Independent and Dependent variable of interest in this area.
The independent variable of interest in this area is the respondent’s awareness on the prevailing
efforts put in place to minimize or reduce the cases of violence perpetrated against women .
Awareness is key to determine whether a woman would be subjected to violence. Regions where
women who are aware about their right and aware about the prevailing campaign against women
would be expected to have less number of cases against women reported (Cuevas , Sabina, &
Milloshi , 2012).
The dependent variable of interest in this area is the frequency of violence against women
(VAW). The frequency of violence could be measured number of cases on crime against women
reported in any given area at any given time period (Montesanti & Thurston, 2015).
Searching for a published article published in 2019
I searched for a published article that was published in 2019 that is within my area of interest.
The interest I found was titled: “Perceptions of violence against women in Europe: Assessing
individual- and country-level factors”

This article sought to test Perceptions of violence against women based on individual-level
predictor variable which is the awareness level.
The other independent variables that the authors found to relate with the dependent variable
(Perceptions of violence against women) included in the study are; vicarious victimization,
defensive and avoidant behaviors, direct victimization and socio-demographic attributes
(Tsavoussis, Stawicki, Stoicea, & Papadimos, 2014).
The authors established that most of the individual-level predictor variables were highly related
with perceptions on violence against women. Public awareness for instance was found to have a
significant association with the perceptions on violence against women (dependent variable).
Regions where the respondents were much aware about the ongoing campaigns to stop violence
against women had lower frequencies of perceptions on violence against women (David ,
Aizpurua, Copp, & Ricarte, 2019). This is a clear indication that the awareness campaigns
conducted in areas is effective in reducing the violence against women (David , Aizpurua, Copp,
& Ricarte, 2019).

References
Alfredsson , H., Ask , K., & Von Borgstede, C. (2016). Beliefs about intimate partner violence:
A survey of the Swedish public. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 57(1), 57–64.
Cuevas , C. A., Sabina, C., & Milloshi , R. (2012). Interpersonal victimization among a national
sample of Latino women. Violence Against Women, 18(4), 377–403.
David , V., Aizpurua, E., Copp, J., & Ricarte, J. J. (2019). Perceptions of violence against
women in Europe: Assessing individual- and country-level factors. European Journal of
Criminology, 1-19. doi:10.1177/1477370819859462
Montesanti , S. R., & Thurston, W. W. (2015). Mapping the role of structural and interpersonal
violence in the lives of women: Implications for public health interventions and policy.
BMC Women’s Health, 15(1), 1–13.
Tsavoussis, A., Stawicki, S. P., Stoicea, N., & Papadimos, T. J. (2014). Child-witnessed
domestic violence and its adverse effects on brain development: A call for societal self-
examination and awareness. Frontiers in Public Health, 2, 1–5. Retrieved August 2,
2019, from https://doi. org/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00178