The Connecticut Crackdown on Speeding

The Connecticut Crackdown on Speeding

1. Who was involved with the current study (hint: cf, p.33)?

Different stakeholders have been involved, including Donald T. Campbell from Northwestern University and Laurence Ross from the University of Denver College of law. The police and the members of the public were also used as subjects or respondents during the study.

1. What is (are) the source(s) of the funding for this study, if any (hint: cf, p.33)?

The main sources of funding come from the National Science Foundation, the US Office of Education, the US Bureau of Public Roads, the National Institute of Health, the US Public Health Service, and the Automotive Safety Foundation.

1. What is the research strategy used (i.e., Experiment, Survey, Field Research, and/or Secondary Data Analysis)?

The methodology applied in the study is “quasi-experimental analysis.” And the specific mode of analysis used in “interrupted time-series design.” The research required the combination of the two to make the study more credible.

1. What is the motivating research question (hint: cf, p.37)?

Can legal amendments improve the overall fatality rates through traffic accidents

1. What are the units of analyses?

The death rates and speed

1. What is the most general research hypothesis, if any?

The research hypotheses are the effects of legal amendments in relation to over speeding, and how the police crackdown assisted in improving the overall fatality rates as a result of careless driving.

1. State the most general null hypothesis, if possible?

The most general null hypothesis is that if the state enacts the law regarding speed driving, by instituting less severe punishments, more and more people are still likely to die on the roads, because capital punishments, as a result of accidents,  have been abolished.

1. The argument articulated by Governor Ribicoff justifying the crackdown on speeding in Connecticut was based on what research design?  What is the dependent variable?  What was the social intervention employed by Governor Ribicoff?  What was the outcome claimed to have been achieved by Governor Ribicoff?  What are the possible alternative explanations to the observed decline in traffic fatalities (hint: cf, p.35-41, and fig. 1)?

The dependent variables are excess speed and traffic fatalities. Another dependent variable is license suspension and a decrease in fatalities. Some of the social interventions employed by the governor included; suspension of licenses whereby the first offense attracted a thirty-day suspension, a second offense attracted sixty-day suspension, and the third conviction resulted in an indefinite suspension of the licenses, subject to hearing after 90-days. The outcome claimed to have been achieved by the governor was a drop in traffic violations and fatalities, because the operators are driving slower and better in the roads. In May 1955, deaths had declined from 122 to 107 in 1956, and during the same period, suspension as a result of speeding shot to 4,559 in 1956 against 209 in 1955. Besides, speeding arrests had dropped by 53 percent, meaning that motorists had welcomed the reforms and were cooperative in the roads.

1. Campbell and Ross employed two quasi-experimental designs to attempt to determine whether the results regarding program effectiveness, as claimed by the Ribicoff regime, are valid.  Describe the designs employed by Campbell and Ross and discuss what threats to internal validity they controlled for (hint: cf, p.41-46, figs. 2-4)?

The designs employed are interrupted time-series analysis and multiple time-series. The interrupted time-series applies the usage of extensive data often available prior and after the measures are reported. For instance, in figure two, the research has used incorporated traffic fatalities for five years prior to the crackdown and four years after the crackdown. The multiple-time series makes use of all the available data, and in the case of the study, information from neighboring states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New York, were all used. The graph has further elaborated on the research hypotheses through the plotting of death rates from the control states alongside Connecticut, which is the region under scrutiny.

1. What are the results?  Did severe traffic penalties prevent traffic deaths?

The Connecticut crackdown has indicated that the crackdown on over-speeding yielded positive results because the fatality rates exhibited a significant decline. Despite the fact that the fatality rates decline, there was no scientific proof to ascertain that the decline was a result of the crackdown. Research results indicate that law enforcement agencies like the court and police officers are less reluctant to initiate severe penalties to perpetrators. Even though the methodology is somewhat ambiguous, the social scientists used tools that enabled him to understand the social system, and this is one of the reasons why multiple-time series were used to acquire data from a neighboring study that would have given the research more credibility.

References

Campbell, D. T., & Ross, H. L. (1968). The Connecticut crackdown on speeding: Time-series data in quasi-experimental analysis. Law and Society Review, 33-53.