A Research Design on “Does restorative justice affect recidivism?”

Employ the scientific method to raise a viable research topic/question in order to research, collect, and review timely, scholarly literature that relates directly to the question. Using knowledge of data and methods, organize and specify how to collect data to test hypotheses and select methods to use in testing these hypotheses.

Propose a research design that models a short article or research note in a published journal. The desing must contain many of the following elements:
1. An introduction with the student explaining the relevance of the topic;
2. A literature review with the student discussing at least twen to fifteen items of previous literature on the topic (the majority of which must have appeared in academic journals)
3. A description of a theoretical framework (this does not need to be an original argument; the student can “borrow” one from your literature review);
4. Construction of hypotheses;
5. A design for testing the hypothesis with the student discussing: (i) The conceptualization and measurement of the student’s variables; and (ii) A detailed strategy for collecting the data (e.g., conduct an experiment, administer a survey, code archival data, etc.);
6. A detailed description of the methods the student intends to employ (statistics) to test hypotheses.
7. A case study in which the student qualitatively examines what can be generalized across cases.
7, A conclusion.

To summarize some points:

These are the list of things that must be in the Report –

Well-specified Research Question, Independent, Dependent & Control Variables and Operationalized Measures, Unit of Analysis;
Literature Review or Case Study Analysis;
Hypotheses and Justification for them based on the Literature;
Links to the Secondary Data (if you were to carry out the Statistical Analysis) – YOU ARE NOT ACTUALLY DOING SO!;
Expected Findings and Speculation based on the Literature

“Remember the unit of analysis is the object or thing being described by the variables, that is, for each unit, you must have the IV and the DV. YOU CANNOT HAVE A UNIT OF ANALYSIS FOR THE INDEPENDENT VARIABLE AND A SEPARATE UNIT OF ANALYSIS FOR THE DEPENDENT VARIABLE!!! You then gather the IV and the DV for each one to subject them to statistical analysis.

The research design question I came up with: “Does restorative justice affect recidivism?”

In regard to my question, one potential unit of analysis is prisoners who have or have not been subjected to restorative justice, or a prisoners who have either had retributive or restorative justice. Then, your IV will be whether each prisoner experienced restorative justice or not (yes/no). Your DV can then be whether that prisoner experienced recidivism or not. And of course, you would have to limit your analysis to one prison, one courtroom, one county, or a group of prisons etc., the reason being that you can gather data for the entire nation. In addition, you would have several control variables.
Another potential unit of analysis is states. In that case, your IV could be if each state imposes restorative or retributive justice for specific crime or a group of crimes (yes/no). Your DV can then be the rate of recidivism for those specific crimes (cannot be for all crimes.) Again, these are issues of matching your IV and DV for the unit of analysis.

Lastly, it should be formatted as a research design would be/like a published research journal article