State The Research Question That Your Group Is Seeking
State the research question that your group is seeking to answer with this project. (In other words,
based on your analysis of the existing political science literature, what important question do you
believe has yet to be addressed, or has been addressed inadequately?)
Do elected judicial officials have an increasing effect on the incarceration rate in comparison to
appointed judges? Furthermore, do states that hold elections for judicial officials experience a
higher incarceration rate in comparison to those states who appoint judges?
State the hypothesis that your group intends to explore in its research design.
In a comparison of states, states that elect judges are more likely than states that appoint judges to
have higher ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
This helped to have more concise data. Also, incarceration rate is measured per 100,000 people,
taking into account the population for each state. The same is true for the violent crime rate, as it
also was measured per 100,000 people. Since both of these variables measured for population, this
was another control variable included in the research.The incarceration rate, crime rate, and
population of the states do not need to be operationalized, as they are already quantitative data. To
operationalize whether or not a state elects or appoints trial judges, we gave each option a specific
number. For example, if a state elects their trial judges, the state was given a one. These states
include: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina,
North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,
Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin (30 in total). If the state appoints a
judge, the state was given a zero. These states include: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut,
Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska,
New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming (20 total). This allowed
us to operationalize all variables and compare them more
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