Rule enforcement in a public setting: The case of basketball officiating

This participant observation study examines some of the definitional and dramaturgical work performed by basketball officials attempting to enforce formal rules in the presence of audiences (e.g., spectators, coaches, players and fellow officials). Our analysis begins with the discovery that officiating requires participation in both a real world of physical events and objects, and a social world of subjective identifications. Second, we explore the contexts of legitimation by which decisions are justified. Third, we identify dramaturgical strategies used by officials to enhance legitimacy in the face of problematic decisions. Finally, we consider the assumptions officials make about the character of their work. The paper concludes with a discussion of indexical and interpretive features of organizational and bureaucratic use of formal rules, including the case of basketball officiating.An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Knoxville, Tennessee, March, 1980. We would like to thank Michael Hughes and James Michaels for abetting suggestions and comments. The authors share equal responsibility for the paper; the names have been listed alphabetically.     

Hidden information acquisition and static choice

This note explores the consequence of hidden information acquisition for static choice theory. We show that any choice function in the observable problem can be consistent with some well-behaved choice function in a metaproblem with unobservable costly information acquisition. This illustrates how choices may not satisfy consistency conditions because a decision maker's decision process (in this case, information acquisition) depends on her feasible set. It also illustrates the importance of modeling the source of violations of consistency conditions, rather than simply weakening axioms on preferences.     

AGE-OF-RECALL EFFECTS ON FAMILY-OF-ORIGIN RATINGS

Family rating scales, particularly those tapping one's view of family of origin, rely heavily on one's summary impressions, perceptions, and recall of the family. Previous research has demonstrated that fairly consistent age, gender, and parent/offspring differences exist in ratings of current family functioning, but little information exists on such differences in rating one's family of origin. The present study had college-age subjects rate current family, family when they were elementary-school age, and family when they were 16 years old. Subjects were 141 college students (93 women, 48 men) who completed the self-Report Family Inventory (SFI) of the Beavers Systems Model of Family Functioning separately for the three specified recall periods (age 10, age 16, and current family). Significant differences were found between age-of-recall groups, with recall ratings from age 10 significantly more competent, cohesive, and less conflicted than those from age 16; current family ratings were intermediate. Relatively few gender by age interactions were significant. Implications for the use and interpretation of family ratings and family-of-origin scales are discussed.     

An approach to the treatment evaluation of Hodgkin's disease

Hodgkin's disease is a cancer of the lymphatic system. The major feature influencing the type of treatment employed, and the ultimate prognosis, is the stage or extent of disease prior to therapy. This paper is concerned with evaluating the difference in patient progress of two staging procedures. One (pathological staging) procedure is more extensive than the other (clinical staging). The evaluation is carried out by firstly developing a mathematical model of patient progress for pathologically staged patients and then using this model to predict what would have happened to clinically staged patients if they had been treated according to their pathological stage. Comparison of these predictions with actual results suggests that pathologically staged patients appear to remain in disease free survival (remission) following radio-therapy longer than clinically staged patients.