Caring for the elderly: a European perspective on today and tomorrow

There is always a temptation to suppose that one's own problems (whether personal or national) are unique. They rarely are. The "problem" of the elderly is no exception and so there is no particular point in looking to the specific characteristics of one's own health, social service, and social security systems for causes. There is, however, every reason to be looking at them for the consequences. They can also exacerbate the causes. In this paper we sketch the principal features (economic, social, and demographic) that have contributed to the "problem" of the elderly in Europe and then outline the main intellectual issues that need to be explored and resolved. That sounds a bit pompous but, if one is to avoid an intellectual morass consisting of the various assertions about needs, obligations, and so on that emanate from rival concerned parties and various professional interests on the one hand, and simplistic political slogans whose only virtue is that they cut the Gordian Knot (but provide no real enlightenment) on the other, then we need to be doing just this. We shall take a few things for granted: that cost-containment is not the be-all-and-end-all of policy; that value for money depends equally on what you get as on what you spend; that overall expenditure per head is mainly determined by income per head (though some countries have managed to get and stay below the regression line); and that it "ain't so" that all one needs to do is to "leave it to the market." To have justified each of these would have taken too much space so we can only assert them and trust that, in swallowing these camels, you won't strain at the gnats to come.     

Decision theory,reasonable doubt,and the utility of erroneous acquittals

A criminal-trial juror votes to convict or acquit a defendant in the knowledge that the vote may be in error: False convictions and false acquittals are unavoidable in human fact-finding systems. We show here that rigorous consistency relationships exist between the juror's assessments of the relative desirability of the four possible trial outcomes and his or her threshold level of reasonable doubt. However, numerical values for reasonable doubt commonly obtained by direct questioning are significantly at variance with those obtained indirectly by computation from evaluations of the four possible outcomes. The disparity is, we argue, no mere methodological detail, but a potentially fundamental substantive issue which has historically been masked by the vagueness of verbal expressions of probability and utility.Helpful comments on earlier drafts from Gary Wagner, Michael Gottfredson, Brian Thorn, Rick Greenstein, Vernon Greene, John Bartholdi, and two anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.     

A contribution to the discussion of probabilities and human hair comparisons

The paper by Gaudette and Keeping on "An Attempt at Determining Probabilities in Human Scalp Hair Comparison" in the Journal of Forensic Sciences (Vol. 19, No. 3, July 1974, pp. 599-606) has provoked considerable controversy. This paper highlights two of the sources of the controversy and shows how the probability, 1/4500, quoted by Gaudette and Keeping should be treated with caution. The necessity of the use of a likelihood ratio statistic is described. It is suggested that the hair examination form resulting from the responses to the questionnaire recently distributed by the authors and also the discussions at Quantico (Proceedings of the International Symposium on Forensic Hair Comparisons, 25-27 June 1985, Quantico VA) should be used to facilitate the collection of the data which will be necessary to enable a likelihood ratio statistic to be estimated effectively.     

Research and Social Security policy in the United States

This article is adapted from a paper presented at a conference that investigated the role of policy research in shaping public policy. The conference focused on how studies of economic and social forces and their relationship with public problems and programs affect the decisions of public policymakers. The author contends that research has the potential to inform policy-making in any of its five stages: problem identification, option development, passage of new laws or development of new procedures, implementation, and evaluation. She notes that different players in the policy-making process use research differently, from the senior government official who needs a quick review of what is known relating to a "hot" issue to the interest group lobbyist who wants access to raw data. The article concludes that research can best achieve its potential when (1) it anticipates policymakers' information needs, (2) it is disseminated in an accessible form understandable to nonresearchers, and (3) the policy analyst is willing to engage in the policy process as an advocate for efficiency.     

Integrating societal and psychological rules of entitlement: The basic task of each social actor and fundamental problem for the social sciences

A preliminary statement of a theoretical framework integrating psychological and societal determinants of justice in human affairs is presented. It is proposed that the social structure provides the rules of entitlement and decision making that regulate the course of routine social interaction. These societally based norms are representable in people's conscious thought processes. By contrast, the psychologically generated rules of entitlement, typically contradict conventionally accepted rules of thought and discourse and thus remain unconscious. The major part of the discussion considers the motivationally important circumstances that engage the unconscious psychologically compelling determinants and how their appearance in behavior is both shaped and legitimized by the situationally prevailing normative context. The final section considers some of the more important methodological, theoretical, and social policy implications of this social psychological theory of entitlements.