RESEARCH QUESTION:
What impact has the detention of Hispanic immigrants had on the mental health of first-generation Hispanic Americans in the last 20 years at the US-Mexico border towns in Texas?
IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The Implications, Limitations and Recommendations section consists of a discussion of the
practical side of the results. How will the anticipated findings facilitate decision making in the
future?
Implications – The Implications section speaks to whether your findings are generalizable to a
wider audience – your population. Most studies use a sample; therefore, this section addresses
randomness, sample size and whether your findings can be extended to the larger population.
And if you used the population as your basis, can your findings be extended to a larger group?
A discussion of the practical. The paper won’t be generalizable because of the way I sampled the population. The research sample for the paper is not a random sample. We will have to do more research to see how it can become generalizable.
Limitations – In Limitations you want to talk about the issues or gaps you encountered. You are
not saying your study design or implementation was weak; you are casting a critical, objective
eye on what the next person could possibly improve upon. Was current data available; was
there lack of access to confidential data; was the sample size smaller than expected; did
unforeseen circumstances like COVID interrupt the ability to get data; was this a new topic and
little information was available; did a significant historical event like the death of George Floyd
occur and change everything…..and so on and so on. There are always limitations of some sort.
Recommendations – Ultimately, research is conducted to provide new information which we
hope will translate into better policy. What recommendations would you make based on the
findings and implications of your research that might affect policy?
Some things I suggest be in the paper for recommendations:
Recommend further research be considered in the court or detained process. Is there any policy developed to help these kinds of people?
Example from old sample paper: DO NOT PLAGARIZE OR COPY VERBAGE
Limitations, Implications, and Recommendations: Limitations
Some limitations of this research are that the data should go past 2008 and 2016 because it is hard to establish causality during a few years and only on certain crimes. Also, it is important to look at the age of the data because you are making assumptions based on old data. Having access to literature, it is important to have access to a large variety of scientific literature and some individuals may see this as a gap in the literature. This will help researchers in the future because having more data for crime and unemployment will give better outcomes for research.
Implications and Recommendations
The findings from this study are generalizable because the population was studied. If this study was applied to a smaller sample size the results may not be generalizable. Adding policies to increase jobs in the state of Alabama can be a great implication and have a positive effect on crime rates. The study shows that when employment drop, so does the crime rate, so making jobs readily available to individuals of different demographics and backgrounds will create a positive effect on crime.
Also, if the research is broken down by individuals’ social class, then looking at those living in poverty, different wage levels, or wage inequality, you can see that those from a lower income level are more likely to be arrested of property crimes than more affluent individuals. I recommend that future research focus on the wage-crime relationship or the inequality-crime relationship. More research on those topics would be great to determine if unemployment and the wage levels causes crime. I also recommend that sites like the UCR provide more variables to compare such as poverty rates, age, and race.
References
Bureau of labor statistics & U.S. department of labor. (2012) The economics daily 2004 – 2005: Changes in state unemployment rates.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2006/mar/wk1/art02.htm
