The nomothetic research is more complicated to apply within the practical criminal justice analysis scope. It mainly requires experiment design allowing to compare the variables in similar conditions (Bachman & Schutt, 2017). At the same time, criminal justice researchers can use the ideographic explanations of causality more frequently because it allows for analyzing the given conditions for particular variables (Bachman & Schutt, 2017). Thus, the researchers can identify casualties between the specific events or actions that led to the particular result. This approach can be helpful in analyzing individual criminals’ behavior.
Considering the mentioned personal life example, I believe that the ideographic explanation may be more relevant to analyzing the relationships between X and Y. This approach can be more often applied because it is more reasonable to identify the sequences of events and analyze the results (Bachman & Schutt, 2017). At the same time, the conditions for the nomothetic explanation are pretty hard to be found in real life. Therefore, the qualitative data can be more efficiently used for making causal inferences (Bachman & Schutt, 2017). However, the approaches choice may be different in the professional sphere. Sometimes, reliable research can only be held through analyzing the qualitative data or using nomothetic explanations. The dependent and independent variables should be put in identical conditions to understand the behavior of the subjects. For example, in investigating the factors causing violent behavior, nomothetic explanations are vital to be applied. In other words, only qualitative data provide sufficient arguments in such a case. Professional life requires diverse approaches to analyzing criminology cases. As a result, both types of casualty explanations should be used under different conditions.
Reference
Bachman, R., & Schutt, R. (2017). The practice of research in criminology and criminal justice. SAGE Publications.