On ensuring the availability of evaluative data for secondary analysis

This paper is based on a programmatic effort to elicit and reanalyze data stemming from the evaluation of social programs. The stress is on identifying problems and negotiating for data and analyzing it. This includes: researchers' reluctance to disclose data for documentation and data control systems; vague or nonexistent policy for assuring access. The possible solutions presented here are based on governmental regulation and policy for publicly supported evaluation.Individuals who kindly provided their reactions to earlier drafts of this paper and/or advice and information in other ways include: Ole Engberg, John Evans, Harold B. King, Sheldon Laube, William Madow, Richard Marciano, Margaret E. Martin, Keith Marvin, Marjorie Powell, Alice Robbin, Peter Rossi, Lee Sechrest, Ernst W. Stromsdorfer, and Frederick Mosteller. Not all their reactions and criticisms have been accommodated, and we alone bear responsibility for the opinions registered here.Development of this paper has been supported by NIE Contract C-74-0115. All unpublished documentation discussed here is on file at the Methodology and Evaluation Research Division (Lucina Gallagher, Librarian).     

The idea of autonomy and the foundations of contractual liability

This paper examines a recurrent debate about the rationale of contractual liability: whether the central object of contract law is to facilitate human interaction by respecting individual choices, or if it is in large part to redistribute wealth, power, and advantages generally. The debate between defenders of freedom of contract and those who would use contract law to advance schemes of redistribution is connected to the long-standing issues between natural-law theories and legal positivism. This paper is divided into two main sections. In the first, the notion of individual autonomy is examined in light of the classical view, most recently advanced by Fried, that the rationale for enforcing contracts is connected to the respect for individual autonomy as such. There is also an examination of the notion of a collective concern, and what it is, from a libertarian point of view, that makes some social goals objectionably collective. The second part of the paper argues that the use of collective resources for the enforcement of contracts brings with it the authority to limit and shape enforcement in the interest of redistribution.     

Finland's penal colonies: The forbearant model and community-based corrections

Community-based corrections is widely heralded as the proper basis for future penal administration. Penal colonies of Finland are employed in this paper to relate changes in society at large to innovation in corrections. The penal colonies were the indirect result of the postwar crisis in Finland and changes brought by industrialization and urbanization. Unprecedented opportunities for solving problems of conventional administration motivated officials to introduce penal colonies as a means of accomodating prisons to the new expectations being imposed on correctional work. The forbearant model is proposed as a hesitant and primitive reaction to pressures to bring corrections into conformity with the trends shaping society at large. This model is useful in analyses of the American movement toward community-based corrections.     

The art of regulation and the regulation of ART: the impact of regulation on research and clinical practice

How a society regulates Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ART) depends on cultural context. The challenge for the regulatory regime is to balance protection for patients and society with freedom for medico-scientific creativity. Neither an exclusively market-regulated nor a peer-regulated approach is realistic politically, or desirable socially, ethically and legally. Legitimate social issues that go beyond the exclusive expertise of doctors and scientists or market choice by patients need to be accommodated within the regulatory regime. Within this context, four key issues are discussed: the lack of a shared social ethic that helps the needs of the community to be balanced against those of its individual members; the negative impact of intrusive external regulation on scientists and doctors; the requirement for doctors and scientists to review their professional structures reflectively and critically if they are to be entrusted with peer-regulation; and the desirability of constructive dialogue between regulators and regulated rather than the use of coercion and criminal sanctions.