Analysis of “Black--White Disparities in Criminal Justice Referrals to Drug Treatment: Addressing Treatment Need or Expanding the Diagnostic Net?” Identify the purpose of the research study, problem, and questions

The major aim of the article; Black--White Disparities in Criminal Justice Referrals to Drug Treatment: Addressing Treatment Need or Expanding the Diagnostic Net? written by Karen Mcelrath, Angela Taylor, and Kimberly K. Tran (2016) is to analyze the racial (Black/White) disparities in the diagnoses of drug abuse against dependence. The article’s objective is to study the way race, and less importantly, related socio-demographic and substance use factors, affect the diagnoses of cannabis use problems, particularly, diagnoses of cannabis dependence against cannabis abuse. The article’s writers equally studied Black/White disparities in diagnoses amongst persons referred to therapy by self, healthcare personnel and several others sources.

The research subject here is, a little over half of the marijuana-related admissions into U.S. state-funded therapy are always referred by the criminal justice system and this has been the situation for around 20 years now (Mcelrath et al., 2016, 4). Across the nations, the population of Blacks makes up almost one-third of the marijuana-related therapy admissions.

This research did not specifically state any research questions.

Describe the design of the study

The design used is a retrospective study design. The word “retrospective” refers to an issue or phenomenon which took place previously. These retrospective studies regularly require secondary data compilation on the basis of available data from previous researches or records (Ary et al., 2013; Creswell, 2013). In this current article,...

Race was represented by binary variables (0 = White; 1 = Black). More control and independent variables were added due to their ability to influence variations in abuse and dependence diagnoses. Almost all the demographic variables present were divided into two clear categories and they were measured by trait presence (coded 1) and trait absence (coded 0). Some of these include GEB/high school graduate, homelessness when admitted and female gender. Ethnic Hispanics may also go through different treatments therefore a new variable on Hispanic ethnicity was introduced and coded 0 for non-Hispanic and 1 for Hispanic. Age was handled as an interval. Three dummy variables were produced for employment status and they are; unemployed, not in labor force and employed part- or full-time. The remaining mental disorders were coded 0 (no) and 1 (yes). Also included at admission were drug use gauges (three in number) and they are; (1) two or more other substances apart from marijuana (marijuana only = 0; yes = 1); (2) regularity of usage over the last 30 days (dummy coded: no use, less than daily and daily over the last 30 days); and (3) previous treatment (no = 0; yes = 1).
Identify whether the research study is a quantitative or qualitative design. Explain your answer

This research study applies a quantitative design. Quantitative data refers to information on quantities, i.e. information which is measurable and can be represented by numbers in writing (Ary et al., 2013) From the previously stated procedures, it is clear that the…