ABSTRACT
Criminologists have developed numerous theories to explain criminal behavior, crime rates, and other phenomena of interest. The literature testing hypotheses derived from the field’s major theories is vast and continues to grow. A fundamental question concerns the strength of empirical support for these various hypotheses, in absolute and relative terms. One of the most common ways of addressing this question is by conducting narrative, qualitative literature reviews. Narrative reviews typically summarize the results of a group of selected studies examining the relationship (or hypothesis) of interest, while neglecting many other available studies. Further, narrative reviews often focus on the statistical significance of individual study findings—if a high proportion of the reviewed studies find that the relationship of interest is statistically significant, then the hypothesis is considered empirically corroborated. The popularity of narrative reviews is evident from a recent volume of Advances in Criminological Theory that attempted to “take stock” of the empirical status of various criminological theories (Cullen et al., 2008); it included fifteen chapters, and all but one of these chapters employed narrative reviews. 1
