In an effort to delineate the methodological development of criminology and criminal justice, this study compares seven dimensions of research methods employed in the 966 articles published in "Criminology," Journal of Criminal Justice," and "Justice Quarterly" during the period from 1976 through 1988. The findings show that "Criminology" articles tend to focus on the causes of crime, social control, and delinquency with an emphasis of inductive empiricism. This type of research uses correlational research designs, cross-sectional data, and multivariate statistics. The two other criminal justice journals use similar methods, but emphasize law enforcement, courts, and corrections. There has been a general increase in empirical works that examine relationships among variables and use multivariate statistics. 4 tables and 25 references