Sex Differences in the Characteristics of Members Lost to a Longitudinal Panel: A Speculative Research Note

A nine-year follow-up of former adolescents reveals sex differencesin the relative deviance and drug involvement of individualslost to the panel in young adulthood. As expected, men who werereinterviewed were less deviant than the noninterviewed, whilethe opposite was observed among women. Specification by raceindicates that the female pattern applies especially to nonwhites,but all women who are reinterviewed, irrespective of race, areno less deviant than the nonreinterviewed. The paradoxical findingfor females may result from changing marital status in thatparticular period of the life cycle and an inverse relationshipbetween delinquency and marriage.     

Social Representations: The Beautiful Invention

Psychoanalysis: Its Image and Its Public is a perfect illustration of Tarde's claim that ‘beautiful’ should be reserved for ideas that lead to a discovery of more ideas and to an invention that we can judge as fruitful for the future. The article examines the influence of the book in geographical, historical and scientific contexts and traces the development and diffusion of the theory of social representations throughout four periods. The article highlights the difference between the first edition in 1961, and the second one in 1976, and it examines the development of Moscovici's ideas over time. The first edition of Psychoanalysis, based on the criticism of sociology of knowledge, underlines common sense as a new object of study, attempting to capture complex social phenomena. It shows common sense as a legitimate object of study that interweaves social, cultural and individual dimensions in the constitution of social reality. The 1976 edition emphasises that language and communication and its role in the theory of social knowledge. The book has had manifold impact on new areas of study. An overview of international research in social representations shows how this work has inspired scholars all over the world, has lead to creating Schools of research and to innovative proposals not only in terms of domains that have been studied but also in terms of theoretical models and methodological concerns.     

UNDERREPORTING OF SUBSTANCE USE IN A NATIONAL LONGITUDINAL YOUTH COHORT: INDIVIDUAL AND INTERVIEWER EFFECTS

The quality of drug data in the 1984 wave of the National LongitudinalSurvey of Youth is explored. Comparisons with other nationalsurveys indicate that underreporting of use of illicit drugsother than marijuana appears to have taken place, and that lightusers of these drugs are underrepresented among the self-acknowledgedusers. Comparison with marijuana use reported four years earlierindicates that experimental marijuana users are much less likelythan extensive users to acknowledge involvement. Even aftercontrolling for frequency of use, underreporting is more commonamong terminal high school dropouts and minorities. Not onlyindividual characteristics but field conditions also contributeto underreporting. Familiarity with the interviewer, as measuredby number of prior interviewing contacts, depresses drug usereporting. We speculate that interviewer familiarity increasessalience of normative standards and that participants respondnot only in terms of their past familiarity but also in termsof their subjective expectations regarding the probability ofa future encounter with the interviewer.     

“That was Then,but This is Now”: Historical Perspectives on Intercountry Adoption and Domestic Child Adoption in Australian Public Policy

This paper brings historical perspectives to bear on the ambivalent and contradictory position of adoption in Australian public policy. It examines the divergent histories of Australian domestic and intercountry adoption (ICA) since the mid‐1970s and the impact of these histories on adoption policy in Australia. It identifies tendencies in contemporary ICA to repeat elements of pre‐reform era domestic adoption. In particular, it is argued that the resistance of ICA to the move to openness in local adoption has been an unacknowledged driver of ICA for many Australian families. We offer corrective readings of the rise of ICA in relation to domestic adoption and conclude by offering alternatives for adoption policy which better align the two kinds of adoption, focusing on the needs of children, as distinct from the desires of adults.     

A COMMON PROPERTY EXPERIMENT WITH A RENEWABLE RESOURCE

This series of three classroom experiments demonstrates the tragedy of the commons and suggests two possible solutions: communication and individual property rights. In the first and second experiments, students jointly own a renewable resource in the form of a plate of M&Ms. Communication is not allowed in the first experiment, whereas in the second experiment students may try to influence each other's desired harvest. The third experiment divides the plate to establish individual property rights.