Basics of Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology 3rd Edition by Michael Maxfield, William Pasewark, Earl Babbie,Scott Pasewark

Exercise 2

William Julius Wilson (1996, 167) cites the following example of why it's important to think carefully about units and time. Imagine a 13-bed hospital, in which 12 beds are occupied by the same 12 people for one year. The other hospital bed is occupied by 52 people, each staying one week. At any given time, 92 percent of beds are occupied by long-term patients (12 out of 13), but over the entire year, 81 percent of patients are short-term patients (52 out of 64). Discuss the implications of a similar example, using jail cells instead of hospital beds.