IDEOLOGY AND POLICY RESEARCH: THE CASE OF MURRAY'S LOSING GROUND

Ideology and policy research are intertwined in many ways; an example is Murray's Losing Ground which uses “science” to justify racial, sexual, and class discrimination. Murray is utterly faithful to the neoconservative version of how liberalism went wrong in the 1960s. He says an intellectual elite shifted the blame for poverty, crime and low achievement to “the system” destroying individual responsibility. But his argument is not supported by evidence. Data are bent tofit foregone conclusions. He argues that more people are becoming dependent on government support, but his method of counting who receives assistance is a fiction. Nevertheless his argument has wide appeal among Americans. Why? His argument touches the self-interested Social Darwinist in almost all of us.     

Insanity plea

Examining 484 consecutive criminal cases in which the NGRI plea was made, it was found: (1) a high degree of interexaminer agreement existed on the issue of the defendant's mental state in a nonadversary examination procedure; and, (2) court verdicts were highly congruent with the opinions expressed by examiners on the issue of insanity.     

State legislation on smoking and health: A comparison of two policies

The two principal smoking-related state legislative activities stand in sharp contrast to one another. Cigarette excise taxation diffused among the states well before the connection between smoking and illness became a public issue, yet more recent tax increases appear to reflect a response to the national anti-smoking campaign. The growing disparity in cigarette prices between tobacco and other states has created a lucrative market in bootlegged cigarettes and has thereby brought new taxation to a virtual standstill for six years. Laws restricting smoking in public places represent a phenomenon of the 1970's clearly bearing the imprint of the anti-smoking campaign. From 1972 through 1978, the number of states with such laws in effect grew from 5 to 36, and the restrictiveness of the laws also increased. The dramatic correlation between diffusion of the laws and decreases in cigarette consumption rates seems best interpreted as each of these reflecting changes in social attitudes toward smoking.     

Is technology transfer more than a “mechanical” process?

Editorial Advisory Board     

Prevalence and distribution of premarital aggression among couples applying for a marriage license

This study used a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale to examine the prevalence of premarital aggression in a community sample of husbands and wives. The sample consisted of 625 couples participating in a longitudinal study of marital functioning and alcohol use. Consistent with past studies, the overall prevalence rate of husband-to-wife premarital aggression was 35%. Sociodemographic variables were associated with premarital aggression, with differences emerging primarily with regard to moderate aggression rather than mild aggression. Further, factors such as race, education, social class, cohabitation, and presence of children were independently associated with premarital aggression. This study is one of the first to examine premarital aggression in a large, heterogeneous sample of young husbands and wives at the same stage of relationship development. Future analyses will examine the prevalence, frequency, and continuity of husband and wife aggression over the first year of marriage.