Generally, qualitative methods are used to supplement quantitative data – particularly by establishing background and/or applicability.
[2] Terminology includes:[4] Participant observation can take many forms, but generally it will take one of the three following: Intensive interviewing is a form of interview wherein the researcher uses primarily broad, open-ended questions in order to obtain in-depth information about the interviewee's experiences, thoughts, reactions, and feelings.
One fault of this method is that it can be largely unrepresentative, and individuals' participation can be influenced or changed by the input of others in the room.
As with some other fields, the scope of criminological issues is so broad that it is nearly always impossible to conduct experiments pertaining to policy (i.e. it would be unethical to subject prisoners at random to higher levels of freedom than others for the sake of experiments, or sentence prisoners at random to longer sentences to observe the effects of increased captivity).
These case studies aid researchers to determine and anticipate potential outcomes of specific policy proposals.