Evaluating adolescent decision making in legal contexts

Challenges the use by policy researchers of a model for comparing adolescent and adult decision making that is based on informed consent standards. An expanded decision-making framework designed to evaluate judgment in adults and adolescents can better test the empirical basis of paternalistic legal policies. The theoretical and empirical literature on the informed consent framework is critiqued and an alternative framework incorporating judgment factors is proposed. Three judgment factors—temporal perspective, attitude toward risk, and peer and parental influence—and their effects on decision making are explored. Finally, implications for future research are analyzed in several decision-making contexts.Several of the ideas in this article were originally presented by the first author and were published as part of a symposium on competence (see Scott, 1992). The current article expands and refines these ideas, provides a more substantial research base, and suggests several future research directions. We thank Joseph Allen, Richard Bonnie, Baruch Fischhoff, William Gardner, John Monahan, Edward Mulvey, Richard Redding, Paul Slovic, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Special thanks to Thomas Grisso for providing much constructive criticism and to Wendy Shang for outstanding research assistance. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the MacArthur Foundation, which supported this work in its early stages.     

Inequality and fertility

This article focuses on the relationship between inequality and fertility, with empirical analysis only of direct influences. Whereas much of the literature seems to be based on 0-order correlations, the present study uses multiple regression analysis to test the strength of the evidence for a relationship between inequality and fertility when competing hypotheses are also considered. In addition, this study attempts to clarify some of the issues surrounding the measurement of inequality and to show how these may affect empirical results. It appears from the results presented here that research into the relative status of women as an influence on fertility holds considerable promise. In particular, it is interesting that a measure of the relative status of women (ratio of female school enrollment to male school enrollment) that is highly correlated with absolute educational status of people in the nation in general, and even more highly correlated with absolute educational status of women, emerges as one of 3 important predictors of fertility. The other measure of the relative educational status of women (female school enrollment ratio minus male school enrollment ratio), which has lower correlations with absolute educational status both of women and people in general, does not appear important, although it should be an equally valid indicator of women's status. It also has lower correlations with total fertility rates. 1 focus of further research should be an attempt to disentangle the effects of the relative status of women from absolute status of women and absolute status of people in the nation as a whole. Less promising is the prospect of future work on the relationship between income inequaltiy and fertility. The results are unencouraging with respect to both sampling problems and the actual magnitude of the effect of inequality on fertility. Overall, it appears that the importance of income inequality as an influence on fertility may have been overstated in the past.     

A status passage analysis of the defendant's progress through the Magistrates' Court

One possible solution to the problem of subjectivity in the interpretation of social phenomena is the application of models derived from formal grounded theory, since such models make explicit the writer's perspective and the assumptions he or she brings to the social situation. This article uses the Status Passage Theory of Glaser and Strauss (1971) to analyze systematically the way in which English Magistrates' Courts deal with defendants. It identifies various features in the courtroom and precourtroom processes and in the attitudes of the courtroom professionals that appear consistent with the view that the social degradation of offenders is an implicit, yet important, objective of these courts. Finally, comparisons are made between the lower criminal courts in England and the United States and tentative explanations offered as to why differences exist between social degradation aspects of the two systems.This article is an abridged and revised section of the author's LL.M. thesis. Many of the revisions are the result of helpful comments made by Tony Bottoms, Peter Moodie, and Barbara Harrel-Bond on the original thesis.     

Last rights. In sickness and in health, more people are taking life's biggest decision away from doctors and into their own hands

When dying is all that awaits them, more and more people are choosing certain death now rather than uncertain life on medical support systems. But the decision seldom comes easy, as a Newsweek reporter discovers during three weeks with the doctors, nurses, patients and families in an intensive-care ward. A best-selling guide to suicide fires debate over when it is right to let life go--and who should make that choice when the patient no longer can.