Understanding Studies and Surveys of Computer Crime
Michel E. Kabay · 2012
This chapter provides guidance for critical reading of the studies and survey results about computer crime. The chapter emphasizes that all studies about computer crime should be studied carefully before placing reliance on their results. Some important items to consider include the population of sampling, the self-selection bias, and testing for the assumptions of randomness, normality, and equality of variance. The chapter discusses different research methods applicable to computer crime. It highlights that interviewing individuals can provide a wealth of data that are unavailable through any other method. One can learn details of computer crime cases or motivations and techniques used by computer criminals. Interviews can be structured or unstructured. The chapter also discusses about surveys which consist of asking people to answer a fixed series of questions with lists of allowable answers. Surveys can be carried out face to face or by distributing and retrieving questionnaires by telephone, mail, fax, and email.