Social Prevention and the Social Sciences: Theoretical Controversies, Research Problems, and Evaluation Strategies 9783110864328, 9783110123876

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Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence 11

Special Research Unit 227 - Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence An interdisciplinary project of the University of Bielefeld conducted by Prof. Dr. GUnter Albrecht, Prof. Dr. Peter-Alexis Albrecht, Prof. Dr. Otto Backes, Prof. Dr. Michael Brombring, Prof. Dr. Klaus Hurre/mann, Prof. Dr. Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Prof. Dr. Friedrich /ijsel, Prof. Dr. Hans-Uwe Otto, Prof. Dr. Helmut Skowronek

Social Prevention and the Social Sciences Theoretical Controversies, Research Problems, and Evaluation Strategies

Edited by Gunter Albrecht, Hans-Uwe Otto with the assistance of Susanne Karstedt-Henke and Karin Bollert

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1991

Dr. Gunter Albrecht

Professor fur Soziologie an der Fakultcit fur Soziologie der Universitcit Bielefeld Dr. Hans-Uwe Otto Professor fOr Erziehungswissenschaft mit dem Schwerpunkt Sozialarbeit und Sozialpodagogik an der Universitcit Bielefeldd Dr. Susanne Karstedt-Henlce Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Sonderforschungsbereich 227"Provention und Intervention im Kindes- und Jugendalter' der Universitot Bielefeld Dr. Karin SOI/ert Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Fakultcit fOr Podagogik der Universitot Bielefeld With 3B figures and 33 tables @

Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability

Library of Congress Cato/oging-in-Publication Dato Social prevention and the social sciences : theoretical controversies, research problems, and evaluation strategies / edited by Gunter Albrecht, Hans-Uwe Otto, with the assistance of Susanne Karsteclt-Henke and Karin Bellert. p. cm.--(Prevention and intervention in childhood and adolescence: 11) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-o123B7-8 (acid-free paper) 1. Social service--Research--Methodology--Congresses. 2. Social service-Methodology--Congresses. 3. Social work with children--Methodology--Congresses. 4. Social work with youth--Methodology--Congresses. 5. Social service-Moral and ethical aspects--Congresses. 6. Social service--Evaluation--Congresses. I. Albrecht, Gunter, 1943. II. Otto, Hans-Uwe. III. Series. HVl1.S5856 1991 91-30026 362,7--dc20 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothelc Cato/oging-in-Publication Dato Social prevention and the .ocial .cience. : theoretical controversies, research problems, and evaluation strategies / ed. by Gunter Albrecht; Hans-Uwe Otto. With the assistance of Susanne Karsteclt-Henke and Karin Bellert. - Berlin; New York: de Gruyter, 1991 (Prevention and intervention in childhood and adolescence; 11) ISBN 3-11-012387-8 NE: Albrecht, Gunter [Hrsg.); GT

© Copyright 1991 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., 0-1000 Berlin 30. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Printing: WB-Druck GmbH, Rieden am Forggensee / Binding: D. Mikolai, Berlin / Cover Design: Hansbernd lindemann, Berlin / Photo: Ullstein-Bilderdienst, Berlin.

Preface Few statements would be accepted so unanimously by both public opinion and the experts in the social sciences as the claim that most modem societies have

long been in a state of almost permanent crisis. Increased deviance, the deterioration of physical, but also especially mental, health, and the prevalence of anomic political behaviors would seem to speak for themselves. While socialist societies in Europe fall apart and alternatives to the capitalist industrial society currently appear to be lastingly discredited, social scientists from the greatest variety of disciplines are involved in the search for scientifically based, theoretically reflected, and methodologically controlled ways for society to prevent the individual and social problems that mostly become so alarmingly apparent during adolescence. By definition, measures of prevention must already be applied at a point in time before problematic developments manifest and when risks can only be estimated more or less reliably. However, measures of prevention then frequently encroach on individual liberty and self-determination, and this can, in itself, be a serious risk. Therefore social prevention should not be implemented without considering the social structures within which it should function. Only then can we realistically judge whether it can be a success and which unintended side effects may have to be anticipated. As prevention also always boils down to decisions about others, each single case requires a thorough ethical testing. There is a great need to search for suitable criteria for such tests when we consider the fact that measures of prevention are conceived and implemented on broad fronts. There is an equally great need to evaluate the numerous experiences with programs of prevention and intervention. Since they represent purposeful intrusions into human life constellations and are very expensive, they must themselves question their effectiveness and efficiency. Programs should not be implemented if previously available knowledge can deliver clear proof of their ineffectiveness. Thus the controlled synthesis of available knowledge acquires particular significance. Therefore particular attention should be focused on appropriate methodological instruments, as these are far from being sufficiently well known although they already demonstrate a highly developed methodology. Naturally, knowledge on the effects of prevention and intervention must also meet very particular quality criteria in order to be of use in a domain that is so close to policy. Although the search for methodological means of ensuring this quality can claim many

VI

fine successes, a realistic judgment calls for an equal emphasis on documenting the limitations of methodological progress and the enormous practical problems in application. The present book has grown out of the Fourth International Symposium of the Special Research Unit 227 (Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence) at the University of Bielefeld that dealt systematically with the issues mentioned above. This conference was held at the beginning of December 1988 in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld. Like the entire Special Research Unit, it was financed by the German Research Association (DFG) and was favored with a broad international response from scientists in a great variety of disciplines; we hope that we were thus able to bring together important experiences and ideas from various countries and professional fields. Alongside the two editors, Karin Bollert and particularly Susanne KarstedtHenke made important contributions to the preparation of this conference. We particularly wish to thank Susanne Karstedt-Henke, whose irreplaceable contributions to the editing of content, style, and language played a central role in preparing this volume. Without her extremely conscientious, persevering, and patient completion of the many detailed tasks involved in a publication containing contributions from such varied disciplines as philosophy, educational science, psychology, sociology, medicine, law, statistics, and criminology, this book would never have been completed successfully. We are also indebted to Jonathan Harrow for his very sensitive translation of many of the German texts. In view of the extremely heterogeneous disciplinary backgrounds of the authors, this was a difficult and prolonged task that he addressed with great patience and conscientiousness. We also wish to sincerely thank Claudia Haas for her careful typing and correction of the texts as well as Stefan Bahlke, Bernd Steffensen, and Volker Verrel who all contributed to the text processing. We wish to thank all the authors, particularly those who delivered their contributions punctually only to wait for quite some time before seeing them in print, and the German Research Association, whose long-term support made the conference possible. Last but not least, we thank the Center for Interdisciplinary Research for once more providing their hospitable premises and their services. Giinter Albrecht

Hans-Uwe Otto

Bielefeld, January 1991

Contents

Introduction 1.

Social Prevention: Theoretical Controversies and Evaluation Strategies Giinter Albrecht and Hans-Uwe Otto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

3

Part I Crises of Present-Day Societies and Social Prevention: Implications for Theory, Methodology, and Ethics 2.

3. 4.

Decline of Community? - Problems of Guidance and Control in Present-Day Societies Johannes Berger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17

Social Individualization and the Fate of Sociological Method Hartmut Esser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

Is an Advocatory Ethic at All Possible? Micha Brumlik . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

Part II Theoretical Controversies

s.

Introduction: Theoretical Controversies Hans-Uwe Otto . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73

Section I Systematic Problems of Prevention as Social Action

6.

7. 8.

Preventive Planning - A Strategy With Loss of Purpose Klaus Peter Japp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

Basic Problems of Prevention Remi Hess .

95

Verwendungsforschung - Research on the Use of Knowledge and Prevention in Social Work Bernd Dewe and Hans-Uwe Otto . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

101

VIII

Section n Prevention as a Strategy of Social Work and Sodal Policy 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

IS.

16.

Moving Beyond the Prevention-Intervention Dichotomy 10 Social Work Burt GaJaway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "

121

Cooptation and Counterculture - The Ambiguous Strategies of the Organizations of the Oppressed Sune Sunesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

131

Childhood, Subjectivity, and Prevention Heinz Sanker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

143

Prevention Through Institutional Change? - The Preventive Potential in the Reorganization of Social Services Karin Bollert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

157

Innovation Despite Bureaucracy? - On the Self-Misunderstanding of Social Work Gaby Flosser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

167

Normalization of Eroded Daily Life: Methodizing Everyday Life in Institutional Contexts Regine Gildemeister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

183

Advances in Research on Social Support and Issues Applying to Adolescents at Risk Benjamin H. Gottlieb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

199

The Lady Is Not for Burning - The Gender Paradox in Prevention and Social Support Frank Nestmann and Christiane Schmerl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

217

Part ill Research on Social Prevention: Old Dilemmas and New Approaches to Evaluating Social Prevention 17.

Introduction: Evaluation Strategies Gunter Albrecht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

237

Section I Meta-Analysis: A New Approach to Evaluation Rcsearrh 18.

Meta-Analysis: Its Potential for Causal Description and Causal Explanation Within Program Evaluation Thomas D. Cook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 245

IX

19.

An Introduction to Meta-Analysis and the Integrative Research Review Harris Cooper. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 287

20.

Meta-Analysis and Social Prevention: Evaluation and a Study on the Family - Hypothesis in Developmental Psychopathology Friedrich Losel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 305

21.

Coping With Threats to the Validity of Meta-Analytic Findings: A Reanalysis of German-Language Psychotherapy Outcome Studies Georg E. Matt . . . .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 333

22.

Methodological Aspects of the Synthesis of Social Prevention Research Larry V. Hedges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23.

353

Meta-Analysis and Brunswik Symmetry Werner W. Wittmann ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 381

Section II The Practice of Evaluation Research: Different Fields

Handling Problems in

24.

Methodological Dilemmas in Research on Prevention and Intervention Gunter Albrecht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 397

25.

Problems in the Analysis of Evaluation Research Data in Educational Science: An Empirical Study on Achieving Equal Opportunity in Instruction Klaus Treumann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

26.

27.

28.

429

Strategies and Prohlems in Research on the Implementation of the West German Abortion Law Reform Monika HiiufJler-Sczepan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

.. 455

Evaluating the Impact of Criminal Law: The Case of Environmental Criminal Statutes Hans-Jorg Albrecht . . . . . . . . . . ..

467

Therapy and Sentencing of Drug Addicts Rudolf Egg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

479

x 29.

30.

Conception of Process Evaluation of Community-Based Cardiovascular Prevention Programs A. Mager, K. Hetzel, M. Vogt, K. Roleff and . .. K.-D. HiiJJemann .

489

The Mass Media and Violent Imitative Behavior: A Review of Research R. John Kinkel and Norma C. Josef . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

499

Section m Longitudinal Studies as Basis of Progress: Chances and Risks for Evaluation Research

31.

32.

Three Facts and Their Implications for Research on Crime Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi . . . . . . . . . . .

525

Incarceration and Recidivism Dieter Hermann ...

537

33.

School Drop-Out and Juvenile Delinquency: First Results of a Dutch Experiment Josine Junger-Tas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551

34.

Moral Beliefs: Patterns of Crystallization and Individual Stability - Findings From a Panel Study Karl-Heinz Reuband . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 573

35.

Simulation Models in the Analysis of Panel Data - New Ways of Predictive Theory Formation in Longitudinal Social Research Klaus Peter Strohmeier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 581

36.

The Analysis of Interdependent Social Processes - The Example of Life-Course Analysis Johannes Huinink . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

601

Author Index

617

Subject Index

629

Contributors

Albrecht, Giinter, Fakultit fUr Soziologie, Special Research Unit 227, Prevention and Intervention, Universitit Bielefeld, Universititsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Albrecht, Hans-Jorg, Max-Planck-Institut fUr auslindisches und internationales Strafrecht, Giinterstalstr. 73, 7800 Freiburg, Federal Republic of Germany

Fl6sser, Gaby, Fakultit fUr Plidagogik, Special Research Unit 227, Prevention and Intervention, Universitit Bielefeld, Universititsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Galaway, Burt, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, 400 Ford Hall, 224 Church Street S.E., Minneapolis, Minn. 55455, U.S.A.

Berger, Johannes, Lehrstuhl fiir Soziologie m, Universitit Mannheim, Seminargebiiude A 5, 6800 Mannheim, Federal Republic of Germany BOllen, Karin, Fakultit fUr Plidagogik, Special Research Unit 227, Prevention and Intervention, Universitit Bielefeld, Universititsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Brumlik, Micha, Erziehungswissenschaftliches Seminar, Universitit Heidelberg, Akademiestr. 3, 6900 Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany

Gildemeister, Regine, Philosopbische Fakultit I, Friedrich-Alexander-Universitit Erlangen, 8520 Erlangen, Federal Republic of Germany

Cook, Thomas D., Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University, 2040 Sheridan Road, Evanston, lllinois 60208, U.S.A. Cooper, Harris M., Center for Research in Social Behavior, University of Missouri-Columbia, 11 East Stewart Road, Columbia, Missouri 65211, U.S.A. Dewe, Bernd, Fakultit fiir Plidagogik, Universitit Bielefeld, Universititsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Egg, Rudolf, Kriminologische Zentralstelle E.V., Adolfsallee 32, 6200 Wiesbaden, Federal Republic of Germany Esser, Hartmut, Institut fUr Angewand1e Sozialforschung, Universitit Koln, Greinstr. 2, 5000 KOln 41, Federal Republic of Germany

Gottfredson, Michael R., Department of Management and Policy, College of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, U.S.A. Gottlieb, Benjamin H., Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G2Wl Hliu6ler-5czepan, Monika, Max-PlanckInstitut fUr auslindisches und internationales Strafrecht, Giinterstalstr. 73, 7800 Freiburg, Federal Republic of Germany Hedges, Larry V., Department of Education, University of Chicago, 5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago, illinois 60637, U.S.A. Hermann, Dieter, Institut fUr ~nologie der Universitit Heidelberg, FriedrichEben-Anlage 6-10, 6900 Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany Hess, Remi, Universite Paris VIII Vincennes a Saint Denis, 2, Rue de 18 Libette, 93526 Saint Denis, France Cedex 02 Hetzel, Karl.beinz, Forschungsprojekt Modell Bergen, Klosterstr. I, 8220 of Traunstein, Federal Republic Germany

XII Hirschi, Travis, Department of Management and Policy, College of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, U.S.A.

Otto, Hans-Uwe, Fakultit fUr Pidagogik, Special Research Unit 227, Prevention and Intervention, Universitiit Bielefeld, Universitiitsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany

Hiillemann, K.-D., Forschungsprojekt Modell Bergen, Klosterstr. I, 8220 Traunstein, FRG

Reuband, Karl-Heinz, Zentralarchiv fUr empirische Sozialforschung, Universitiit Koln, Bachemerstr. 40, 5000 Koln 41, Federal Republic of Germany

Huinink, Johannes, Max-Planck Institut fUr Bildungsforschung, Lentzeallee 94, 1000 Berlin 33, Federal Republic of Germany Japp, Klaus Peter, Fakultiit fiir Soziologie, Universitiit Bielefeld, Universititsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Josef, Norma C., Department of Psychiatry and Lafayette Clinic, Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich. 48202, U.S.A. Junger-Tas, Josine, Ministerie van Justitie, W 0 D C, Schedeldoekshaven 100, Postbus 20301, 2500 EH's Gravenhage, Netherlands Karstedt-Henke, Susanne, Special Research Unit 227, Prevention and Intervention, Universitiit Bielefeld, Universitiitsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Kinkel, R. John, Department of Sociology and Adjunct Graduate Faculty, Department of Management, Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich. 48202, U.S.A. LOseI, Friedrich, Fakultiit fiir Psychologie, Universitiit Erlangen-Nili'nberg, Bismarckstr. I, 8520 Erlangen, Federal Republic of Germany Mager, Andrea, Forschungsprojekt Modell Bergen, Klosterstr. I, 8220 Traunstein, Federal Republic of Germany Matt, Georg E., Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA. 921821-0350, U.S.A. Nestmann, Frank, Fakultiit fiir Pidagogik, Universitiit Bielefeld, Universitiitsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany

Roleff, K., Forschungsprojekt Modell Bergen, Klosterstr. I, 8220 Traunstein, Federal Republic of Germany Schmerl, Christiane, Fakultiit fUr Padagogik, Universitiit Bielefeld, Universitiitsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Strohmeier, K. Peter, Institut fUr Bevolkerungsforschung und Sozialpolitik (IBS), Universitiit Bielefeld, Universitiitsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Siinker, Heinz, Fakultiit fUr Pidagogik, Universitiit Bielefeld, Universititsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Sunesson, Sune, Lund Universitet, SocialhOgskolan, Box 1720, 22101 Lund, Sweden Treumann, Klaus, Fakultiit fUr Piidagogik, Universitiit Bielefeld, Universitiitsstr. 25, 4800 Bielefeld, Federal Republic of Germany Vogt, M., Forschungsprojekt Modell Bergen, Klosterstr. I, 8220 Traunstein, Federal Republic of Germany Witonann, Werner W., Lehrstuhl Psychologie im Sozialwissenschaftlichen Institut der Universitiit Erlangen-Niirnberg, Lange Gasse 20, Postfach 3931, 8500 Niirnberg, Federal Republic of Germany

Introduction Social Prevention: Theoretical Controversies and Evaluation Strategies

Social Prevention: Theoretical Controversies and Evaluation Strategies GOOter Albrecht Hans-Uwe Otto

1.

Modem Social Crises and the Concept of Prevention and Intervention

One of the few topics on which public and expert opinion are in so much agreement is that most modern, Western societies - leaving the socialist societies completely to one side - find themselves in a state of crisis that is demonstrated by a great number of indicators. This is particularly confirmed in the fields of deviant behavior and physical and psychological health. Although societies respond to this trend with a variety of strategies, there is mostly no mentionable stability in outcome, so that the direct costs of delinquency and crime, physical and mental illness, and other forms of impaired development, as well as the direct costs of social work, justice, and incarceration, are augmented by major costs for new measures of prevention and intervention. Great hopes are particularly placed on the latter, as it would seem to be completely rational to avoid potential problems by using available theoretical and practical knowledge to prevent or to remove constellations that, according to tested scientific knowledge, would lead to problematic developments in the future with a probability that borders on certainty. As the underlying causes of impaired development are generally located in childhood and/or adolescence, even though they may only initially manifest in adulthood, it is recommended to focus measures of prevention on these age groups as early as possible. Measures of intervention also seem to be particularly appropriate for the phase of childhood and adolescence as it is above all the phase of adolescence or young adulthood that reveals the highest incidence or prevalence rates in a series of behavioral problems. This background explains why the concept of scientifically based prevention and intervention has now enjoyed a general popularity for some decades - not least stimulated by a long period of unexpected growth in the social and behavioral sciences - and that it has partially led to a general swing toward unjustifiably high expectations on the power of corresponding strategies.

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Giinter Albrecht and Hans-Uwe Otto

Nonetheless, it is advisable to retain a healthy scepticism toward an all too pragmatic and unconsidered growth of comprehensive strategies of intervention and prevention. This scepticism feeds on ethical, theoretical, methodological, and economic considerations, a few of which will be briefly considered below.

2.

The Limits of Prevention and Intervention From the Perspectives of Ethics and Policy Implementation

Certain types of measure of prevention and intervention generally imply direct or indirect intrusions into individuals' civil rights and liberties and thus require a particularly thorough and compelling justification. For a series of measures of social intervention, there is therefore an established canon of law that specifies both the prerequisites for their use as well as the design of the measures (e.g., in the use of youth welfare and juvenile criminal law). Despite all the doubts about the clear perception and the effectiveness of these legally prescribed and set measures of intervention, these measures nevertheless enjoy the - certainly completely suspect - privilege of being held as the norm for dealing with problems that occur, without apparently requiring any further ethical, theoretical, or practical-economic justification. This remains the case, even though almost everybody knows that this established form of practicing intervention is not only unsuccessful when applied to certain types of problem but also even causes damage - as has been repeatedly proved over the centuries for the example of most traditional forms of incarceration. New forms of intervention or prevention - apart from their chance of being implemented as policy - always need to be subjected to very specific ethical controls when they represent an additional or more far-reaching intrusion into individual civil rights and liberties. This is mostly the case when measures are applied without the permission of the person addressed or their legal representation, and the client becomes the object of purposeful attempts to modify his or her personality, behavior, body, and so forth in such a way that specific individual or socially undesired, harmful events or states either do not occur or the probability of their occurrence is decreased. Such a measure becomes particularly problematic if it represents a massive intrusion into the life-style or the physical constitution of the client and is accompanied by a not inconsiderable risk of undesired, negative side effects without the highest certainty of achieving the desired intended effect. For these reasons, measures of intervention and prevention that are ethically acceptable and can be implemented politically should primarily be those that are

Theoretical Controversies and Evaluation

5

aimed at changing the social and social-psychological context conditions in such a way that the probability of the occurrence of socially desired behaviors is increased without the decision-making scope of the individual being so reduced that he or she feels robbed of his or her liberty. The advantage of such a strategy would be that it would take important findings from systems theory into account. As a consequence, we must assume high-level, functionally differentiated subsystems in modern societies that encode and process inputs from the systemic environment according to their own specific internal criteria of selection so that direct external intrusions with measures of intervention or prevention would be doomed to failure. Accordingly, we could generally only anticipate the desired effects if the measures were to be designed so that they could be decoded in such a way by the target subsystems that the probability of the desired behaviors would change in the intended direction. Such an indirect strategy of prevention and intervention in the form of contextual guidance would have the further advantage that the individuals would not experience the corresponding measures as a violation or restriction of their liberty, which frequently leads to reactance that generates undesired side effects and sometimes only undesired effects. Before a somewhat detailed consideration of the problems of prevention and intervention in modern societies, it is nonetheless necessary to make at least a very brief analysis of those social developments that are supposed to have led to the increased need for measures of intervention and prevention. As will be revealed below, to some extent this precisely involves the same developments that also make it more difficult to conceptualize, implement, and realize measures of intervention and prevention, or at least require a comprehensive reflection on the prerequisites and limitations of such measures if one does not want to resort to the "strategy" of behaving according to the principle of trial and error or blind actionism. From the many fundamental changes in modern societies, we shall name a few that we consider to be of particular significance.

3.

Some Central Characteristics of Modem Societies and Their Significance for Prevention and Intervention

The loss of "community" in modem societies. Although the dichotomy of "community" and "society" is certainly oversimplified and still leads to all too simple interpretations despite the much more differentiated conception of Talcott Parsons, it nevertheless addresses an essential trend of the development. Modern societies are constantly characterized by their members' almost notorious complaints about a loss of community. This loss of community, whether

6

GUnter Albrecht and Hans-Uwe Otto

it be caused by division of labor, urbanization, industrialization, or whatever, is usually accompanied by isolation, the reduction and qualitative change of social controls, problems with the search for meaning, and the loss of solidarity. This, in tum, leads to a great nwnber of direct and indirect problems. Direct consequences occur, for example, when problems in the search for meaning give rise to the threat of suicide or psychological disorders, or when reduced social controls lead to an increased willingness to translate deviant motivations into action. Indirect consequences; in tum, are exhibited when individuals become restricted in their ability to cope with personal, social, and economic crises because they are not functionally embedded in informal networks that can provide various sources of solidarity and social support. Preventive and interventive strategies that aimed to rectify the loss of community encountered fundamental theoretical and practical problems that either have remained completely unresolved (one can compare the repeated new attempts of Emile Durkheim) or have led to extremely questionable political side effects. Even today, it is strongly recommended that strategies that are only or primarily only directed toward an artificial recreation of community and network commitments instead of performing controlled, problem-oriented prevention and intervention should be viewed with extreme scepticism. .

From External Control to Self-Control. A second, fundamental trend in modem societies has been pointed out by Norbert Elias: Social control has fundamentally changed over the course of development in that it has increasingly moved from constraints exercised by others to constraints exercised by oneself. Our behavior is no longer, or much less than before, regulated by our submitting to the threat of sanction or the naked force of others. Instead, we internalize a great number of behavioral standards that, additionally, are becoming increasingly subtle and restrictive, above all insofar as they place constraints on the direct expression of emotion. Thus external controls have turned into self-controls that, although they permit a much more subtle regulation of behavior, are also linked to particular dangers. A successful socialization is now of completely central importance, as socialization has transferred social controls into the hands of those who have to be controlled. The enormous growth in the complexity of social structures, the increase in the dynamics of social growth, and the expansion of functional differentiation simultaneously result in enormous demands on the socialization of the individual: It must ensure that persons from very different social strata who to some extent are experiencing extremely rapidly changing framing conditions acquire the capacity to administer self-control and yet remain creative and restrain their emotions to the greatest possible extent. This should make it clear

Theoretical Controversies and Evaluation

7

that "nonnality" and "confonnity" in modem societies are states that can only be achieved through the successful outcome of very complex socialization processes. If these processes do not succeed, the society can no longer successfully resort to former pre- or early-modem forms of social control, as these are not appropriate to establish those self-controls in the individual that our social life - to some extent, completely undeservedly - takes for granted. Although modem societies repeatedly resort to almost atavistic forms of social control (e.g., in current incarceration policy and the reintroduction of capital punishment in the USA), it seems that everyone is aware from the very outset that this policy does not aim to improve the sanctioned individual but serves completely different functions. An appropriate establishment of self-controls must be attempted in childhood or adolescence. Therefore, intervention must respond to symptoms of deficient or problematic development at a very early stage if these symptoms prove to be truly reliable indicators or predictors. Nevertheless, in the single case, these symptoms can almost never be the grounds for a sufficiently reliable, deterministic, individual prognosis unless we are dealing with purely biological or physical processes. The prolongation of the action chains and the problems of intervention. We can also calion Norbert Elias as a witness for the third important trend in modem societies. Elias has pointed out that modem societies are characterized by a major lengthening of chains of interdependence among their members. The increasing "Vergesellschaftung" of all human life and the growth of increasingly more complex configurations cause the members' actions across the various networks in which their interaction partners are linked to have repercussions that the member often does not even perceive, intend, or desire. This formation of long action chains is not only significant for the creation of problem situations but is also above all important for the conceptualization, the implementation, and the realization of measures of prevention and intervention. Theoretically, we know that measures of prevention and intervention can frequently have side effects not only for their clients but also for those who are not directly addressed. Under certain circumstances, the worst consequences can arise out of good intentions when these third parties find themselves in the path of the intended main effects for any length of time. Unfortunately, when faced with this trend toward ever longer and more complex action chains, our theoretical and empirical knowledge is insufficient to predict with sufficient certainty whether side effects have to be anticipated, which side effects, and how they should be evaluated. A great variety of social problems appears to arise from long-term consequences of long chains of interdependence that have been insufficiently understood and/or cannot be effectively manipulated. It is therefore necessary to exercise even greater care and restraint when wanting to

8

Giinter Albrecht and Hans-Uwe Otto

obtain very specific effects through prevention and intervention. This involves the controlled setting in motion of action chains that should react to developments that are labeled deviant or should stop merely potential future deviant developments, despite the fact that one can never be certain that they would really occur if the corresponding measures were not undertaken. On the other hand, under some circumstances, action sequences occur that were unintended, and these are particularly problematic if they cause injury to the clients or to third persons.

The process of "individualization" and its implications. Closely linked to the trend toward a lengthening of action chains is the phenomenon of "individualization." In each of the modern societies that have experienced an enormous growth in wealth in the last decades, social inequality has not been decreased. However, the conditions that have led to the enormous improvements in the life situation have had other social-psychological and societal consequences for the relatively disadvantaged groups than those found in earlier phases of social development. Class membership is now losing its power to shape awareness and behavior; the individuals are exposed to individual opportunities to shape their lives in the leisure-time, consumer, and education sector that lead to a further dissolution of class-specific milieus. This development is accompanied by a series of problematic side effects. The individualistic interpretation of social problem constellations, which are just as socially determined as before, finally even including the interpretations of these problems by those who are affected by them, leads to causal attributions that result in stigmatization and self-stigmatization. These place great obstacles in the path of any active problem-solving strategy. The increasing individualization also exposes previous knowledge about the possibilities of influencing attitudes through changes in social structure or context to the threat of becoming obsolete, as the relationships between categorical characteristics, such as gender, class, occupation, income, and educational level, on the one side and specific patterns of interpretation and action on the other are becoming increasingly indistinct. As these relationships were never overwhelmingly distinct in the past, we are now faced with a new level of unpredictability regarding the responses to measures of prevention and intervention that also gives no reason for overoptimistic hopes on the effectiveness of sociostructural and contextual interventions. This results in a dilemma for measures of social prevention and intervention: On the one side, measures should try to avoid paying too much attention to individual characteristics or individuals and their behavior, as this simultaneously appears to give rise to the problem of one-sided preference or the danger - even if unintended - of evoking stigmatization and the problem of the open restriction of individual liberty. On the other hand, our previous arguments show that

Theoretical Controversies and Evaluation

9

social prevention must also consider the individual or subjective factor, as this is the only way in which it can consider how structural changes "rebound" from the individual and evolve their specific effect in each case.

The naivity of routine activity in the social sciences. In this context, it seems appropriate to introduce a somewhat general theoretical and methodological comment on the type of relationships that are traditionally assumed by social scientists and which they frequently also use to design their proposals for social practice. One of these assumptions is the naive hypothesis that there are generally linear relations between the various variables in a theoretical model that can be used as a basis in the conception of action models. Accomplished empirical social researchers naturally know that they can in no way depend on this, yet they nonetheless strive to use the available analytical instruments to obtain usable results. However, theoreticians rarely adopt the suggestions of empirical researchers in order to stimulate their theoretical fantasy with observed nonlinearity. Similar observations can be made with reference to the deficient theoretical consideration of the multilevel problem or with reference to interaction effects, buffer variables, and so forth. These are all indications that we really should not be surprised when the results of theoretically guided measures of prevention and intervention are not in line with our expectations. Reality, and particularly social reality, is never as simple as our mechanistic models.

4.

Methodological Problems in Research on Prevention and Intervention: The Example of Treatment Effectiveness Evaluation

In the previous sections, we have repeatedly stressed that there are good reasons for demanding that measures of intervention and prevention should be required to prove their legitimacy. If they pass an ethical and moral test and thus actually first become discussable, we are then faced with the question whether the available theoretical, empirical, and practical knowledge permits the anticipation that the planned measures will lead to the desired goals. This question sounds very simple, however, it is generally extremely complicated. The demand for evaluation and its implications. At one extreme, we know so little about the factors involved and how they are embedded in the complex network of social and individual connections that corresponding statements do not pass beyond the rank of speculation. Measures of intervention and prevention on this basis can only be accepted if the defects or deviant developments

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appear to be so serious and threatening that almost any means are considered to be justified. Even in such cases, it would be incorrect to have too many illusions about the willingness of societies to experiment; there are a great number of indications that a way of dealing with a social problem that has proved to be without success and even harmful is maintained for a long time. Conceivable alternatives, in contrast, are already rejected in advance by demanding comprehensive proof of their effectiveness. In these situations, treatment effectiveness evaluation must protect itself from the threat of degenerating into an instrument for the protection of the status quo. The instrwnent of meta-analysis or meta~valuation and its potential. At the other extreme, a vast number of empirical research fmdings are available but we cannot make an appropriate assessment without a specific methodology. Different research designs, different treatments in the various practical programs, different theoretical and even philosophical positions among researchers and/or practical workers, different implementation timepoints and settings, and so forth, are all elements that can be responsible for differences in the findings. These need to be controlled in order to work out systematically the hard core of fmdings on which one can more or less depend.

Meta-analysis or also meta~valuation represents an attempt to create a valid methodological basis for such an assessment of research findings. It has the advantages of being able to sift through the jungle of findings comparatively quickly, it does not expose the clients of strategies of intervention and prevention to unnecessary risks, and it could additionally have the important effect of systematically revealing methodological errors and of helping to reveal the0retical gaps. Above all, it could also lead toward a goal that should actually be a scientific ideal, namely, to make scientific knowledge cumulative instead of always only chasing after new findings that are subsequently soon forgotten without leading to further developments. The Conflict Between Treatment Effectiveness Evaluation and Methodological Rules and Relevance. Unfortunately, the last extreme is certainly untypical, because we only possess a relatively small knowledge base for many social problems. This is particularly of little practicality in those practical questions in which the social framing conditions do not permit the use of experimental designs and even quasi~xperimental conditions are only present when these are interpreted in a very broad sense. For many societies, the strict maintenance of experimental conditions is impossible not only for ethical reasons but also. because of formal, legal conditions. This applies, for example, to problems in criminal justice that can almost always only be studied with less powerful

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11

designs. But even in situations that principally permit experimental designs, they can hardly be retained for a number of actual research questions. In many models of prevention and intervention that attempt to implement psychological, educational, or sociological findings, it is clear, even on the conceptual level, that they can only achieve the intended effects after a long period of treatment. Under these conditions, it is always very difficult to avoid fluctuations among the respondents and the researchers themselves, to keep a complex treatment constant across the various persons involved, particularly across longer periods of time, and so forth. These are only a few of the many factors that are responsible for the fact that the empirical basis for the evaluation of measures of prevention and intervention is frequently constituted in such a way that it is impossible to avoid doubts in its validity and reliability. This is even more understandable when we consider that new forms of treatment generally have to assert themselves against a tradition that is linked to the vested interests of established groups. Naturally, those to whom new measures are addressed also have a right to avoid exposure to unnecessary risks caused by a careless evaluation of measures. After all, measures of intervention and prevention have to be financed, and it is understandable that the only measures that should be continued are those that have acceptable costs and have been validated by strict, methodological treatment effectiveness evaluation. This, however, once again results in a dilemma: The closer the compliance with strict methodological rules in the course of an evaluation, the more frequently new action models result in so-called "null effects," that is, they appear to have no effect. This would lead to the retention of older measures that - as frequently stressed above - are broadly successful in avoiding such controls on their legitimacy. Rossi's "iron law of null effects" no doubt correctly points out that just because something is new does not also mean that it has to be effective. But one can also interpret this result as implying that models that can be introduced "cleanly" into a very simple experimental design can be traced back to a conceptual and theoretical structure that is too simple to deal with a great number of the basic theoretical problems mentioned above. For this reason, we cannot even anticipate a provable effect.

Longitudinal studies: Their possibilities and limitations. One particularly important knowledge gap that has repeatedly been revealed in the past is that while it is precisely research on prevention and intervention that has focused its analyses on changes over time, social research unfortunately only has restricted instruments for dealing with this perspective. Neither the statistical assessment of changes, which is faced with major problems, nor the theoretical explanation of the processes and phases by which interventions from without are trans-

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formed into psychological and social changes within the persons or groups concerned have been sufficiently thoroughly researched. The majority of work is restricted to either pure cross-sectional analyses or to studies of processes of change that are of such short duration that they are basically unable to provide much information on the typical problems in prevention and intervention. Panel studies with only a few assessment intervals, in contrast, face the danger that they cannot reflect the finer courses of change, because the long intervals between the changes that occur and the assessments that are made render it impossible to assess changes with sufficient precision. However things may tum out, it would appear that there are very good reasons for promoting longitudinal studies in order to remedy these deficits. Nonetheless, some critics point out that by using well-eonceived experimental designs and intelligent analysis, cross-sectional analyses provide a better basis for many relevant research issues because they are less subject to certain methodological sources of error. In addition, they are very much cheaper and faster. Prospective longitudinal studies run for many years or even decades before they deliver results - and then it is always questionable whether the findings in any way still apply to the present situation. Retrospective studies do not take so long but their generalizability across time also remains uncertain. It is also argued that restrospective studies are either restricted to the use of limited data (e.g., excerpts from criminal records) or have to collect data in ex post facto surveys, which involves major sources of error in certain types of data if the study goes beyond purely "factual" questions. At present, we are involved in a controversial discussion of these issues. Experience suggests that this will not result in unconditional support for one of the two positions but that specific solutions will be proposed for specific research problems. This is also documented by the papers in this volume.

5.

A Provisional Appraisal

Thus, it is clear that treatment effectiveness evaluation is of completely fundamental importance for research on prevention and intervention. It places the highest demands on the theoretical fantasy and the methodological competence of the social researcher, and its considered application also requires the development of specific heuristics if the evaluator does not want to get entangled in the snares of his or her own methodological rules and be turned into a nonintentional defender of the status quo.

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13

In the German-speaking countries, we unfortunately find that a deficit in

researchers who are theoretically interested in prevention and intervention coincides with a lack of methodologically competent social researchers and a complete absence of experience in dealing thoughtfully with evaluation research. But even internationally, we are far from an adequate discussion of the theoretical and, above all, the social-theoretical issues in prevention and intervention. A particular cause for concern is that the general theoretical discussion, the empirical research, the methodological discussion, and the practice of prevention and intervention are to a large extent carried out independently from one another. This leads to a loss of important potential knowledge and potential practical advances. For this reason, great efforts are needed to overcome this very unsatisfactory state. We have attempted to take an albeit very timid step in this direction.

Part One Crises of Present-Day Societies and Social Prevention: Implications for Theory, Methodology, and Ethics

Decline of Community? Problems of Guidance and Control in Present-Day Societies Johannes Berger

1.

Introduction

The evolvement and expansion of modern societies has been accompanied from its very beginning by a fundamental critique focusing on the destructive consequences of modernization. This critique is more manifold and differentiated than it would seem to be at first sight and it extends to nearly every central feature of modernity. It is beyond the scope of a critique of the economy, and it would be misleading to identify the fundamental critique of modern society with a "leftist" view on it; whether Marxian in a genuine sense or more obliged to the ideas of the "Frankfurt School". The 19th century is pervaded by a conservative and romanticist social criticism exhibiting a no less critical attitude toward modernity than the socialist literature. If one follows Nisbet (1972), the "sociological tradition" is deeply rooted in that conservative literature. As Nisbet now has contended, according to the "sociological tradition", the main shortcoming of modernization is the decline of community. In the following, I will concentrate on a critical examination of the assertion that modernization is inevitably accompanied by a decline of community; further, I shall take up certain management or control problems that may be entailed by this asserted decline. I will not distinguish carefully between governance, guidance, control, and related terms, but I hope that this laxity will not impair greatly my main point. The paper belongs to an investigation of a much broader scope dealing with a very general question: What - if anything - is wrong with capitalism? Of course, the concepts "capitalism" and "modernity" have a different meaning, but I believe that it is advantageous to interpret capitalism in terms of modernity on the one hand and to take capitalism as one of the main modernizing forces - "the most fateful in history" (Weber, 1920, pA) on the other hand. Obviously the assumption of a "decline of community" is - as nearly everything in sociology - controversial; therefore the title of my paper, in so far as

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it implicitly contains the contention of a "decline", certainly needs a question mark. Let me add that what follows is only an outline of a debate that cannot claim to provide a final solution to the questions raised. The topic "modern society", its basic structure, and future prospects did not dominate the debates of sociologists in the 1970s. Especially in West Germany, the discipline aimed at becoming recognized by the state and other academic disciplines. Sociology won recognition by concentrating on middle-range questions and by problem-solving, that is, by offering solutions to social problems as they were defined by private and public administrations. Interest in questions of basic features and future prospects of modem societies passed for being either too "leftist" or too "speculative". Presumably due to recent developments in sociological theory - I refer to the replacement of Critical Theory by systems theory - the prevailing attitudes toward "grand theory" have changed again. Perhaps as a consequence of a renewed interest in "grand theory", today the topic "modernity" is once again enjoying broad attention. Of course, the renewed interest in theory can only partly explain the appeal of subjects like "future prospect and central problems of present-day societies". It seems to me that this renewed interest is mainly due to structural and cultural dislocations and tensions occurring in the course of development of Western societies. On the level of social structure, a period of unprecedented growth and prosperity came to an end in the 1970s. Since then, the institutional structure of the welfare state, in the framework of which this period of prosperity took place, has been challenged. Flexibility, deregulation, individualization, and ecology are keywords that are apt to describe either the direction of institutional change that is now at stake or at least to circumscribe the "contested terrain". On the cultural level, the "project of modernity" is challenged by a postmodern reasoning that is heavily influenced by French philosophy. According to postmodem thinking, modernity is charged with its endless endeavor of improvement on the one hand and its idea of rational consent (Zustimmungsptlichtigkeit - any action must be legitimized) on the other. In the postmodern context, both traits of modernity are regarded as having negative consequences outweighing the positive ones. One cannot say that sociological theory has simply taken over this critique. Anyhow, the "postmodern mood" is reflected - as a short look at sociological systems theory in its East-Westphalian version can show - in the prevalence of specifity, pluralism, and difference over consent, unity, and identity. 1 My task in this paper is not an evaluation of this debate. I mentioned it only to illuminate the renewed interest in a "diagnosis of our time" (Mannheim) in

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19

current sociology. To contribute to this diagnosis I now turn to the problems related to the contended "decline of community". In the "sociological tradition", the "decline of community" is regarded as an inevitable outcome of modernization. In order to examine this contention I therefore discuss in the following four simple questions that are related to it. First, what is the basic feature of modernity; second, does modernization cause a decline of community; third, if there is a decline of community, does it pose any problems, and, if this is the case, what is new about them; and fourth, if there is a decline at least in some respect and if this decline causes problems, do present-day societies dispose of some resources and mechanisms to cope with this decline? Can we think of solutions, or are present-day societies simply exposed to that decline, as asserted in the "sociological tradition"?

2.

The Basic Feature of Modernity

Before I take up the first question, let me briefly clarify what I mean by "sociological tradition". By this term I mean the 19th century classical tradition of sociology reaching its climax in the work of Tonnies and Durkheim. This branch of a theory of society differs from the Marxian one in several important respects. Marxian critique first aims at a critique of the economy (and only mediated by this critique, to a critique of the society as whole); second, it focuses on inner instability, a dysfunctioning of the economy; third, it contends that there is an alternative to capitalism, and fourth, it claims that this alternative can be reached unambigously by a "withdrawal," a notice of agreement to the "rules of the game". 2 In contrast to the Marxian approach, the sociological tradition first localizes the central problem of modern society in the sphere of community or societal community (as Parsons would say). It may be that these problems are caused by the economy; but the site at which they become virulent is the societal community. Second, the sociological tradition describes the central problem of modern societies as a consequence not of malfunctioning, but of "goal attainment," the side effect of which is interference with the motivational resource base of a modern society. Third, no clear-cut alternative promising a definite improvement exists. Therefore, the "sociological tradition" is deeply pessimistic with regard to modernization. Finally, withdrawal would not help, because modernity is trapped in paradoxes: Gains in one dimension have to be payed by losses in another.

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At first glance, one may doubt whether a discipline like sociology, in which hardly any assertion is uncontroversial, has indeed produced a unified framework to conceive the essence of modernity. I hold that this unifying framework exists and that it can be explicated at best in terms of a theory of differentiation. To avoid a repetition of well-known matters, I dispense with outlining the general idea of functional differentiation, its validity, and its applicability to the analysis of modernization. I confine myself to some remarks on the effects of differentiation. This restriction is justified, because I believe that nothing else is needed to discuss the central question of whether modernity necessarily entails a "decline of community".

Decomposition As R. Mayntz (1988) has recently emphasized, the theory of functional differentiation adheres to a decomposition paradigm. With reference to traditional societies, the process of differentiation entails the decomposition of an original totality. By functional differentiation, an integrated context of life is broken up. Obviously such a view is susceptible to romanticism; an attitude that the theory of functional differentiation has not always been free of. "The relation of medievalism to sociology" - to quote Nisbet (1966, p. 15) - "is particularly close". It characterizes the conservative reaction of the 19th century to the advance of a market society, to take the "inner strife" (Zerrissenheit) as a signum of the present, to deplore "lost worlds", and to long for a reunion of the separated parts. Differentiation thus results in disembeddedness. Polanyi (1944) made use of this concept to summarize in what way a differentiated society differs from a premodern one. He concentrated his analysis on the evolvement of self-regulating markets - and self-regulation, in this view, is the counterpart to embeddedness - but Polanyi's analysis can be extended to every functionally differentiated subsystem. All subsystems of a modem society are desencadre (to quote Durkheim's term), they are all emancipated from a larger social context.

Specialization in Subsystems With reference to the subsystems of a modern society, differentiation amounts to specialization and an increasing autonomy. Through specialization, tasks that were formerly organized in a broader social context now come under the regime of a special institutional structure. For instance, the production of truth becomes a matter of science. This means both that only the scientific subsystem

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is competent for truth and that it is competent for producing truth only it has lost any further competence, for instance, the competence to create sense. The feature of autonomy is often misinterpreted as independence from environment. Dependency might even be increased. Durkheim's "Division of Labour" was - as one knows - dedicated to solving the riddle of how it can happen that life spheres that become increasingly autonomous simultaneously become more dependent. Increasing autonomy therefore means increasing "Eigengesetzlichkeit" (determination by inherent laws). For instance, in modernity, economic behavior has emancipated itself from a comprehensive ethics of the good life; it has become morally neutralized insofar as it is guided only by economic considerations. Therefore, the increasing autonomy can be characterized by self-referentiality and indifference (see Luhmann, 1984). Increased sensitivity to requirements of the system (self-referentiality) is connected with increased insensitivity with respect to the environment of the system (indifference) .

Equal Ranking Parts With reference to the society as a whole, differentiation means the emergence of a society divided into heterogeneous but equal ranking parts. As Luhmann has pointed out, when functional differentiation has become the primary form of differentiation, no system can claim primacy or the place on the top of a control hierarchy. Not even the political system is fitting for this role. It is highly questionable whether it does dispose of the degree of authority, the instruments, and the capacity of taking those actions that are required for centralized guidance.

Increased Options for the Individual Finally, with respect to the individuals, differentiation amounts to an increase of options and a decrease of ligatures, to take up Dahrendorrs (1979) famous pair of concepts. Constitutive for the modern individual is a fundamental experience of contingency. In a functionally differentiated world, concrete group norms erode and collective values prescribing a certain behavior fade away. Because nearly everything could be organized differently, meaningful life now must be created deliberately by every individual himself; it is not ensured by a "metasocial guarantor" (Touraine).

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3.

lohannes Berger

Does Modernization Cause a Decline in Community?

So as not to lose too much space, I shall stop depicting the effects of modernization at this point and tum to my second question: What has become of community in the course of modernization? The effects of differentiation sketched above already contain elements of an answer to this question: erosion of nonns, moral neutralization, disembeddedness, loss of meaning, and so forth. To grasp the full range of the possible effects of differentiation on community, one has to take into account the evolutionary scheme of which the concept of differentiation fonns a part. Differentiation, after all, is not only a tenn describing a structure, it describes an evolutionary process, too. To seize the substance and direction of social evolution, the "sociological tradition" has made use of abstract dichotomies like status and contract (Maine), mechanic and organic solidarity (Durkheim), or community and association (Tonnies). Community or Status are keywords for sociological theory's attempt to develop an encompassing categorial framework that is superior to and more general than the economic paradigma and utilitarianism (see Streeck, 1987, p. 9). "In the sociological tradition from Comte to Weber, Nisbet (1972) emphasizes, 'the conceptual contrast fonned by the communal and the noncommunal is vivid and articulate. It was Tonnies, ... who gave it its lasting terminology of 'Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.."" (p. 48). Gemeinschaft "encompasses all forms of relationship which are characterized by a high degree of personal intimacy, emotional depth, moral commitment, social cohesion, and continuity in time" (p. 47). Its archetype is the family. Taken as a category depicting a stage of development, the conclusion seems inevitable that in the course of history community vanishes. "Modem society acknowledges no neighbour" - in these words Disraeli summarizes a vast amount of 19th century thought (see Nisbet, 1972, p. 52). With respect to this disappearance, Tonnies (1963) does not hesitate to speak of the "pathological" course of modem society (p. XXIII). Whereas in the Middle Ages, a positive and organic order prevailed, modem times are essentially negative (p. XXXI). Thus every step on the road to an individualistic social order implies a loss of communitarianism, or moral community. So impressing this analysis may be at first glance, its inner weakness is nonetheless obvious. At least two strands of critique of the "decline of community" hypothesis can be distinguished. The first one emphasizes that, at least on a local level different from the level of the nation state, moral community and the loyalities typical for it do not vanish, but new fonns occur again and again. In

Decline of Community?

23

fact, in present-day SOCIeties, "most persons will, simultaneously and with varying degree of loyalities, identify with several communities of varying sizes, types and sources of valuation" (Buchanan, 1986, p. 109). The second type of critique can be traced back to the "sociological tradition" itself. Indeed, the specific achievement of community is to produce a feeling of solidarity and fellowship. But the "status-contract" or the "community-association" dichotomy wrongly identify community with solidarity, thus taking community as the sole source of solidarity. Things look different if there is another source of solidarity. It was of course Durkheim who tried to demonstrate that a modem society disposes of a source of solidarity of its own that substitutes for community. The ongoing division of labor makes the collective consciousness disappear but simultaneously a new "morality of individualism" is occurring. Durkheim regarded the division of labor as an independent source of solidarity, different from community, being able to produce II kind of solidarity that is appropriate to the age of individualism and contract. But there is an agreement among Durkheim experts that this giant - on the shoulders of whom we dwarves are supposed to stay - failed to demonstrate the division of labor being a source of a new moral authority. For this reason the question: "decline of community" is again at stake; this time, however, with a different meaning: Jack of social cohesion. In the transition to modernity, community is replaced by association, but this does not necessarily mean that the "social bond" tears. The conclusion that the social bond tears is compelling only if community is the only source of integration and if the expansion of "association" or contral'! endangers this source. NeoDurkheimians of all kinds indeed doubt whether a modern society disposes of sufficient inner cohesion or normative integration; that is, whether there is really a mechanism that can serve as a functional equivalent to community. A discussion of these doubts brings me to my third question: What is the problem with the decline of community and - if there is one - what is new about it?

4.

If There Is a Decline in Community, Does it Cause Any Problems?

10 the sociological literature, consequences of functional differentiation of different kinds and importance ascribed to the progressive division of labor are debated. On the microlevel, alienation and anomie are usually ascribed to differentiation; on the macrolevel, attention is drawn to disintegration, mal-

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function, and problems of guidance. The remaInIng space is too limited to review this discussion thoroughly. Instead, I shall concentrate on the neoDurkheimian analysis of the problem: erosion of the "social capital" that provides the framework for our economic policy and culture (see Buchanan, 1986, p. 108). In the neo-Durkheimian context, this erosion is taken for a threat to social stability. But the conviction that "loss of community" endangers society is anything but self-evident. It is only convincing if the statement "status renders possible contract" circumscribes the only possible way in which both concepts are interrelated. As Streecl' (1988) pointed out, one can construe the relationship between status and contract, community and association, in two further ways: (1) Contracts or voluntary associations serve as a base for new types of community - shortly: Contract is able to create status. (2) Community is a shackle to association: Status prevents contracts from being effective and - as one can add - it therefore has to be removed in the interest of a better society. This is the position of the advocates of an unlimited modernization and market society. Otherwise the neo-Durkheimians: They share with Durkheim the view that a society is held together by a collectivity of common norms and values; like Durkheim they emphasize the revolutionary change of the social structure that has taken place during the transition to modernity. They further hold that, by this "switch", the question arises whether the sources of common values and norms dry up as the division of labor proceeds. Finally, deviating from the Durkheim of the "Division of Labor", neo-Durkheimians adhere to a thesis of "self-destruction" . According to this thesis, a modern society - I now quote Hirschman - "exhibits a pronounced proclivity towards undermining the moral foundations on which any society, including the capitalist variety, must rest" (Hirsclunan, 1974, p. 1466). One can distinguish three versions of the general idea that a modern society erodes the moral foundations needed for its functioning. Hirschman calls the first one the "dolce vita" version. The most recent example of this version is Bell's (1976) "Cultural contradictions of capitalism". In producing that immense collection of commodities Marx spoke of, capitalism enervates the spirit of frugality necessary for successful accumulation. According to Bell, the key role in this process is played by the institution of consumer credits. It is not worthwhile to go at length into Bell's construction of how the successful attainment of wealth will finally undermine the process of the generation of wealth. Bell's reasoning is convincing neither on theoretical nor on empirical grounds. Following Bell exclusively, a certain form of credit should be responsible for tendencies of self-destruction. Empirically in West Germany, a saving rate of

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2S

private households of about 13 % of income causes problems of a demand gap for consumer goods rather than indicating a spread of hedonism. The second version - following Hirschman - can be called the "sorcerer's apprentice version", best elaborated in Schumpeter's classic, "Capitalism, socialism and democracy". "The bourgeois". Schumpeter (1942) writes, "finds to his amazement that the rationalist attitude does not stop at the credential of kings and popes but goes on to attack private property and the whole scheme of bourgeois values" (p. 143). Schumpeter probably had in mind bourgeois leftist intellectuals who, like Sweezy, son of a banker and student of Schumpeter, gave up their allegiance to the capitalist order. I put aside a thorough analysis of this contention because I cannot see that this foundation of the "selfdestruction" thesis should be taken very seriously. It might be stimulating but not really convincing on empirical grounds. I hold that only the third version is worth being pursued further. According to this version, modernity endangers itself not by consuming moral resources of its own, like diligence or belief in private property, but by exhausting resources that stem from the past. Modernity rests on such resources, but it is unable to contribute to their maintenance. Whereas the "dolce vita" version stated the erosion of protestant ethics, the "sorcerer's apprentice version" feared the emergence of socialist motives. The third version stresses motivational problems that neither refer to the present nor to the future form of social order but to the past. Hirschman picks out Horkheimer's "eclipse of reason" (1947) as an example, but I think outside the obsolete older Frankfurt School there are much better examples that also have the advantage of combining theory with empirical research. In my opinion, the most elaborated version of the idea of a self-destruction via a depleting moral legacy is the masterpiece of Alan Fox (1974): "Beyond contract". Fox is an industrial sociologist. To substantiate the "self-destruction" thesis, he makes use of the dichotomies of the "sociological tradition". status, and contract. Fox claims that status enables contract but that the expansion of contracts will "in the last instance" endanger status and thus itself. In comparison with other neo-Durkheimian analyses, Fox's study has the merit of being grounded on a thorough empirical study of the Taylorist work organization. The framework of the analysis is neo-Durkheimian, because it is guided by the insight that the labor contract - as every market transaction - does not suffice itself, but is only possible due to a very complex social organization (see Durkheim, 1964, p. 429). Every purposeful rational action has affective and normative preconditions in the living world; where they erode, the mechanism of contract cannot engage. A purely instrumental rationality therefore possesses no power to bind.

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"Those devotees of the market", Fox writes, "who see it as the answer to all human problems provided it is applied unblinkingly and unswervingly enough still fail to grasp that even the modem economic system, to which it is assumed to apply in excelsis, continues to operate as it does only because the economic exchange of the market has not entirely taken over" (p. 374). By the transition from a society based on social exchange to a society based on narrow economic exchange, a mechanism replacing high trust by low trust relations is set into motion. This self-enforcing downward spiral is mainly rooted in a type of labor relations that prescribes standardized role definitions to the labor force, thus restricting the scope of discretionary action to a minimum (Fox, pp. 59, 96). Labor experiences this type of work organization as distrust and reacts with a termination of confidence on its part. Because every extension of lowtrust relations increases the probability of a further extension, the downward spiral comes into motion (pp. 102-104, 140). Again I can neither deepen the analysis of Fox's study nor discuss the objections to it at length. To give only an idea of this discussion, I only mention three different lines of arguing, on which the results of Fox's study can be called in question.

First, it is an empirical question whether the division of labor is progressive and characterizes capitalist development as a whole. Empirical studies of work organization (see Kern and Schumann, 1984; and the literature refered to in Thompson, 1983) point to the fact that a turning point beyond which Taylorism is contraproductive has already been passed. Second, Fox fails to take into account the possibility that "contract" does not only destroy status but creates new status (see Streeck, 1988). Third, if Fox was right, the survival and, what is more, the smooth functioning of a market society would border on the miraculous. Reacting to the last objection, Fox certainly could argue that possibly he may have underestimated the time necessary to corrode normative heritage, but that in the last instance the analysis is valid (see Streeck, p. 18). However, to defer the time of the final breakdown of a market society into an open and virtually infinite future amounts to making the argument immune to empirical objections. Another way to defend Fox's version of the "self-destruction" thesis is to introduce the idea of "threshold values", which can be crossed in the process of the "decline of community" and solidarity (as the main "output" of commWlity), and beyond which new problems of solidarity will in fact occur. For several observers, the mid-1970s, that is, the end of the welfare-state period and the challenge to a corporatist interest regulation, indicate such a crossing of

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a threshold. The construction of thresholds does not serve to support the "self-destruction" thesis in the strict sense of a breakdown of social cohesion but to draw the attention to tension lines, cleavages, and problems of guidance and control, which are typical for present-day societies in the West. So is there anything new with regard to recent developments in Western societies - developments one can draw upon to back the idea of an erosion of "social capital"? Since I am not an expert in microsociology, I will confine myself to some remarks on changes on a macrosociological level with respect to a possible crossing of "threshold values". In my view, developments in three different realms of social reality are serious candidates to underline such a change; that is, a crossing of "threshold values". I refer to state failure, solidarity problems of social policy, and certain new problems of private-interest organizations (like the trade unions are).

State Failure As Hirschman pointed out, in the 30-year interval between the workings of Schumpeter and Horkheimer on the one hand and those of Fred Hirsch - who restated the idea of a depleting moral legacy of capitalism - on the other hand, this idea was almost forgotten because, during that era, the Western world passed through a remarkably long period of sustained growth and comparative political stability. The capitalist market society, "suitably modified by state planning and welfare state reforms seemed to have escaped from its selfdestructive proclivities and to generate again ... considerable confidence in its ability to solve the problems which it would encounter along its way" (Hirschman, p. 1470). Today, especially the confidence in state planning has withered away. The belief in the capacity of the state to control the economy and, in addition, society as a whole, is upset. This belief in planning (von Hayek calls it "constructivism") started to fascinate academic elites in the 1930s, and it is safe to assume that it passed its climax in the late 1960s. Since then, in some major countries of the West like Japan, Great Britain, and the USA, the retreat of this idea is almost dramatic. Deregulation, competition, and the return to market principles is again on the agenda. It is this return to market principles that fosters concern with respect to the effects of these principles on solidarity on the one hand; on the other hand, there is some evidence that state failure also has to do with a weakening of moral community. "If all persons tend to share the same objectives", Buchanan (1986) contended, "governance becomes easy". But this is only true provided that the objectives of the community and the state are identical. Making use of a favorite phrase of

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Marx, one can turn the argument about. That is: if all persons do not tend to share the same objective, governance becomes difficult. As a rule, the reinforcement of market forces weakens commonly held conceptions of the good life.

Solidarity Problems of Social Policy As the recent discussion on the reform of the systems of social security in West Germany shows, these systems, possibly for the first time since the war, are confronted with serious solidarity problems. The setting up and the consolidation of these complex systems has been celebrated as an act of solidarity between the active and the inactive population of the employed with the unemployed and of the healthy with the ill. On the occasion of the reform of health insurance, the parliamentary opposition has explicitly charged the government with, if not withdrawing the principle of solidarity entirely, at least tolerating or working toward a decisive weakening of it. Be that as it may, no one can overlook that expenses for social security have increased faster than incomes for 20 years. This provokes the question whether there are not any limits of burden that the members of compulsory insurance are willing to bear. In addition, experts in social policy have repeatedly contended that not only the proportion of social contributions to income has increased but that a progressive redistribution from the active to the inactive population (and from the healthy to the ill) has taken place. In this case, the threat to solidarity would be less due to a change of preferences than to a change of the constraints under consideration. But, on the other hand, it can be argued that the very fact of establishing a social service or of taking over a state responsibility for tasks that were formerly fullfilled privately weakens the readiness to solidaristic behavior.

New Problems of Private-Interest Organizations The loss of solidarity can be studied with reference to organizations in a twofold manner. First, private-interest organizations like parties, trade unions, and private associations of all kinds are compelled to live with a very general and, if I am not mistaken, fast-expanding phenomenon: the loss of the "regular customer" . No organization can any longer reckon with such a regular customer, who is loyal to the organizational ends, walking "through thick and thin" with his or her organization, so to speak. In a recent paper, Streeck (1987) traced back the fallen capacity of organizations to bind and their decreased potential to produce loyality directly to diminished integrative advances

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originating in community-like social structures. "Increasing multiplicity" - I quote Streeck (p. 447) - "threatens to deprive organizations from a resource which seemed indispensble to them up to now: that elementary 'mechanic solidarity' stemming from social homogeneity, on the basis of which private interest organizations could produce 'organic solidarity'''.

Second, a shrinking potential of organizations to oblige aggravates that problem, which in general is posed by the actions of powerful interest organizations. Here I am referring to the often noticed lack of motivation of organizations to be guided by the general interest rather than by their self-interest. There has been a IS-year debate - starting with a seminal paper of Schmitter (1974) between theoreticians of pluralism on the one hand and the corporatism approach on the other - as to whether organizations can really be blamed for threatening the public interest. The corporatism literature has emphasized that private-interest organizations produce indispensable control outputs rather than endangering state authority. But a new round of this debate must be opened if the age of corporatism is over or if organizations get at least themselves into stress due to the increasing multiplicity I just mentioned. Living in the age of "disorganized capitalism", one could be seduced into taking a nostalgic glance backward at the good times of "organized capitalism" (see Lash and Drry, 1987), when the organizations of the labor market, obliged to a kind of general interest, contributed to keeping the level of complexity low by aggregating diverging interests, thus ensuring that society remained governable.

5.

Can Present-Day Societies Cope With the Decline munity?

In

Com-

Do present-day societies dispose of resources to cope with the problems just mentioned? A full answer to this question would have to start with an overview of the mechanisms of guidance and control that a modern society disposes of. Sociology did not proceed very much in developing a theory of guidance. It seems, the "state of the art" is still circumscribed by the classic book of Dahl and Lindblom in 1953. Dahl and Lindblom distinguished four mechanisms of control: the price system, hierarchy, polyarchy, and bargaining. In a footnote to his follow-up book of 1980 (Beyond Market and State), Lindblom added moral as a regulating mechanism, without expanding further on this source of integration. To rely on moral to solve problems of guidance would first presuppose that this source is available at all. But as I indicated, moral in the sense of a moral community is anything other than a reliable source of control.

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Second, if this source were available at all, it would be an ambivalent instrument with respect to guidance. As Buchanan has pointed out, if persons identify with specific communities (ethnic, racial, etc.), social conflict will tend to emerge between the relevant communities, and problems of govemability will rather increase than decrease. Apart from the fact that a restocked forest is not of the same quality as the original one, a revival of moral community is, for the reason mentioned, a doubtful means to solve guidance problems. But as I indicated, a modem society is not inevitably dependent on moral community as the one source of social cohesion. The message of Durkheim's "Division of Labour" has been that there is a different source of social cohesion that is compatible with the functionally differentiated structure of a modem society. Durkheim failed to derive it satisfactorily. I conjecture its origin is a rationalization of community and not the division of labor. Apart from differences of intellectual status ("giant versus dwarves"), a short paper can in no way make good what a famous book failed to demonstrate. Therefore I am content with indicating a pair of concepts, appropriate to serve as a starting point for this task. I take up Buchanan's distinction between a moral community and a moral order. Whereas a moral community "exists among a set of persons to the extent that individual members of the group identify with a collective unit", a moral order exists when "participants in social interaction treat each other as moral reciprocals, but do so without any sense of common loyalities to a group or community" (1986, p. 109). The question now is whether either a moral community or a moral order is a more reliable resource in order to tackle problems of guidance and control. As the discussion on the reintegration of evacuees in the Federal Republic of Germany has made clear, the problem with a moral community is that solidarity stemming from a feeling of belonging together has either been dissolved in the course of modernization or this type of solidarity is at variance with universalistic ideas and values. The problem a moral order poses as a resource of guidance is that it is only a procedural norm and not a regulative one, and therefore possibly inadequate to cope with the reference problems of guidance: excess variety. Anyhow, it seems to me more promising to develop further moral order than to revive moral community. I hold that the idea of a moral order contains starting points to include into the mutual respect each individual deserves the respect for nature, and to integrate in the moral order a weak idea of distributional justice. Rawls' (1971) "difference principle" could count as an example for such a rather weak equity principle. Thus the question of justice is once again on the agenda. "The task of the most advanced societies", Durkheim wrote, "is a work of justice". As to this concept, Durkheim remains fairly vague. But anyhow I assume that most of us will agree to this vague idea of justice. Insofar we are all more or less Durkheimians.

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Notes 1 In my view, postmodernity as an "attitude" or "world view" is basically a cultural phenomenon. If one anyhow looks for counterparts on the level of social structure, the first place to consider is the dissolution of those categories within which modernization took place (like class, family, etc.) (see Beck, 1986). Another "postmodern" trait of reality (or better: the perception of reality) is the obscuring of the borderline between reality and "fiction" caused, as it is asserted, mainly by the modern mass media. If really - due to the increasing influence of the world of pictures produced by television - "primary reality" is going to be replaced by the "secondary" one of television - Enzensberger (1988) treats this assertion with irony - this process would basically have a "cultural" meaning because patterns of perception are concerned. A more sociostructural version of this idea is the contention that social reality in the most advanced societies is of a kind that renders the distinction between reality and fiction more and more meaningless. 2 This formulation relies on Roemer's (1982) game-theoretical conceptualization of exploitation.

References Beck, U. (1986). Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Bell, D. (1976). The cultural contradictions of capitalism. New York: Basic Books. Buchanan, J. (1986). Moral community, moral order or moral anarchy. In J. Buchanan (Ed.), Liberty, market and state. Political economy in the 1980's (pp. 108-120). Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press. Dahl, R., and Lindblom, C.E. (1953). Politics, economics and welfare. Planning and politicoeconomic systems resolved into basic social processes. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Dahrendorf, R. (1979). Life chances. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Durkheim, E. (1964): The division of labour in society. New York and London: Free Press/ Macmillan. Enzensberger, H.M. (1988). Das Nullmedium oder Warum aile Klagen fiber das Fernsehen gegenstandslos sind. In H.M. Enzensberger, Mittelmafi und Wahn. Gesammelte Zerstreuungen (pp. 89-106). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Fox, A. (1974). Beyond contract. Work, power and trust relations. London: Murray. Lash, S., and Urry, J. (1987). The end of organized capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lindblom, C.E. (1980). Politics and markets. New York: Basic Books. Hirschman, A.O. (1982). Rival interpretations of market society: Civilizing, destructive or feeble? Journal of Economic Literature, 20, 1463-1484. Horkheimer, M. (1947). Eclipse of reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Kern, H., and Schumann, M. (1984). Das Ende der Arbeitsteilung? Rationalisierung in der industriellen Produktion. Munchen: Beck. Luhmann, N. (1984). Soziale Systeme. Grundri6 einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Mayntz, R. (1988). Funktionelle Teilsysteme in der Theorie sozialer Differenzierung. In R. Mayntz et al. (Eds.), Differenzierung und Verselbstindigung. Zur Entwicklung gesellschaftlicher Teilsysteme (pp. 11-44). Frankfurt: Campus. Nisbet, R.A. (1966). The sociological tradition. New York: Basic Books. Nisbet, R.A. (Ed.) (1972). Social change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Polanyi, K. (1944). The great transformation. The political economic origins of our time. Boston: Beacon. Rawls, I. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP. Schmitter, P.C. (1974). Still the century of corporatism? Review of Politics, 36, 85-131. Streeck, W. (1987). Vielfalt und Interdependenz. Uberlegungen zur Rolle von intermediiiren Organisationen in sich verandernden Umwelten. KOlner Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 39, 471-495. Thompson, P. (1983). The nature of work. An introduction to debates on the labour process. London: MacMillan. TonDies, F. (1963). Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Weber, M. (1920). Gesarnmelte Aufsiitze zur Religionssoziologie. Vol. 1. Tubingen: Mohr.

Social Individualization and the Fate of Sociological Method Hartmut Esser

In his book "The Rules of Sociological Method", Emile Durkheim (1982) proposed that "social facts" should be treated as "things" (p. 60). It was necessary to consider them "detached from the (~onsci()us beings who form their own mental representations of them" (p. 70). The "sociological facts could only be studied objectively in so far as they had become independent from individual actions, efforts and manifestations" (1982, pp. 81- 82). Only then could the object of sociology gain the necessary stability to ('onstitute a promising and progressive science (1982, p. 83). The basis for this stability could only be sought in the "society", or more precisely, in the structural organization of society's members and the effectiveness of social controls: "The primary origin of social processes of any importance must be sought in the constitution of the inner social environment" (1982, p. 135). The object of sociology and the key to the explanation of social events is accordingly the structures and milieus that represent a particular, unconventional kind of reality, in the form of "moulds" for the action of the individuals (1982, p. 70). It is well-known that Durkheim's "Rules" were originally published as a book in 1895 (the first German edition in 1908). Anthony Giddens published the "New Rules of Sociological Method" in 1976. Rule A states: "Sociology is not concerned with a 'pre-given' universe of objects, hut with one which is constituted or produced by the active doings of suhjects" (1976, p. 160); and furthermore: "The production and reproduction of society thus has to be treated as a skilled performance on the part of its members... " (1976, p. 160). It is certainly also true that the subjects are also located in history and that they are unable to choose freely the conditions of their doing. However, according to Rule B Two, structures should "not be conceptualized as simply placing constraints upon human agency, but as enabling" (1976, p. 161). The consequence for sociological method is correspondingly a clear shift toward considering the subjective states of the actors, their abilities, knowledge structures, and symbolic worlds in order to analyze the process through which the actors - mostly unintentionally - continue to actively reproduce and recreate the structures that surround them.

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Giddens' position clearly rejects the Durkheimian program. It is a rejection of any of the sociologies of structures. systems. norms. and roles that long dominated the profession following the peak of structural functionalism (and even today continue to characterize the textbooks and self-image of sociology). It is also a rejection of the empirical and analytical variant of this understanding. the sociology of variables. that is constructed on the action-shaping power of empirically observable. unequivocal. and stable categorizations. experiences of socialization. and social controls in the typical interest groups and milieus of the "standard demography". Do the above-mentioned controversies and also the position taken by Giddens lead to a loss of identity for sociology (as we must certainly fear from the perspective of the Durkheimian school)? Are Giddens' "New Rules" only a further variant of the seemingly never~nding methodological confusions of sociology? Is this only the continuation of the various methodological disputes that have flared up once again over the question of the nature of the social. and so forth. in the interface of positions relative to the humanities. "idealism". or "hermeneutics"?

Another hypothesis will be proposed here: The rejection of the "old" rules of sociological method (in Giddens as well as a series of other authors; see below) is neither random nor a simple rearguard action of methodological dualism in a sociology based on the humanities. It is far more an expression of certain irrefutable "methodological consequences of societal differentiation" (Esser. 1979; translated). and thereby the consequence of particular. systematic changes in the structure of (Western) societies in the 80 or so years between the publication of Durkheim's Rules and the New Rules from Giddens. In the following. this hypothesis will be considered as a result of the so-called individualization hypothesis so lastingly formulated by Ulrich Beck (1986). Stated briefly. the individualization hypothesis proposes that. in the course of the further modernization of society. the memberships of actors to specific categorizations (e.g.• according to wealth or class) increasingly intersect and destabilize. and that the systematic effectiveness of these categorizations for action increasingly dilutes and disappears. In other words. there are increasingly fewer unequivocal. sociological facts that function as direct. action-determining. external constraints for the actors.

The present paper attempts to show that some of the recent theoretical and methodological developments in sociology are in fact much easier to understand if the individualization hypothesis is regarded to be at least tendentially correct.

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The basic argument is: With the dissolution of sociological facts (as an empirical fact), the old rules of sociological method actually become increasingly less plausible, and new rules become more comprehensible that - so it is assumed respond solely to the increasing individualization and subjectivization in functionally differentiated societies. In principle, this supports the arguments and methodological conclusions in Giddens. However, there is one far-reaching difference: In contrast to the New Rules, the systematic consideration of the constitution of social processes as a result of the subjectively meaningful actions of actors does not mean the abandoning of a nomological and explanatory position. Durkheim obtained some of his rules specifically from the conviction that sociology had to be a systematically explanatory science, and that this would require certain stable laws (that he saw as being anchored in the sociological facts). The decay of the societal foundations of such laws certainly suggests - according to the hypothesis - an individualization and subjectivization (as well) of sociology. However, given such a subjectivization and individualization of the rules of sociological method, it is still possible to seek and realize an, in principle, nomological explanation of social processes. In other words: The "hermeneutic" change of sociological method, which it was probably correct to point out, does not exclude the retention of explanatory, analytical, and nomological methods in sociology.

1.

The Problem

From a theoretical perspective, the individualization hypothesis formulates a much older suggestion that the so emphatically claimed, genuine "sociological laws" do not even exist (and also cannot exist), as such laws are only the observable consequence of the stability of certain specific (historically relative) parameters, and that when these parameters change, these "laws" also lose their apparently iron character (see, in particular, Popper, 1974, pp. 98-100; more recently, Boudon, 1983). With the individualization hypothesis, Beck had consistently questioned whether this also meant that sociology had come to an early end as an independent discipline with a specific object of investigation (Beck, 1986, p. 130, 139). And, in fact, the suspected end of (analytically oriented) sociology joins another area of science that has been well-prepared in another way. Has not Thomas Kuhn presented us with the sometimes, in some places, in various niches,

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calming certainty that science in any case does not develop according to the puritanical rules of a "logic of research"? Does not this hypothesis of the end of sociology lead exquisitely to Feyerabend's demand that we should finally abandon the concept of scientific rationality? Is it correct to conceive that we have finally arrived at the point at which even the last "positivist" must acknowledge that social reality is too complex, too unique, and too various for us to even hope to be able to achieve anything at all with analytical methods? And does not all this emphatically support the correctness of the sociology-related variants of the "new age" (in constructivism, research based explicitly on the views and concepts of the subjects of research, e.g., women, blacks, and certain variants of present-day "systems theory")? The individualization hypothesis additionally interfaces the trends that can be observed in recent sociology - away from deductive-systematic theory formation toward inductive-qualitative description with a fundamental, content-related argument. It is exactly this, it can be thought, that makes the individualization hypothesis in some ways so persuasive: It justifies the increasing suspicions that are taking hold about the "limited utility of methodological rules" (see Mayntz, 1985) with an essentially much stronger argument than these abstract, methodological discussions could in any way achieve. The assumptions of the individualization hypothesis also do not appear to be completely implausible in this from a standpoint that continues to maintain a strictly analytical orientation: Have the traditional variable models of empirical social research not always really been highly insufficient (seen both in the extent of the variances normally "explained" as in the explanatory theoretical status of such models)? Has the search for genuine sociological laws not actually in fact remained remarkably unsuccessful - as is shown, for example, by simply asking which laws of this kind sociology has revealed up to now? Does not social reality in fact very much block any causalistic and objectivistic approach? Is it not truer to say that the processes observed are characterized by rather complex interdependencies and fluctuating processes instead of static categorizations, isolated actions, or simple factors or "variables"? On the other hand, the joy about an end to sociology because of the loss of a sufficiently stable object should not be perfect: The decay of the explanatory power of traditional theoretical concepts would simultaneously also mean the loss of the applicability of sociology and finally thereby also a threat to its entire social legitimacy. In certain applied domains, practice, change, and "intervention and prevention" are only possible (as planned activities) on the basis of explanatorily powerful and empirically confirmed theoretical hypotheses possessing a sufficient external and internal validity.

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The question is then: Has the increase in societal individualization that is not discussed further here - actually brought about the end of (general and applied) sociology? Or is it not more the case that social individualization has been the unavoidable and final reason for placing sociology on the methodological and theoretical foundation that it has always needed as an explanatory and practicable science, but that, due to specific circwnstances, one had previously not needed to ascertain to any particular extent?

2.

Why the Problem Was Hardly Noticed Before

The hypothesis that the following shall justify more: exactly is thus: The sociology in which the individualization hypothesis (and Durkheim's rules) is discussed has never really been "explanatory" . However, this lack - to continue this claim - previously never had any particular consequences. It only first becomes apparent when some fundamental backgrounds for the predictive power of traditional forms of sociological analysis become increasingly invalid because of specific societal processes. The classical basic conviction of sociology demands the explanation of structures purely through structures. The problem that immediately arises from the methodology of explanation is then what should be the nomological core of such an explanation of structures? For a certain length of time, the impression could be given - according to the hypothesis - that such a nomological core existed in certain subfields of sociology, as certain "structural" regularities (e.g., for a long time, the covariation of class status and political orientation, religious structure and the suicide rate, social differentiation and family forms, etc.) could also, at least roughly, be observed empirically. However, the underlying foundation of such regularities was apparently according to the individualization hypothesis - on the one hand, that there were clear differentiations of interests that could be labeled in clear categories (such as, e.g., "social class"), while, on the other hand, there were also clear differentiations of milieu that could be summarized conceptually in, for example, the category of "status". The historical "stroke of luck", which was not recognized as such at the time, was that the differentiations of interest and the differentiations of milieu covaried with one another in a relatively stable, exclusive, and clear way. This covariation produced a series of further correlates that, on the one hand, permitted the development of sociology as a type of categorization theory and, on the other hand, permitted the growth of

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specific subfields in which special categories, concepts, and partial correlations could be sought and also found in relatively stable ways (such as, for example, the concept of a party structure based on milieus and cleavages with attendant voting behavior across long periods of social change (see Lepsius, 1973). Yet, why was this procedure relatively' successful for such a long time? It can be suspected that an implicit explanatory theory was possible on the basis of the special social relationships of covariation between differentiations of interests and differentiations of milieu that basically was more far-reaching than the traditional categories (e.g., of class and status) could have permitted: Class relationships label, for example, clear and exclusive action motivations and (in some circumstances reinforced by corresponding organizational and institutional concentrations) also certain types of cognitions, everyday theories, and interpretations of the world. The differentiations of milieu ensure that the differentiations of motivation and cognition (that result from the position of classspecific interest) are continually reinforced in everyday life and thereby retain a thorough and lasting relevance for action. And the two combined form the "moulds" that Durkheim conceived as forming the basis of sociology as a scientific discipline. This clarifies the theoretical background of categories and concepts in classical sociology: Basically they are a conceptual categorization - suggested by the historical circumstances or at least not particularly momentous - of typical (and stable) differences in specific, structurally stable conditions of action of collectives of actors. However, the individualization hypothesis states that the stability and exclusivity of any structural conditions of action is increasingly breaking up. The consequence is then highly predictable - particularly against the background of the above-mentioned theoretical explication: The prognoses for the action of actors derived from the traditional categorizations can have increasingly less hope of empirical confirmation. That which at first - unnoticed - appeared to be like a stroke of luck for the circumstance-free functioning of structural explanations, proves in this context to be a fundamental deficit: As structural segmentation (of interests and milieus) made it unnecessary to reconsider the special conditions in which the theoretical concepts were valid and advance toward a true theoretical explanation, the decay of these implicit conditions of validity catches a merely structure-oriented sociology almost unawares. Against this background, Beck's question whether the funeral bells are tolling for sociology is more than just a further example of his command of language.

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Earlier Symptoms and Reactions

A series of earlier symptoms and reactions shows that the consequences for sociological theory and research suggested by the individualization hypothesis have not just been noticed recently. Apart from Giddens, there has always been a discussion on whether structures do not only exist and take effect in an "objective" way, whether "iron laws" and dynamics and feedbacks of social processes themselves should not be considered independently from individuals, whether institutions are the - mostly unplanned - results of the intentional actions of subjects, and so forth. It is noticeable that the trends toward an actor orientation and toward the subjectivization of sociology have markedly increased in recent years and that the pleas to strengthen the reference to the actor in sociological theories now reach far into the arguments of systems theory (see, e.g., Schimank, 1985, 1988). The symptoms and reactions can be determined on a series of completely different levels: In general sociological theory, a marked trend away from strategies of theory formation using typologies and classifications can be observed. Sociological functionalism (e.g., in the form of Parson's AGIL schema) is apparently only still involved in some rearguard actions (and the efforts to revive it can also hardly cover this up; see Alexander, 1988; Alexander and Giesen, 1987). More and more, one is beginning to depart from the terminology of the "old" theories of systems and differentiation that, in tum, were also linked to the differentiability, countability, and stability of specific subsystems of the whole of society (see, e.g., Mayntz, 1988). And classical macrosociology - be it either from the Durkheimian or the Marxian school can mostly only be found (if at all) in introductory courses and discussions on the history of dogmas, and rarely in current theoretical and empirical research. This erosion of the classical macrosociological concepts (also including those of "role", "norm", "values", "subsystems", etc.) was also accelerated when it became increasingly clear that mechanisms repeatedly named in classical sociology for the stabilization and integration of social structures (social control, circulation of media, legitimacy, etc.) basically point toward a much more general core for the explanation of social processes than the terminological concepts make clear. The concepts of classical sociology were oriented toward social relationships that could more easily be described with structural segmentation rather than with functional differentiation (in which, e.g., Parsons' control hierarchy of the different system levels was a last, only too obvious, attempt to transfer the model of a hierarchically segmented "old-European" structure to "modem" societies as well). Specific phenomena and processes in

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the way that they are considered to be typical for "individualized" societies, can, at best, still be characterized with terms in this perspective: "interpenetration" for the fact that the different subsystems intermingle; cybernetic self-regulation as a - basically very nonsociological - approach to explain social integration without having to refer to a value system or the like; the discrimination between system and life world to characterize the fact that the macrosociological imperative cannot be conceived in complete independence from some conditions on the microlevel, and so forth. To express it briefly, classical macrosociology, including its systems theory and "critical" variants, shows or showed all the symptoms of a degenerating research program. The most sustained signs of these problems in traditional macrosociology and its associated applied sociologies is the recent marked increase in the competition to introduce new words for phenomena that can no longer be processed suitably with the classical categories. Indeed it is not purely chance that the terminology of figuration and process sociology introduced by Elias (1970) was only accepted broadly after the classical structure-functional approaches had declined. Luhmann (1975, pp. 27 - 29) was relatively early in proposing a completely different explanation of social stability than that of Parsons: that the political system does not stabilize through a (however abstract) moral process, but through the (thoroughly "amoral") unwinding of formal procedures whose only goal is to ensure the limitation of conflicts, the crosscutting of lines of loyalty and interest, and the pluralization of reasons for dissatisfaction. The more recent version of Luhmann's theory of social systems (Luhmann, 1984) logically continues this argument to the extent that it tends to reject any naming of structural "factors" and traces everything that exists back to it having developed in some way - "autopoietically" - from itself. Equally, it cannot be pure chance that, in recent years, there has been a clear increase in the willingness to accept the synergetic concepts developed in physics for analyzing a series of otherwise inexplicable, complex aggregation phenomena (see Weidlich and Haag, 1983). Some of this terminology has been adopted by sociology, and attempts have been made (though often in an inadequate way) to apply it to a series of phenomena (see Druwe, 1988, for a critical review). Finally, the recently more sustained orientation toward the "dynamics and networking of social patterns" (toward network analysis, game theory, and process explanations) can also be seen as a sign that a series of important and interesting sociological problems cannot be analyzed suitably with the traditional "static" and "atomistic" concepts. Two early (and each for itself also lastingly effective) reactions to certain shortcomings of classical structural sociology must also be mentioned at this point:

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Homans' criticism of the then predominant (Homans, 1964); and Blumer's (and later normative paradigm and the still effective that is also joined by Giddens (see Blumer,

paradigm of structural functionalism Wilson's) criticism of the so-called plea for an interpretative sociology 1962; Wilson, 1970).

The two directions differed greatly in their starting points, though they probably had the same backgrounds. Homans particularly deplored the lack of explanatory power in structural functionalism. Blumer emphatically pointed out that all structures, however stable they may appear, are finally the result of the action of subjects who are interpreting situations. In his search for an explanatory core for macrosociological phenomena, Homans arrived at certain processes from behavioral theory that underlie all behavior. In his subjectivization of social structures, Blumer points to the symbolic mediatory nature and the thoroughly processual nature of all situations, regardless of how stable and objective they may appear (see also Collins, 1981). The common core of both theoretical approaches is, however, the attempt to interpret, to understand, and, finally, to explain macrosociological phenomena (finally) as the result of human action. The fact that both (relatively early) reactions did not remain entirely ineffective is indeed connected to the fact that the theoretical arguments to which they were linked had always already been part of another classical domain of sociology than that of structure theory. The fact that they have, nevertheless, in a certain way always remained very marginal was particularly due to the insufficient consideration of the particular requirements for an aggregation of microprocesses to macrophenomena - behavioral sociology and interactional sociology - in both approaches (see section 6).

4.

The (New) Problems in the Applied Sociologies

The increasing difficulties in continuing sociology in the traditional way can also be seen in developments in a series of highly different applied sociologies. In general, the applied sociologies also have to realize that the specific concepts they have developed and used (e.g., the life cycle, disengagement in the aged, adolescent subculture, the nuclear family, urban zones, etc.) are increasingly less adequate to describe, let alone explain, current developments. The reason for this can be suggested: For the applied sociologies, the inadequacies of a sociology that is only oriented toward structural theory apply in a particular manner. Because of the lack of a sufficiently general and (initially) abstract theoretical explanation of their specific phenomena, or because of the con-

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centration on conceptual descriptions of their phenomena, the applied sociologies are particularly vulnerable to changes in the - implicit - basic foundations of their statements. As the theoretical explanations are frequently only related to the specific application in each case, applied sociologies are additionally notoriously poorly prepared for the occurence of anomalies. As the conditions under which a relation is valid have not been made explicit (or are not even known), when anomalies arise, the entire concept has to be thrown overboard on each occasion and replaced by another concept that is mostly introduced ad hoc. The consequence is that applied sociologies are often characterized by the eclectic stringing together and reinvention of concepts and terms that provide a good description of a series of phenomena that arise but are unable to provide the explantory power that is basically needed. When anomalies arise, the reaction is often restricted to merely plotting and describing in as exact detail as possible the continuously changing relations because a theoretical perspective is lacking. The theoretical eclecticism and "positivism" of both qualitative and quantitative methods that is frequently to be observed in some of the applied sociologies at present is probably a direct reaction to the only too inadequate theoretical equipment for incorporating the new phenomena in any other way than simply labeling, interpreting, or "narrating", which finally means only describing. These developments can be shown in a series of applied sociologies. In the sociology of social inequality, it is argued whether the so-called "new" social inequalities are actually new, or whether they are only newly discovered inequalities, or, more recently, whether they are only dimensions of social inequality that have become more relevant, or masked forms of old social inequalities. Why these particular forms of equality are now to be found in modem societies is scarcely explained; nevertheless, there is a plenitude of new terms and concepts (see, e.g., the volume edited by Giesen and Haferkamp, 1987) and a boom in, for example, very descriptive kinds of life-style studies. In electoral sociology, increasing doubt is being cast on the utility of cleavage

theory to explain voting behavior under "individualized" societal relationships: As memberships, loyalties, and fixed interests are increasingly criss-crossed and mobilized, it becomes increasingly hard to accept that there are stable cleavage structures secured by corresponding milieus that permit a long-lasting explanation of voting behavior on the individual level. The adoption of "economic" theories of voting behavior, in which voting is conceived as an

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individual rational choice oriented toward maxlmtztng utility, into the interpretations and designs of empirical election research could well be a reaction to the fact that the explanatory power of sociodemographic variables - as rough indicators of clear differentiations of interest and milieu in the electorate - are considered insufficient to cope with the increase in the criss-erossing of memberships. The structural indeterminacy of individual voting behavior does not contradict the fact that relatively stable results can nevertheless be observed on aggregate: Even random processes in the individual domain can produce stable results on an aggregate level (as any fairly persistent gambler must realize). However, this is not a systematic or even satisfactory explanation for this stability on the macrolevel even with the disintegration of cleavage and milieu structures (see, e.g., Kaase, 1986). Family sociology is confronted with the problem that the traditional forms (nuclear family, household, marriage, partnership) have become more numerous and unpredictable in both structure and process. New forms of households, the increase in divorces and remarriages, and the duplication of types of life cycle and so forth that this permits or demands confront us for the first time with a question that was otherwise not considered problematic: What actually "binds" persons together? What are the real foundations of role distributions in marriage, family, and household? How are "opportunities" (e.g., of finding a partner of a certain age) actually constituted? All the essays on these new procedures, however elegiac, and all descriptions, however interesting, of, for example, partnerships (married or unmarried), communal living accomodation, single-parent families, and so forth (see, e.g., Beck-Gemsheim, 1983, 1986) cannot cover up the fact that we basically do not know why these forms are appearing at present and why the actors behave in the way that they do. We have not been able to answer these questions with traditional role theory for a long time. Whether we can answer them with the interpretative paradigm also depends, among others, on whether the results of these efforts are not just descriptive and interpretative but also explanatory and theoretical. In a similar way, the sociology of adolescence and the aged fmds itself confronted with a completely new phenomenon that, for example, there are no (longer) fixed roles for adolescence or the aged and that henceforth one is obliged to also deal theoretically with the phenomenon that adolescents and the aged (like all other actors as well) are in a position to choose between a great number of options.

However, this realization that structural constraints obviously no longer exelusively determine the actions of adolescents and the aged makes it finally

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clear that the former structure and role explanations were always only a special case of a much more general explanation; namely, that of a theory of the choice between options on the level of individual, interlinked actors. As soon as we arrive - for "structural" reasons - at a duplication of the options, it becomes clear that acting in roles has also always been such an act of choice under special conditions. With the disintegration of the structurally given roles, one can no longer explain the empirical processes through "role theory" alone. New formulas, like those that roles are defined, identities negotiated, situations interpreted, and that everything is indeed a question of the complex relation of subjectivity and objectivity, best describe the changed procedures and recall the problem that has arisen. Nevertheless, such orientation hypotheses are also (as yet) no theoretical explanation. Urban sociology is recently beginning to see more and more that the concepts of social ecology, the succession of urban developments, the zone models, and so forth, have all been generalizations of historical special cases and that ultimately urban developments can be just as varied as any other social process. Additionally, social ecology provides a classic example of the dangers facing a fundamentally atheoretical special discipline when the fundamental relations underlying observed regularities change: With the dismantling of stable neighborhoods, the increases in both the possibility and the need for mobility, the increasing commercialization of the accomodation market, and so forth, both the systematic effectiveness of being embedded in neighborhood contexts and simultaneously the possibility of explaining urban structures with one unified principle disintegrate (see various articles in Friedrichs, 1988). Mention should also be made of the sociology of migration that, as a macrosociological theory, has always been confronted with the problem that it is not just differences in gross national product that cause persons to migrate but that a series of subjective, actor-related factors need to be included if one wants to explain the real movements of migration. Finally, we should mention the sociology of the "new" social movements in which - as in the sociology of social inequality - a controversy has arisen on what is actually new about them (see, e.g., Huber, 1988). At least there is an agreement that these social movements can no longer be conceived sufficiently with categories of fixed interest structures and milieu structures, but that they - at least apparently - each increase in density in an unpredictable way, run for a certain period of time, and then decline again in just such an (apparently) unpredictable way (Japp, 1984).

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We can state that in both general sociology and the applied sociologies there is a series of signs and already even reactions showing that the traditional concepts, terminologies, and partial explanations of the "old" sociological method have obviously reached the limits of their capacity, not least because of a series of new (or newly apparent) social phenomena. It is basically not important whether these limits have alway~ been in existence or whether they have only become apparent with recent developments. The hypothesis requiring further support would then be that any (old or current) limits to the power of a sociology with an exclusively structural orientation certainly compel revisions of the traditional Durkheimian program, but that the New Rules from Giddens are not alone sufficient to solve a continuing demand for sociological explanation.

s.

What Is Not an Explanation?

The fundamental idea in this article is that a "truly" explanatory sociology is less restricted by the validity of the basic social conditions named than the classical structural sociology. Giddens broke this restriction to fixed structural conditions by pointing out that macrophenomena are anchored in the life world. At the same time, this meant that the clearly explanatory foundations of Durkheim's rules were also abandoned. The "hermeneutic explication and mediation of divergent forms of life within descriptive metalanguages of social science" and the "explication of the production and reproduction of society as the accomplished outcome of human agency" proposed in Rule 0 Two (Giddens, 1976, p. 162) do not specify in which wayan adequate explanation of social processes should now be made possible. However, what do the outlines of such an explanatory sociology look like? An adequate explanation of social phenomena is recognized to consist of - if one follows the methodology developed for this - a specific content (a specific collective phenomenon that has to be explained) that can be "derived" deductively from the two necessary components of an explanatory argument: from a "general" law and from certain parameters to which this law is applied (see for a general treatment of the logic of explanations, e.g., Esser, Klenovits, and Zehnpfennig, 1977; Schnell, Hill, and Esser, 1988, pp. 44-46). These conditions of an adequate explanation suffice to show what is not an explanation. Simple descriptions, for example, are not explanations.

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Descriptions are certainly not possible without their being embedded in a theoretical system, and explanations are also not possible without good descriptions. Descriptions also often provide implicit indications for an explanatory argument (e.g., by enumerating the "history" of a course). However, even a highly detailed description is not alone sufficient to provide the generalization of the single case that an explanation requires: Explanations always require the reference to a more general hypothesis of relations that goes beyond the description of the single case. Terminologies, typologies, taxonomies, and "ideal types" are also not an explanation. Terms prestrueture a research domain; they guide the focus of attention and the total process of theory formation. Yet they do not reveal anything about the empirical incidence of the categorizations named in the terms, and certainly provide no information on which general relations form the basis for expecting the occurrence of a specific phenomenon. To this extent, introducing, for example, a concept of "autopoiesis" for the "explanation" of phenomena of the self-organization of collectives should at most be evaluated as a reiterating conceptual description and in no way as even an approach to an explanation of such processes. The "discursive interpretations" of, for example, interaction sequences, recently proposed in relation to certain qualitative methods, are also not explanations. These are also generally only descriptive "interpretations", and their only particular quality is that they can be tested against alternative interpretations in a collective method: the discourse. Under one specific condition, such discursive interpretations could certainly provide one sort of explanation: when the interpretation (of actions) is explicitly related to specific motives and situational circumstances of actors and embeds these in a general theory of the origins of an action or a speech act (e.g., on the basis of a theory of "rational" action and speech). Up to now, this has not been performed in this field (at least not in an explicit and systematic way). Additionally, analogies and metaphors (such as the organism metaphor, the function metaphor, the system metaphor, the evolution metaphor, the network metaphor, the process metaphor, the interdependence metaphor, the figuration metaphor, etc.) are also not explanations. Metaphors and analogies are sometimes useful aids to illustration. Occasionally they simplify an intuitive understanding of processes. Often enough, however, they lead to a precipitate rejection of a deeper analysis of the problem. If an explanation of the problem concerned exists, they are additionally superfluous even as aids to illustration.

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Even the so-called orientation hypotheses are not explanations; for example: All societal being is to be conceived as a figurative process of power balances, a consequence of the interdependence of structure and culture; the processes concerned are engendered by definitions of the situation and the subjects' considered dealing with situational options, and so forth. Orientation hypotheses are at best preliminary stages for an explanation. Giddens' New Rules are such orientation hypotheses. Developing them to a (complete) explanation is mostly a comprehensive task that has yet to be performed, the size of which is easily hidden behind the robustness of the vocabulary. Such orientation hypotheses can certainly provide valuable help in working out the problem. In each case, they lack (at least) one central element of any explanation: an explicit naming of functional dependencies (e.g., why actors prefer one option to another in situations; why actors interpret a situation in one way and not another; why and on the basis of which mechanism should a "structure" influence the "culture" in a certain way; how exactly and why actors reproduce social structures through their actions; etc.). Finally, the stringing together of loose associations in sociological vocabulary is most certainly no explanation; even if the procedure is enriched by single examples, however interesting, that should create the impression of a systematic confirmation of the intuition, yet are far from being able to complete the task (as, e.g., Durkheim emphatically denounced in his introduction to "I.e Suicide" as the unacceptable habits of some "sociologists"; see Durkheim, 1973, pp. 17 -19). Therefore, what would be the components of an explanatory sociology that is subject to neither the limitations of Durkheim's Rules nor the shortcomings of Giddens' New Rules (namely, that they are merely orientation hypotheses)?

6.

Outlines and Basic Elements of an Explanatory Sociology

The basic structure of the requirements of an explanatory sociology that - at

least on a conceptual level - could avoid the difficulties mentioned above, is gradually beginning to crystalize (see, e.g., Lindenberg and Wippler, 1978; Boudon, 1980; recently the short outlines of this approach in Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987). Accordingly, it is necessary, first, to provide a sufficiently general nomological core to explain collective phenomena. It is assumed that this core is to be found on the level of action laws, the premises of which contain intentions and subjective knowledge structures of actors. Secondly, it is

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necessary to be able to use this core to derive the effect of structures on actions (in conjunction with the empirical interpretation of the theoretical terms of the particular action theory). Third, it is finally necessary to derive the collective phenomenon under study from a - more or less complex - aggregation of the previously explained action sequences using the introduction of further empirical and analytic information. Although a lack of space prevents a detailed discussion of the various conceivable alternatives, existing problems, and difficulties of application, it would appear to be becoming more and more apparent for the first problem area that the necessary (universal) nomological core for the explanation of all types of social phenomena is to be found in a theory of human action. This assumes that human actors perceive external ("objective") characteristics of situations, evaluate them according to their experiences ("subjectively"), and use their estimation of certain consequences to select the action that has a higher expected value (in total) than the expected value of all other alternatives. Completely different elements can enter into these evaluations and expectancies; the "everyday theories" applied here can be parts of ideologies, philosophies, a "cultural system", "actor fictions" regarding social subsystems, and so forth. The preference systems can contain the preferences of other persons (or not), they can be based on "internalization" (or not), and so forth. It is assumed (on the basis of a great number of converging indications from various disciplines of the social sciences; see, e.g., Bohnen, 1975, pp. 32-53) that the principle of action outlined here is sufficiently universal to extend the analysis of the sociological phenomena under consideration far enough into both the past and the conceivable future. At the very least, it is assumed that this nomological core is more general than all previously known "structure laws". It has already been pointed out above that if the explanatory core of a theory is to avoid the deficits of mere orientation hypotheses, it must explicitly report its functional dependencies. In the proposed theory of action, these are the motives and cognitions of actors or, on the one hand, the elements of situations that are perceived and subjectively evaluated by the actors, and, on the other hand, the action selected according to a specific choice principle. As there is not enough space for a detailed discussion of this microtheoretical approach, it shall only be pointed out that the basic principles of the theoretical core were used in the same way by such apparently diverse sociological classics as Weber, Parsons, and Schutz. This does not have to be stressed any further for Weber (see Weber, 1972, pp. 1-14). That the action concept in Parsons (see in particular, Parsons, 1962, pp. 3-29) can be united with the theoretical model sketched,

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has been made explicit in different ways and does not require any further confirmation here (see, e.g., Vanberg, 1975, pp. 186-189). Of interest in this context is the indication that Alfred Schutz - often assumed to be the founding father of the interpretative paradigm - proposed an action theory that closely matches Weber, Parsons, and the above-mentioned theoretical model. He was particularly interested in working out the differences between the rationality of everyday action and a complete (e.g., "scientific") rationality. Schutz considered the particular characteristics of everyday rationality to be that persons form layers of knowledge about the structure of their environment, and in such a way that with increasing irrelevance and distance from life domains, the individualizing precision of the knowledge decreases and the proportion of classifications increases. Persons act - according to Schutz - in the everyday world in each case from their subjective position according to the stipulation of the classifications previously given for it. These classifications can easily be reconstructed as complexes of stimulus-expectancy hypotheses. Nevertheless, the principle of action still contains rational choice: Although persons generally do not develop the complete and objective "rationality of knowledge" in everyday life (e.g., as seen from an external, scientific standpoint), the "choice itself is rational if the actor selects from among all means within his reach the one most appropriate for realizing the intended" (Schutz, 1964, p. 79). Schutz is not denying the rationality of everyday action, but only emphasizing that the choice of action is made on the basis of subjective parameters (including restrictions in information processing and processing time). It is precisely this that the general action theory sketched above also requires as a microtheoretical core for structural explanations. As a result it can be stated that a microtheoretical core converges from the most varied sources such as neobehaviorist theory, statistical and economic decision theory, value-expeetancy theory, and Weberian, Parsonian, and Schutzian action theory, and that this core has always already received a lot of attention from completely different perspectives and in completely different applied contexts. This core could provide the systematization required by Giddens' orientation hypotheses. The generality of the nomological core sketched above has a certain consequence that does not, however, point to a principal problem but - in contrast - indicates even more clearly the central advantage of applying this approach in our context: The parameters necessary for the explanation of a concrete action must be specified empirically in each single case. This raises

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the second problem domain, the explanation of actions as the effect of structures (in conjunction with the above-mentioned action theory). This requires the specification of which structural contexts a particular actor (or a particular collective of actors) belongs to, and in which way the membership of the structural contexts is perceived, "interpreted", and evaluated by the actors. These "structural" parameters (in conjunction with information on the respective interpretations, perceptions, and evaluations) can then be used to predict and explain the behavior of the individual actor (together with the above-mentioned theory of action). The result of this part of the explanation will be called the "individual effect" in the following (in line with Lindenberg and Wippler, 1978). The accompanying explanatory problem is labeled the "coordination problem" . From this perspective, the traditional structural explanations or "systems analyses" are forms of implicit solutions to this coordination problem. The third problem domain in explaining collective processes is a consequence of the "duality" of the nature of the social that is particularly due to the fact that the consequences of actions are, as a rule, independent from the action intentions. It is this that first leads to the known emergencies, paradoxes, contradictions, and unplanned results in social processes. However, this makes it necessary, according to the above-mentioned explanation of the actor's action (as a consequence of particular structural constell,ations), to derive the structures reconstituted by the action of the actors in a separate explanatory argument; that is, to make structures understandable as phenomena that are "produced" by individual actors. Such a derivation usually cannot be performed with a simple (additive) aggregation of the individual actions. Additional information and analytic arguments (e.g., about diffusion processes or rules of coordination rules) are frequently necessary. This idea will be explained with a simple example from electoral sociology: In a purely proportional voting procedure, the distribution of seats in a parliament (under the conditions of the respective apportionment system) can be derived almost completely by simply adding up the individual voting actions. However, as soon as an additional (empirical and not explained further here) aggregation rule such as a five-percent rule has to be considered, the collective result is no longer a simple additive aggregation of the single, individual actions. However, the corresponding distribution of seats can be derived deductively from the rule (as a "transformation rule" in the terminology of Lindenberg and Wippler) together with the individual effects. This aggregation problem generally places very high - both empirical and analytic - demands. It is labeled (again following the terminology of

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Lindenberg and Wippler) a transformation problem. The traditional structural explanations have at best solved this problem intuitively. The approaches from behavior theory and interactionism have not even seen it as such (and therefore mostly left it completely open). Even in Giddens' New Rules, it can only be found as a metaphor for a problem that still has to be solved. We can summarize as follows: An adequate explanation of the collective phenomena that interest sociology requires three elements: (1) a general nomological core, which in this case consists of a particular variant of the theory of subjectively rational action; (2) the specification of structural parameters for the explanation of the action of a collective of actors through the action theory (the solution of the coordination problem); and (3) the specification of the aggregation rules that, in conjunction with the individual effects, can be used to provide an adequate explanation of the collective phenomenon in question (the solution of the transformation problem). The basic outline of this explanation is very simply illustrated in Figure 1. It proceeds from a structural constellation (at Time 1) that represents the situational "parameters" for the perceptions and evaluations in individual actors at this timepoint. This can be used in conjunction with an action theory to explain the individual actions of the actors. From these individual actions (and the continued existence of certain personal dispositions in the actors or structural characteristics on the context levels) it is possible to derive - mostly first in conjunction with certain transformation rules - a specific structural consequence at a later timepoint (Context 2), that, in turn, is significant for individual actors and their actions. a ------

Context 2

\

Individual

Individual actors 1

\

~=\ c

-

7'

Actions 2

Fig. 1: An oudine of the relation between contexts, actors, and actions

In this way, it is not only possible to explain the state, emergence, and change of social structures, but, above all, to show in what way such structures are

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always mediated by the microlevel. The most important advantage of this is methodological: It involves an explanation that is adequate according to all the rules of the art (insofar as it is possible to obtain the corresponding empirical information) . It is not a matter of chance that the outline shows certain similarities to the conceptualization of the micro-macro problem in Lindenberg and Wippler (1978), the process explanations in Hernes (1977), the interdependence models in Boudon (1980), or, more recently, also in Coleman (1986). These approaches have developed a solution, in which even the details are similar, within the conceptual framework of the methodology of structure-oriented individualism. From a methodological perspective, these are so-called genetic explanations (see Stegmiiller, 1983, pp. 406-408; Esser et al., 1977, pp. 143 -145), in which very individual and open-ended courses of events can also be modeled by using general laws and either special external conditions or endogeneous conditions produced by the individual process. As principally, these can be the same although changeable units, feedback processes can be modeled just as easily as sequences, oscillations, increases, and decreases, repetitions and unique events, and undirected or directed developments. In other words, even the most highly "individualized" relations can be modeled within the framework of this approach in such a way that predictable results can be derived (as well as phenomena like the "dialectics", the autonomous laws, and the unintended consequences of intentional actions). In addition, three of the most important false conclusions in theoretical argumentation in the social sciences can also be illustrated with the outline. The explanation of the characteristics of a certain structure (Context 2) exclusively through the properties of another structure (Context 1) can be labeled a collectivistic false conclusion (a), according to which there exist some kind of macrosociological laws sui generis that appear to make it plausible for structures to change without any dependence on the actors. All theories that maintain an autonomy of "social systems" from the "individuality of psychological systems" are subject to this type of false conclusion. A psychological false conclusion (b) occurs when the state of the actors at a timepoint is explained exclusively from the individual dispositions of the actors at earlier timepoints and not as a consequence - at least indirectly - of the situational characteristics mediated by actions and actors. Finally, an autopoietic false conclusion (c) - as we shall label it here - is the assumption that actions do not proceed from actors again mediated by contexts, individual characteristics, and earlier actions - but that in some way actions generate

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actions from themselves (as Lulunann appears to assume, see Lulunann, 1984, pp. 228 - 230). The main advantage of the present approach - alongside the fact that it is clearly explanatory - is particularly that the world is made more flexible in the parameters and not in the theoretical core of the nomological hypothesis. In other words: It is not the underlying, general, theoretical core (here an action theory) that is regarded to be historically or structurally variable, but the situational conditions through which explanatory arguments can be derived in conjunction with the theoretical core. Therefore, we are principally in a position in which we can assume parameters that are completely different to those known at present, and at the same time also make systematic predictions for relations that have either not been present up to now or about which we have no knowledge. However, this is exactly the situation with which sociology as a science is continually confronted: The conditions of action change progressively (and indeed unlike many natural sciences, above all in a way that these conditions often have to be regarded as being of a completely new kind). At the same time, it is expected that the action of actors can be predicted within the changed conditions. The approach sketched above permits precisely this: The variation of the changed situational conditions only means the variation in the parameters while the nomological core of the explanation remains constant. Given the parameters and given the nomological core, systematic predictions remain possible. However, this ability is not available to a sociology that is committed to closely relating certain structural relations to certain other structural relations, with the consequence that when the structures change, the entire "explanatory" core can no longer be applied (which is all too rashly, but without justification, used to point to a "scientific revolution" and a multiparadigmatic discipline).

7.

"New Rules" of Sociological Methods?

Durkheim's "rules" did not gain their plausibility by chance, namely, against a background of social structures that had to be described with a more segmentary rather than functional differentiation. The "moulds" in which the action of individuals has to be embedded without particular variations are formed by clear and stable memberships to clearly separated interest structures and cultural milieus. Action and its collective consequences are then directly explicable through the membership to these categories. An "individualistic" basis for

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sociology appears to be superfluous or even erroneous: Where the constraints on action are narrow enough, there is no room for "individual" variation; where the logic of the situation is clear and stable, the psychological logic of the actors is only of interest in sociologically meaningless idiosyncrasies of individual life worlds. In contrast, Giddens' New Rules emphasize - together with a series of voices that use similar arguments - the subjective, active, intentional, creative, and "hermeneutic" basis of social processes. This - according to the abovementioned thesis - is also not random. With the disintegrative trend of the remaining segmentary differentiation in the industrial societies (according to the individualization hypothesis), Durkheim's moulds lose their predictive power. Where the possible options increase, the remaining constraints do not allow us to make any more precise predictions of action. Where the consequences of action become uncertain or inconsistent, this is just as scarcely possible. There are a great number of reasons for this, and we all experience them every day: Role conflicts, status inconsistencies, situation-specific morals, an increasing compulsion to "self-monitoring", and so forth are the consequences of the crossing of social circles, regional and social mobility, the destandardization of biographies and the decline of traditional everyday remedies. As a consequence, the New Rules base sociological methods on the individual and subjective elements that make up social processes, precisely because, apparently, there are increasingly fewer objective "moulds".

The methodological consequences of this development were performed accordingly: Quantitative methods responded with multivariate causal models and more complex auxiliary theories for measuring the theoretical constructs. Depth interviews, narrative biography research, single case analyses, and sociology as a "hermeneutics of the natural life world" gain in plausibility and popularity (and not just because they continue the humanistic tradition of sociology). The reactions of theoretical sociology are also well-known: the decline of functionalism and the appearance in rapid succession of terms for macrosociological processes that repeatedly redescribe the problems that arise but cannot solve them. Finally, a certain "microsociological revolution" arises in the form of the interpretative paradigm and other subjectivistic variants for which Giddens' New Rules are only one particularly visible indication. For the goal of an explanatory sociology, neither the old nor the new rules of sociological method were satisfactory. Durkheim's program applied the nomological core required for each explanation on the level of macrolaws. These laws decline - and the old rules with them - with the disintegration of seg-

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mentary structures and milieus. Although Giddens' New Rules formulate the problem. they do not provide any information on which conditions are then necessary for adequate structural sociological explanations. They do not name a nomological core and actually reject one. And the aggregation problem is left open or not even noticed. Thus. in fact. it is little more than a plea for a hermeneutic microanalysis of "life worlds" in which the most important problem domains of sociology - such as social inequality. traps of interdependences and paradoxes in recursive loops - cannot be considered. Why neither the old nor the new rules of sociological method are able to provide a sufficient methodological basis is made clear by the fact that the old rules anchored the nomological core of their explanations in a historical past; the new rules do not even have such a nomological core and restrict sociological method to the qualitative description of the micro-life-worlds of the actors. The model for the explanation of social processes outlined above should avoid both deficits. This leads on the one hand to introducing and applying the most universal nomological core possible: a theory of action that is not bound to specific historical and institutional conditions but can adopt these conditions as variable elements in its hypotheses. On the other hand. it leads to the naming of the logical and empirical requirements that are necessary for deriving collective contents on the basis of individual effects. In this model. structures are no longer conceived as mere moulds but as individual. and sometimes very variable. opportunities and barriers for action. These opportunities can additionally be modeled as being mediated subjectively and symbolically. The emergence of structures is also explained explicitly as a consequence of individual action; however. not by using simple. linear-additive aggregations. but by introducing particular rules for the transformation of the individual effects in particular collective situations. Thus neither the hermeneutic-subjective analysis of life worlds nor merely the use of orientation hypotheses can reveal how actions lead to structures. At the same time. the advantages of both the old and the new rules should be retained: the analytical-nomological reference of Durkheim's sociology and the idea that individualized structures can represent extremely perceptible constraints. And the consideration of the subjectivization of social action. which is correctly given such a strong emphasis in Giddens' rules, should also be retained. The unification of both aspects -

nomological modeling of structural courses and "hermeneutic" analysis of meaningful action - is often (still) considered

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impossible: Actions can only be understood and not explained; hermeneutic analyses cannot be integrated into the study of the constraints and dynamics of social systems; actor-oriented theories cannnot assess structures and unplanned processes, and so forth. The model should also clarify in a schematic way that subjectivization and nomological explanation, actor-oriented theory and the analysis of situation-related constraints, microanalysis and macrotheory, and quantitative and qualitative methods are not (necessarily) mutually exclusive. Neither micro- nor macroanalysis alone, neither a hermeneutic reconstruction of the subjective life world of the actors nor an "institutional analysis" alone, nor even theories about the "life world" or about "systems" can by themselves provide the necessary power of explanation. This explanatory power can also not be provided by merely programatically demanding that micro- and macrolevels be considered together, and so forth. The considerations then flow into elements of rules of sociological method whose combination, at a first glance, could appear to be unusual: the detailed description of the embedding of actors in subjectively and symbolically mediated structures; the modeling of this embeddedness in a nomological theory of action (as the core of the entire explanation); the detailed presentation of the formal and informal rules through which particular results of action determined in a collective of actors are transformed into collective consequences; and the modeling or the empirical analysis of unintended consequences of the interdependencies of actors or the unplanned sequential consequences of their actions. To put it shortly, a combination of the modeling of ideal types, of nomological explanation, and of "qualitative" detailed analysis and description (as well as - it goes without saying - independent and systematic tests of the theoretical suppositions). That this will step across the neatly kept borders between interpretative and explanatory sociology and that possibly neither the supporters of the old nor even those of the "new" sociological method will like to rediscover themselves in these rules is probably of secondary importance (and for this reason is easy to accept).

References Alexander, J.e. (1988). The new theoretical movement. In J.N. Smelser (Ed.), Handbook of sociology (pp. 77 -101). Newbury Park: Sage.

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Alexander, J.C., and Giesen, B. (1987). From reduction to linkage: The long view of the micro-macro link. In J.C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Miinch, and N.J. Smelser (Eds.), The micro-macro link (pp. 1-42). BerkeleylLos AngelesfLondon: University of California Press. Beck, U. (1986). Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Beck-Gemsheim, E. (1986). Vom "Dasein fUr Andere" zum Anspruch auf ein Stiick "eigenes Leben": Individualisierungsprozesse im weiblichen Lebenszusammenhang. Soziale Welt, 34, pp. 308-340. Beck-Gernsheim, E. (1986). Von der Liebe zur Beziehung? Veriinderungen im Verhiiltnis von Mann und Frau in der individualisierten Gesellschaft. Soziale Welt, Sonderband 4, pp. 209-233. Blumer, H. (1962). Society as social interaction. In A.M. Rose (Ed.), Human behavior and social process. An interactionist approach (pp. 179-192). London: Routledge. Bohnen, A. (1975). Individualismus und Gesellschaftstheorie. Tiibingen: Mohr. Boudon, R. (1983). Individual action and social change: A no-theory of social change. British Journal of Sociology, 34, 1-18. Coleman, J. (1986). Social theory, social research, and the theory of action. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 1309-1335. Collins. R. (1981). On the microfoundations of macrosociology. American Journal of Sociology, 86, 984-1014. Druwe, U. (1988). "Selbstorganisation" in den Sozialwissenschaften. Kolner Zeitschrift fUr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 40, 7862-7875. Durkheim, E. (1973). Suicide: A study in sociology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Durkheim, E. (1982). The rules of sociological method and selected texts on sociology and its method. S. Lukes (Ed.). W.D. Halls (Trans.). London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd. Elias, N. (1970). Was ist Soziologie? Miinchen: Juventa. Esser, H. (1979). Methodologische Konsequenzen gesellschaftlicher Differenzierung. Zeitschrift fUr Soziologie, 8, 14-27. Esser, H., Klenovits, K., and Zehnpfennig, H. (1977). Wissenschaftstheorie 1: Grundlagen und Analytische Wissenschaftstheorie. Stuttgart: Teubner. Friedrichs, J. (Ed.) (1988). Soziologische Stadtforschung. Sonderheft 29, Kolner Zeitschrift fUr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Giddens, A. (1976). New rules of sociological method: A positive critique of interpretative sociologies. London: Hutchinson. Giesen, B., and Haferkamp, H. (Eds.) (1987). Soziologie der sozialen Ungleichheit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Hernes, G. (1977). Structural change in social processes. American Sociological Review, 29, 513-547.

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Homans, G.C. (1964). Bringing men back in. American Sociological Review, 29, 809-818. Huber, J. (1988). Soziale Bewegungen. Zeitscbrift far Soziologie, 17, 424 - 435. Japp, K.P. (1984). Selbsterzeugung oder Fremdverschulden. Thesen zum Rationalismus in den Theorien sozialer Bewegungen. Soziale Welt, 35, 313-329.

Kaase, M. (1986). Das Mikro-Makro-Puzzle der empirischen Sozialforschung. Anmerkungen zum Problem der Aggregatstabilitit bei individueller Instabilitit bei Panel-Befragungen. KoIner Zeitscbrift fUr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 38, 209-222. Lepsius, M.R. (1973). Parteiensystem und Sozialstruktur: Zum Problem der Demokratisierung der deutschen Gesellschaft. In G.A. Ritter (Ed.), Deutsche Parteien vor 1918 (pp. 56-8C». KoIn: Kiepenheuer and Witsch. Lindenberg, S. and Wippler, R. (1978). Theorienvergleich: Elemente der Rekonstruktion. In K.-o. Hondrich and J. Matthes (Eds.), Theorienvergleich in den Sozialwissenschaften (pp. 219-231). Darmstadt und Neuwied: Luchterhand. Luhmann, N. (1975). Legitimation durch Verfahren. (2nd 00.) Darmstadt und Neuwied: Luchterhand. Luhmann, N. (1984). Soziale Systeme. Grundri8 einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Mayntz, R. (1985). Ober den begrenzten Nutzen metbodologischer RegeIn in der Sozialforschung. Soziale Welt, Sonderheft 3, 65-77. Mayntz, R. (1988). Funktionelle Teilsysteme in der Theorie sozialer Differenzierung. In R. Mayntz, B. Rosewitz, U. Schimank, and R. Stichweh (Eds.), Differenzierung und Verselbstindigung. Zur Entwicldung gesellschaftlicher Teilsysteme (pp. 11-44). Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Mayntz, R. (1985). Ober den begrenzten Nutzen methodologischer Regeln in der Sozialforschung. Soziale Welt, Sonderband 3, 65-77. Parsons, T., et al. (1962). Some fundamental categories of the theory of action: A general statement. In T. Parsons and E.A. Shields (Eds.), Toward a general theory of action (pp. 3-29). New York and Evanston: Harper. (1st ed. 1951) Popper, K.R. (1969). The poverty of historicism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Schimank, U. (1985). Der mangelnde Akteurbezug systemtheoretischer Erklarungen gesellschaftlicher Differenzierung - Ein Diskussionsvorschlag. Zeitscbrift fUr Soziologie, 14, 421-434. Schimank, U. (1988). Gesellschaftliche Teilsysteme a1s Akteurfl.ktionen. KOiner Zeitsebrift fUr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 40, 619-639. Schnell, R., Hill, P.B., and Esser, E. (1988). Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung. Miinchen: Oldenbourg. Schutz, A. (1964). The problem of rationality in the social world. In A. SchUtz, Collected Papers, Vol. 2, The Hague: Martinus Nighoff. Stegmilller, W. (1983). Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschaftstheorie und Analytischen Philosophie, Vol. 1: Erklarung, Begriindung, Kausalitit (2nd. ed.). Berlin! Heidelberg/ New York: Springer.

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Vanberg, V. (1975). Die zwei Soziologien. Individualismus und Kollektivismus in der Sozialtheorie. Tiibingen: Mohr. Weber, M. (1972). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tiibingen: Mohr. Weidlich, W., and Haag, G. (1983). Concepts and models of a quantitative sociology. The dynamics of interacting populations. Berlin: Springer. Wilson, T. (1970). Concepts of interaction and forms of sociological explanation. American Sociological Review, 53, 697-710. Wippler, R., and Lindenberg, S. (1987). Collective phenomena and rational choice. In J.C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Miinch, and N.J. Smelser (Eds.) , The micro-macro link (pp. 135-152). BerkeleylLos AngeleslLondon: University of California Press.

Is an Advocatory Ethic at All Possible? Micha Brumlik

The question about the possibility of an advocatory ethic - like the question about any kind of ethic - refers to uncertainities in action. The question about what to do usually emerges when our everyday or traditional action orientations crumble because of doubts, lack of success, or disappointments. In the field of pedagogy, the question about an advocatory ethic rders to the problem whether we are at all and to what extent obliged in our roles as educators to help others become themselves. Do we not incapacitate others by such intentions without asking them? Do we not just misuse such an ethk as a guise to advance our own interests? These are the questions that each advmhis opinion of the present state of the capitalist formation of society as a. "bureaucratic society of controlled consumption" (1972). Viewed against a systematically presented historical development of the deformation of everyday life into ordinariness, this society becomes "the social place of highly developed exploitation and carefully

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controlled passivity" (Lerebvre, 1972a, p. 149), so that strategies of a social dealing with the ordinariness, with the people living in it, with associated objectives and reasons can be identified. Even if Lefebvre's interest and objective can be connected to the content of Habermas's statements on communicative rationality as the constitutive condition of reason, freedom, and subjectivity, Lefebvre - just to fill this perspective materialistically in his analysis - goes decisively beyond Habermas's reductions that lie in his substantial limitation to problems of the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld. He develops a concept of the "reproduction of conditions of production" (Lefebvre, 1974) and links it with his opinion that the criticism of everyday life includes the criticism of political economy (1973, p. 262). Insisting on the necessity of a theory of societal labor (1977, Vol. I, p. 140), Lerebvre can make the role of the economy in the process of social reproduction a central theme (1972, pp. 266-267, p. 177, Vol. III, p. 159). He combines this with discussions on the "political meaning" of the criticism of political economy and its object (1969, p. 14, 1975, pp. 114-115), ending in the conclusion that the analysis of the economic basis only allows the realization of the basic structure of a society, but that it does not yet lead to insights into how it actually works (1977, Vol. III, p. 153). This also includes the acquisition of a theoretical approach and apparatus to help define processes of producing and reproducing social conditions in contrast to the production of things. Based on this approach, Lefebvre justifies his intention to open up the definitions of the term "capital", as they were categorically understood by Marx, toward their underlying real historical processes and movements. This means that limitations arising from the object of criticism of political economy, which is the capitalistic society, must be surmounted, because economic thinking and an enclosed, limited understanding of production in a materialistic sense enjoys some priority in this society. A conception of production as "production of man by man himself, by means of diverse works in the course of history" (1975, pp. 114-115) not only builds the background but also opens up a perspective to qualify the state of "modernity" as a historical product of social practices and, by this, its transitional character (1977, Vol. III, p. 164). Lefebvre's reference to Marx's concept of the production paradigm within which the unity of a double process of work and reproduction of social relations is described, emphasizes - in contrast to the way this is done in

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Habermas's separation of the material from the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld - the mediation between the practical relations of people to nature that is projected into the image of a reconciliation between man and nature by Lefebvre and Adorno and the historically changing production of relationships among human beings. A conscious production of social relations is first of all opposed by attempts of the capital to reach totality that are reconstructed by Lefebvre for the different historical stages of this movement for accomplishment and in its consequences on appearances at the surface of societies without disregarding those constitutive circumstances of the conditions of capital that are established deep in the structure. This approach enables Lefebvre to classify the actual movement for accomplishment and consolidation of the conditions of capital that has the image of a self-realization movement, basically as access to subjectivity in the form of access to space and time. Thus, with a historical-systematic intention, Lefebvre's theories of modernity, of the urban, of the cumulative and noncumulative processes - and associated types of time - and of ordinariness overlap: Hence the stages and processes of development in both human history and the history of capitalism become the object of analysis. The subsumption movement of the capitalization process takes place without the latter disappearing in it, by means of a double process in the modem world: the process of complexity and homogenization. "What matters to us is to see the unity of the double process and perhaps to realize its inner conflicts. The homogenization, Le., the mimesis, is hidden in the complexity. Nevertheless, it is not inconceivable that one day the qualitative complexity will be the winner over the world of the homogeneous where the differences are only fictitious." (Lefebvre, 1975, p. 226; translated). Now, what is decisive is to analyze into which different shapes and forms this process of complexity and homogenization, which characterizes modernity, splits up and can be split up in order to see how the attempt is made to realize the aim of this subsumption process, the conditioning of the individual (1977, Vol. III, p. 169) and the negation of subjectivity: Hidden in the process of the "Vergesellschaftung of society" there is a dialectical movement: "Totality or rather totalization; individualization (or the "personalization" that has started in individualism - and also failed, by the way); finally, particularization which has been aggravated into segregation by means of a very

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efficient analysis of the functions of groups and occupations. This triple movement contains a variety of contradictions." (1977, Vol. III, p. 166; translated). This process that traces back uniformation with its essential consequences to processes of separation like cutting up the coherence of life into work, private life, and leisure time (1972, pp. 86-88, 1978, pp. 254-256; see Slinker, 1984, pp. 23-25), finds its fmal stage of development in the access to ordinariness that covers up the process of uniformation from above, and this suppresses the differences because it is even more extensively cut up than work is (1978, p. 146). Owing to this form of totalization of society that splits up into the triple movement of "Vergesellschaftung", particularization, and individualization (1978, pp. 326, 340), there is a decisive limitation of constitutional conditions of subjectivity and competence of acting: "'Attitudes' have taken the place of autonomous occupations" (1972, p. 243). What this decisive development builds up complementary to the one that comprehends the conditions of existence of members of this society, is an importance that lies in the fact that "the ordinary in modem world ... has ceased to be a 'subject' (full of potential subjectivity) in order to become an 'object' (of social organization)" (1972, p. 88). This puts in concrete terms what Marx has defined on the level of a categorical differentiation of the term capital for the position of work and of living work capacity: Work as the general productive force of wealth, as subjectivity, is reduced to the purpose of being an element of the capital (see, Marx, 1972, p.205). The programming of ordinariness as a mechanism of power, and privatism as a form of existence of the members of the late capitalistic society complement one another. In its connection to privatism, ordinariness, which is in fact cut up into pieces though it is equipped with an appearance of unity, leads to passivity, to nonparticipation (Lefebvre, 1975, pp. 120-122, 1974, p. 102, 1972a, p. 195, 1978, p. 146). Detailed studies on the structure and content of privatism lead Lefebvre to the opinion that this privatism builds the basis or the end of an advancement of the individual and must not be mistaken for the realization of the individual because it rather arises from the substitution of subjectivity by some subjectivism (Lefebvre, 1973, p. 30, 1978, p. 246).

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Alternatives that serve to prevent this negative development arise from a practice that has to be developed both individually and socially and that is founded in a new form of thinking and acting and their unity: The basics of this are, on the one hand, a loss of meaning that comes along with the totalizing building of a system, and thus a substantial inability to integrate, and, on the other hand, what Lefebvre characterizes as the project of the "total human being": it is the human being as an individual who has recognized himself: "The .real acquisition« of humanity through humanity itself, the acquisition of nature - and also the inner nature of humanity, too - by the social being, and thus the return of the human to itself with all the .wealth of development«, so that this wealth will develop again in everyday practice, will eventually take place, become reality." (1978, p. 358; translated).

4.

Perspectives

Even Hegel - to remain within the specifically German tradition - has already analyzed in his "Philosophie des Rechts" (philosophy of right) the interrelations between the members of the bourgeois society as being externally and particularistic. In contrast to that, Marx spoke of the "association of free individuals" in his "Grundrisse der Kritik der poJitischen Okonomie" (Foundations of the critique of political economy). Taking into account the previous considerations, the consequences of this external connection are becoming increasingly obvious today. A concept of "children at risk" that is based on the foregoing analyses has to center on the relation between subjectivity and social orientation. The future of the "individual" and the social system, as it is established in capitalistic societies, is tied together in an inverse relationship: If the "individual" should survive, the social system has to be changed and vice versa. Some corresponding approaches and topics can be found in the debates by Postman (1982), Hengst (1981), and Wambach (1981; see Castel, Castel, and Lovell, 1982). Processes of individualization taking the shape of subjectivism, individualism, and privatism also lead to consequences for the social figuration of "childhood". The individualization of the social status "child" is backed up by processes of differentiating family relationships (e.g., families without fathers/ mothers, new partners of the parents), so that children ~xperience very different social settings. This leads to a pluralization of biographies and to the disappearance of the foundations of the concept of "normal life" as it is

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determined by the welfare state as a starting point for measures of prevention and intervention. This, however, does not effect a pluralization of chances in life for everybody, but essentially promotes the segregation of society, which in turn - as the analyses of Lefebvre have shown - lays the foundation for improved social control and social disciplining of potential subjects.

In this way, the aim of an enlightened modern age, the autonomy of everybody's practical life on the basis of universal principles Gustice, freedom, equality), is counteracted. At the same time, it is becoming clear that today the attack on autonomy, the functionalization and conditionalization of individuals - if it is meant to be successful - has to start off with a colonization of childhood. It is my opinion that the social theoretical and social political discussion about prevention - especially with regard to "children at risk" - has to go back to the history of childhood in the bourgeois world and try to learn something from these processes. Based on ethnographic or civilization-theoretical arguments, some studies within the current German research in the field analyze the social determination and construction of children's lives, of being a child, as well as images of childhood by concepts derived from the history of childhood. They analyze the philanthropic discourse on childhood that includes the support as well as the control of children as the process of "Padagogisierung" ("pedagogization") of childhood. This process aims at a specific qualification of the members of a social class to take part in social life, that is, de facto to take part in economic competition (Richter, 1987; Wild, 1987).

In the context of an ideology-critical destruction of what can be decoded as "possessive individualism" (MacPherson, 1962), it is obvious that egoism, privatism, and the welfare of all have always excluded each other; but nowadays the consequences of this process of "Vergesellschaftung" have left traces in everybody's life. That is why childhood, the social cultural product of working on the "fact of development" in the first phase of human existence (Bernfeld, 1967, p. 51), should not be linked as a function to the predominant social conditions today. Perhaps, it is only by means of strengthening the independence of children's lives - of their subjectivity - and by taking seriously everybody's rational talents, that one may succeed in structuring pedagogical, familial, and generally social acting in such a way that today's decisive risk "future" becomes workable as a problem of a just world. Therefore, the pedagogical is political.

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Not only in this respect, it is quite useful to refer to the introductory considerations about professionalization and the question of design space in social work, child care, and so forth: This is now the question of the societal location of prevention. Here it is decided whether prevention is conceptualized as a social technique with the aim of social control and colonization or as a process on the basis of communicative action - according to Habermas (1981) - or it might be explained in the context of the theory of Lefebvre with his interest in rehabilitating everyday life, which means to strengthen the ambiguity of everyday life against the processes of colonization. Both approaches refer to discussions about the possibilities of establishing a mode of life that might be called ..autonomy of action". This includes the necessity to think about universal rights, human rights, and children's rights within their social context.

Note 1 The term "Vergesellschaftung", as it is used here, has been developed by new critical social theory based on Marx's analyses of political economy and capitalism. The term characterizes those processes by which the particularistic structures and expressive relationships of small systems and communities (Gemeinschaft) are absorbed into universalistic structures and changed to instrumental relationships. In a wider sense, the term designates those processes by which the structures of market economy and industrial production dominate all social relationships and social systems that have hitherto relied on noneconomic relationships. Translating this term by "socialization" would be especially misleading in the context of this article. Therefore the German term is used throughout.

References AIanen, L. (1988). Rethinking childhood. Acta Sociologica 31, 53-67. Bardy, M. (1988). Policies of childhood. In H. Ph. Hepworth (Ed.), Canadian seminar on childhood implications for child care policies, June 1988 (pp. 222 - 233). Vienna: European Centre for Social Welfare. Beck, U. (1986). Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Beck, U. (1988). Gegengifte. Die organisierte Unverantwortlichkeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Bernfeld, S. (1967/1925). Sisyphos oder die Grenzen der Erziehung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Brinkmann, W., and Honig, M.-S. (1984). Kinderschutz als sozialpolitische Praxis: Hilfe, Schutz und Kontrolle. Miinchen: KOsel.

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Castel, R. (1983). Von der GeIahrlichkeit zum Risiko. In M.M. Wambach (Ed.), Der Mensch als Risiko (pp. 51-74). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Castel, F., Castel, R., and LovelI, A. (1982). Psychiatrisierung des Alltags. Produktion und Vermarktung der Psychowaren in den USA. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Chorover, St.L. (1979). From genesis to genocide. The meaning of human nature and the power of behavior control. New York: Bantam. Cochran, M. (1987). Empowering families: An alternative to the deficit model. In K. Hurrelmann, F.-X. Kaufmann, and F. LOseI (Eds.), Social intervention: Potential and constraints (pp. 105-120). Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Evers, A., and Nowotny, H. (1987). O'ber den Umgang mit der Unsicherheit. Die Entdeckung der Gestaltbarkeit von Gesel1schaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Engelbert, A. (1986). KinderalItag und Kinderumwelt. Frankfurt: Campus. Geulen, D. (1987). Zur Integration von entwicklungspsychologischer Theorie und empirischer Sozia\isationsforschung. Zeitschrift fiir Sozialisationsforschung und Erziehungssoziologie, 1,2-25. Habermas, J. (1981). Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Vols. Suhrkamp.

1-2, Frankfurt:

Hegel, G.W.F. (1967). Philosophy of right. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hellerich, G. (1983). Screening in den USA: Der KleinstIdnder-TUv. In M.M. Wambach (Ed.), Der Mensch als Risiko (pp. 137-149). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Hengst, H. (1981). Tendenzen der Liquidierung von Kindheit. In H. Hengst, M. Koehler, B. Riedmilller, and M.M. Wambach (Eds.), Kindheit a1s Fiktion (pp. 11-72). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Hengst, H. (1985). Perspektiven einer subjektorientierten Kulturforschung. In H. Hengst (Ed.), Kindheit in Europa (pp. 302-315). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Heyns, B. (1987). Professionalism and children's services. In K. Hurrelmann, F.-X. Kaufmann, and F. LOseI (Eds.), Social intervention: Potential and constraints (pp. 7586). Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Honig, M.-S. (1986). Verhauslichte Gewalt. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Jugendbericht, 5 (1980). Bericht iiber Bestrebungen und Leistungen der Jugendhilfe. Bonn: Bundestagsdrucksache 8/3685 Kaufmann, F.-X., Herlth, A., Schulze, H.-J., and Strohmeier, K.P. (1984). Wirkungen offentIicher Sozial1eistungen auf den familialen SozialisationsprozeB. In K. Liischer (Ed.), Sozialpolitik fUr das Kind (pp. 181-211). Frankfurt: Ullstein. Lang, S. (1985): Lebensbedingungen und Lebensqualitiit von Kindern. Frankfurt: Campus. Lefebvre, H. (1969). Aufstand in Frankreich. FrankfurtlMain: Ed. Voltaire. Lefebvre, H. (1972). Das Alltagsleben in der modernen Welt. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Lefebvre, H. (1972a). Die Revolution der Stiidte. Miinchen: List. Lefebvre, H. (1973). La somme et Ie reste. Lausanne: Belibaste.

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Lefebvre, H. (1974). Die Zukunft des Kapitalismus. Die Reproduktion der Produktionsverhaltnisse. Miinchen: List. Lefebvre, H. (1975). Metaphilosophie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Lefebvre, H. (1977). Kritik des Alltagslebens. Mit einem Vorwort zur deutschen Ausgabe. Vols. 1-3. Kronberg: Athenaum. Lefebvre, H. (1978). Einfiihrung in die Modernitiit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Liegle, L. (1987). Welten der Kindheit und Familie. Weinheim: Juventa. Liischer, K. (1984). Sozialpolitik fiir das Kind: Ein allgemeiner Bezugsrahmen. In K. Liischer (Ed.), Sozialpolitik fiir das Kind (pp. 13 -48). Frankfurt: Ullstein. MacPherson, C. B. (1962): The political theory of possessive individualism. Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marx, K. (1972). Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie. Frankfurt: EVA. Mause de, L. (1975). The evolution of childhood. In L. de Mause (Ed.), The history of childhood. New York: Harper. Postman, N. (1982). The disappearance of childhood. New York: Delacorte Press. Richter, D. (1987). Das fremde Kind. Zur Entstehung der Kindheitsbilder des biirgerlichen Zeitalters. Frankfurt: Fischer. Simitis, S. et al. (1979). Kindeswohl. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Slinker, H. (1984). Bildungstheorie und Erziehungspraxis. Bielefeld: Kleine. Slinker, H. (1989). Subjectivity and social work. Education, 40, 95-116. van Krieken, R. (1986). Social theory and child welfare. Theory and Society 15, 401-429. Wambach, M.M. (1981). Kinder als Gefabr und Risiko. Zur Psychiatrisierung und Therapeutisierung von Kindheit. In H. Hengst, M. Koehler, B. Riedmiiller, and M.M. Wambach (Eds.), Kindheit als Fiktion (pp. 191 - 231). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Wambach, M.M. (Ed.)(1983). Der Mensch als Risiko. Zur Logik von Pravention und Friiherkennung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Wild, R. (1987). Die Vernunft der Vliter. Zur Psychographie von Biirgerlichkeit und Aufklarung in Deutschland am Beispiel ihrer Literatur fUr Kinder. Stuttgart: Metzler.

Prevention Through Institutional Change? The Preventive Potential in the Reorganization of Social Services Karin Bollert

1.

Introduction

The life situations of the recipients of individually centered social services currently show, or have already manifested, problems that cannot be attributed causally to the individual and thus tend to weaken the relevance of the previously dominant, single-case-related logic of intervention. A processing of such new problem states - for example, in the way they manifest against the background of structural unemployment and the change in family structures can only be successful if the available care facilities are no longer made secondary in the hierarchy and subordinated to the goal of correcting individual behavior difficulties. In this context, there is no lack of proposals aimed at obtaining more adequate access to the problems of the clients through institutional restructuring. The integration of facilities in urban districts, the strengthening of the cooperation with other facilities, or the institutionalization of special education and outpatient measures are the demands that are most frequently named here. The following will investigate whether corresponding measures of reorganization will actually lead to the necessary administrative preconditions for a preventive processing of problems.

2.

The Design of the Study and the OperationaJization of the Research Issues

This issue was investigated by carrying out semistructured, guided interviews in 28 urban youth welfare offices in North Rhine-Westphalia. Most of the questions presented to the experts in the youth welfare offices dealt with general and functionally specific subject areas. The interviews with the chiefs of social welfare departments were scheduled to analyze the link between youth welfare and the sociopolitical and communal contexts and action scopes. However, the

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Karin BOllen

decisions made in the political policy-making process only find their concrete application in the administrative action of the social service administrations represented by the heads of the youth welfare offices and their representatives in this study. In contrast, the chiefs of department are characterized by their relative closeness to the actual consequences of politically defined and administratively structured goals of youth-welfare-specific interventions.'

As the results of a pilot study had shown that it could not be assumed that youth welfare offices have a homogeneous structure, we will first refer to the debate on the reorganization of social services (see KUhn, 1980; Miiller and Otto, 1980) and systemize the administrative preconditions of preventive youth welfare and test the premises of the characteristics of its design. Alongside the institutionalized decision-making and control structures and the opportunities that adolescents have to participate in decision-making processes, we are particularly interested in the reasons for implemented or planned changes in the structural organizations and in studying whether the combination of internal and external services, the decentralization and regionalization of social services, and the setting up of teams of counseling and control instruments has changed the perception of the tasks and goals of public child guidance (see Japp and Olk, 1981). Particularly in the analysis of the last-mentioned complex of issues, problem definitions and problem-solving patterns are related to the administrative framing conditions of youth welfare work in order to more closely assess their potential for prevention.

3.

Organizational Structure of Public Child Guidance

In the presentation of the results, it must first be pointed out that comprehensive changes in structure have to be assumed compared to the description of the organization of youth welfare offices in the Third Report on Youth (Dritter Jugendbericht, 1972). The reason for this is that the reorganization of youth welfare offices in North Rhine-Westphalia is relatively advanced. A reorganization of social services has already occurred in 21 youth welfare offices and it has only been purposefully ignored in 3 youth welfare offices. Related to the single, previously mentioned constructional features of the reorganization, the following results can be presented in summary. The central criterion for differentiating between the 21 reorganized and the 7 nonreorganized youth welfare offices is the merging of internal and external services (see Bronke and Wenzel, 1980). In contrast to earlier studies, in which

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this organizational feature was predominantly viewed from the perspective of the cooperation between social workers and administrative personnel, the development of this cooperative relationship no longer plays any role. In the majority of cases, internal and external services are exclusively performed by social workers. However, this does not mean that this has been accompanied by a neglect of administrative aspects of the work; it is far more the case that administrative work has been integrated into the field of activity of the social worker. There is no longer any distribution of labor between administration and social work within the youth welfare offices. It is far more the case that it can be summarized that the merging of internal and external duties has imposed itself as an organizational form of public child guidance services. Also in the measures of reorganization that have not yet been carried out, this design feature forms the decisive starting point. Alongside the merging of internal and external duties, the goal of "tight linkages to the community" should also be achieved through the regionalization and decentralization of social services (see Schafer, 1980). Independent of the implementation of organizational restrueturings, work in local districts and administrative separation of areas of activities respecting local competence have become a widely shared component of public child guidance. Major differentiations can be made with regard to the extent of decentralization, that is, the size of the districts. These differences are mostly explained by the chosen method of forming districts. Larger districts are generally due to the distribution of districts being organized according to the structures of urban administration or the number of personnel not permitting smaller divisions. As sizes of up to 30,000 persons per district cannot meet the demand for overseeable district units that are oriented toward existing local structures and conceivable for those employed, some of the youth welfare offices exhibit attempts to arrive at a more suitable distribution of districts. This has been achieved partly by forming smaller areas of responsibility within larger districts. Another procedure plans to completely reorganize the districts according to demographic data. As a consequence of this, further restructurings of the offices are planned. Whether decentralization will actually lead to more tight linkages with the community is as yet unexplained by this. At least the size of some of the districts justifies doubts. However, in the end, these linkages are not an essential feature of a social administration but are mainly decided by the results of its activities (see Schafer, 1980). Thus community linkages are no longer a measure that is exclusively constituted organizationally but is essentially determined by the goals and frameworks of activity that are used to access the clients (see Bourgett, Preusser, and Volkl, 1980; Brulle and Marshall, 1981).

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The separation of special services has already been hailed as a further constructional feature of reorganization. The available findings on this permit the conclusion that in all youth welfare offices, not only a separation of special services from the general education services has been accomplished but, in addition, an expansion of this subdomain has occurred. As in the decentralization of social services, this principle of organization has multiplied independently from the measures of reorganization. Decisive for the separation and centralization of special services is the small number of cases in the districts, the need for special qualifications, the intensification of care for clients, and the long-term cooperation with other institutions (see Japp and Olk, 1981). Juvenile court assistance, care of adopted children, adoption services, and the field of legal guardianship have been joined in recent years by education committees and, in some towns, the use of street workers. Nevertheless, there are some signs of a correction to this trend, as the first attempts to decentralize the special services or the inclusion of the corresponding social workers in the team or group work of the general child guidance services should counter the anticipated threat of an increase in the duplication of care and competence problems. However, the question of specialization as opposed to generalization of the qualification of social workers appears to be decided for the time being. With the widespread establishment of special services and the general child guidance services, independent fields of activities have been created for generalists and specialists.

In addition to the previously described organizational restrueturings, the opportunities for planning internal communication processes and decisionmaking structures take an important position in the discussion of the reorganization of social services. Particularly through the institutionalization of the team principle, the work of social workers should be interrelated and the decisionmaking basis should be professionally grounded. Once again, independent of the implementation of measures of reorganization, the single-case responsibility of social workers has succeeded in establishing itself in all offices. All respondents stressed that the social workers were given a broad decisionmaking scope in their work that was only rarely restricted by control interventions. This single-case responsibility is generally also not disrupted by the participation in team or group work sessions. Mostly, the social workers themselves decide when and whether they offer a case for discussion within a group, that is, the participation in a team occurs more or less exclusively on a voluntary basis - in contrast, the institutionalization of teams with decisionmaking competences is the exception. While in one-third of the youth welfare

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offices, almost no teamwork is intended, in the other welfare offices, stronger forms of group work with a counseling function or the principle of a "temporally limited" team work have formed. Here, work groups have more the character of a "decentralized work discussion;" their purpose is to pass on information and coordinate work fields, and they are frequently called by the senior officer of a section or a chief of department. Against the background of a major expansion of personnel in the youth welfare offices and a spatial separation of social workers due to the regionalization of social services, the work group is, above all, an efficient form of organization from the perspective of the administration (see Irle, 1980). It is not the horizontal expansion of a professional control that is the focus of attention here; it is far more the case that the vertical control structure is even strengthened by the position of the chiefs of department and senior officers of a section. Professional counseling is only practiced when this is expressly desired by the social workers or when the ..seriousness" of the cases makes this necessary.

In this context, it is particularly important that the decision-making competences administratively assigned to the social workers are almost exclusively oriented toward the dominant form of single-case processing. In everyday practice, the single-case responsibility has certainly given major decisionmaking scope to the social workers, however, only so long as this is used in a so-to-speak "inconspicuous" framework. As soon as their work involves high-cost interventions or when work fields that lie outside of the corresponding professional field have to be introduced, the single-case responsibility is dropped in favor of hierarchical decision-making structures. Along with the increased participation in team sessions and group work, social workers are simultaneously faced with an increased pressure to reveal the bases of their decisions and if necessary let them be revised by colleagues. This fact points to the equal presence of controlling effects of team work and group work in youth welfare alongside the counseling function. Before presenting more detail on the goals and breadth of the forms and structures of organizations described, an important point should not be forgotten here. In addition to the internal decision-making and control structures, the survey asked how much scope the children and adolescents themselves have within the framework of the processing of problems. All respondents assumed that there had been enormous changes in the opportunities for adolescents to contribute to the discussions in recent years. This opinion is not least an administrative reaction to the fact that the clients "present themselves differently" than before. On the one hand, greater use is made of the right to complain; on

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Karin BOUert

the other hand, self-help groups and initiatives by clients have contributed to a revised perspective - without the adolescents themselves accepting the decisions, an assistance can only have a very restricted possibility of success.

4.

Goals and Breadth of Administrative Structures

Beyond describing different forms and structures of organization, we shall now concentrate on how far administrative preconditions for a preventive youth welfare have formed within the framework of organizational restructurings. A study of the reasons for measures of reorganization first makes it clear that administrative criteria of rationality were predominant or were the triggers for the reorganization of social services. In 10 youth welfare offices, the need for restructuring was reported to depend on the welfare reforms carried out in North Rhine-Westphalia at the beginning of the 1970s. The merging of previously independent towns carried out in the framework of communal reorganization called for the standardization of different organizational structures. In addition, in five further towns, specific local regulations such as the reorganization of departments or the restratification of personnel triggered reorganization. The common feature of these measures is that they were first imposed on the youth welfare offices externally, and stronger, professionally developed criteria, such as the improvement of care facilities, only contributed to their legitimation afterwards. Only in six offices were such criteria focused on from the start against the background of an increasing ineffectiveness of the existing care facilities. As the breadth of organizational changes cannot be derived directly from their causes, the effects that can be achieved through the reorganization are more informative for an estimation of the preventive potential of the administrative structures. As Figure 1 shows, the breadth of measures of reorganization is restricted to a limited change in the perception of tasks. The integration of internal and external duties and the completed decentralization of facilities have particularly led to a stronger concentration of care facilities, to an expansion of outpatient measures, and to "shorter paths" for the clients and to the target groups. Neither the goals of work in the field of public child guidance have been greatly influenced by this nor have new target groups been contacted. The breadth of the reorganization remains restricted to the intensification of the care

Prevention Through Institutional Change?

163

100

1 " - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ,

80%

60%

40%

20%

s

d

s

s

d

8S~

lS~

41~

70.6~

29.4~

N=64

s d

= No changes through measures of reorganization = changed through measures of reorganization ~

= Aim of public educational services

tj = Responsibilities of public educational services ~ = Clients of public educational services Fig. 1:

Changes as result of measures of reorgBJJizatiOD with regard to aims, responsibilities and clients

of the classic clients and is at most supplemented by the inclusion of members of the client's family in the problem processing. Public child guidance thus continues to be characterized by a single-ease-oriented approach; compensatory and thus finally also always controlling approaches to their clients have hardly been dismantled; in other words, the changes in the problem situations of the clients sketched at the beginning remain broadly unconsidered. On the basis of these findings, the high level of support that is given to the

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Karin BOllert

relevance of organizational structures for the possibility of having a preventive impact is at first surprising. Only one respondent assumed that the available organizational conditions did not sufficiently meet the requirements for preventive activity in child guidance. All the others stressed good to optimal preconditions supplemented by proposals for improvements that in most cases referred to an expansion of the cooperation between various departments or to the institutionalization of new special services. This apparent discrepancy between the predominantly negative estimation of the breadth of measures of reorganization and the positive evaluation of organizational structures is resolved when the respondents' replies to the preventive achievement profile of previously realized measures and facilities are included. Thirteen respondents who assumed that assistance has a preventive effect were opposed by 53 persons who considered that prevention is at best only beginning to be achieved. However, a lack of preventive facilities was expressly not traced back to the existing organizational structures. Instead, the real working procedures and assignments described in this context indicate that the respondents considered child guidance to be in a secondary position and that they are more or less only able to perform reactive interventions. Because of this, the corresponding facilities and measures lack the necessary acceptance among the adolescent clients; this makes a general contribution to the solidification of the negative image of child guidance and thereby to the entire youth welfare service that is complained about from all sides. Here it can clearly be seen that although the organizational restructurings have changed the construction of the youth welfare offices and the departments for public child guidance, the goal perspectives of the work developing within these structures have not been influenced by this.

S.

Discussion of the Results of the Study

Against the background of these findings, the reduction of many preventive approaches to the demand for further changes in the organizational structures of public child guidance is more than dubious. The exclusiveness of administrative changes that is expressed in this does not lead anywhere. Basically, it can be assumed that the multiple integration of internal and external services, the decentralization of the forms of the facilities offered, and the institutionalization of various special services have first created the basic framing conditions for a preventive orientation in public child guidance. However, as long as the dominance of secondary, reactive single-case work remains untouched by this,

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165

measures of reorganization will have no consequences for the implementation of preventive potentials. Only a comprehensively revised goal perspective in child guidance can lead to the types of facility that are more adequate for the problem here. This requires that youth welfare must achieve complementary, supportive, and autonomous preventive facilities characterized by a change in the impact on societal areas and fields of education. In this perspective, youth welfare should then step beyond its classical orientation toward minority or peripheral groups to become a vehicle of public education on the same terms as the socialization authorities of school, family, and educational system. The need for such an expansion and separation of the area of work and responsibility in youth welfare is justified above all by the need to institutionalize facilities and work to supplement the family and the school, as both the institution of the family as well as the school and education system cannot meet the demands of the modernization process in society. In all, measures and interventions of youth welfare should be directed to the welfare state's goal of providing equality of opportunity and the support of egalitarian structures in society and individual action scope - a demand that can hardly be expected to be met through further measures of reorganization.

Note 1 In all, 97 analyzable interviews were carried out with a total of 110 respondents. The interviews were distributed across the single groups as follows: 24 with chiefs of social welfare departments, 28 with youth welfare office managers, 17 with provisional youth welfare office managers, and 28 with chiefs of department.

References Bourgett, J., Preusser, N., and VOlkl, R. (1980). Kommunale Sozialpolitik, Sozialokologie und Verwaltungshandeln in der Jugend- und Sozialhilfe. Neue Praxis, Sonderheft 5, pp.

29-60. Brooke, K., and Wenzel, G. (1980). Rechtliche Aspekte der Integration des Jugendamtes in eine Gesamtorganisation der sozialen Dienste. Neue Praxis, Sonderheft 5, pp. 140145. Briille, H., and Marshall, A. (1981). Sozialarbeit im Stadtteil - Der soziale Raum als Strukturprinzip kommunaler Sozialarbeit. Neue Praxis, Sonderheft 6, pp. 82 - 92. Irle, G. (1980). Wie rational sind Organisationsstrukturen? Ambivalente Auswirkungen der Neuorganisation sozialer Dienste. Neue Praxis, Sonderheft 5, pp. 145 -159.

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Japp, K.P., and Olk, T. (1981). Zur Neuorganisation sozialer Dienste. In Projektgruppe Soziale Berufe (Eds.), Sozialarbeit: Problemwandel und Institutionen. Expertisen 2, MOOchen: Juventa Dritter Jugendbericht (1972). Bericht uber Bestrebungen und Leistungen der Jugendhilfe gemiB § 25 Abs. 2 des Jugendwohlfahrtsgesetzes. Bonn. KUhn, D. (1980). Historisch-systematische Darstellung von Neuorganisationsmodellen der kommunalen Sozialverwaltung. Neue Praxis, Scnderheft 5, pp. 90-106. MUlier, S., and Otto, H.-U. (Eds.)(198O). Sozialarbeit als Sozialblirokratie? Zur Neuorganisation sozialer Dienste. Neue Praxis, Sonderheft 5, Darmstadt: Luchterhand Schafer, P. (1980). Der Beitrag der Neuorganisation der sozialen Dienste fUr eine blirgernahe kommunale Sozialpolitik. Neue Praxis, Sonderheft 5, pp. 106-121.

Innovation Despite Bureaucracy? On the Self-Misunderstanding of Social Work Gaby Flosser

1.

Introduction

While a need for innovation in social work is certified from many sides today, the opportunity for fundamental refonn is viewed rather sceptically. The times of model designs and of a conceptual redesign of the sector of client-centered services seem to have found their preliminary end in the 1970s with the "reorganization of social services" in the course of restructuring community administrations in West Germany. The search for further opportunities for development thus concentrates on the "restructuring of what is there", that is, on the constitutive elements of social work activity. The characteristic duality of bureaucratic and professional elements of social work is therefore a central starting point in both theoretical as well as practical considerations on the implementation of new patterns of action. Internal administrative reorientations in favor of "professionalization" and of a decrease in administrative rationalities focus their hope for a "better" way of dealing with problems on the group of the social workers themselves. Additionally, there is criticism of an expertocratic variant of increasing professionalization supported by social movements ("self-help movement") and new fonns of social engagement ("new honorary engagement"). Others, in turn, choose categories of space ("district orientation") as criteria of possibly recognizing and handling social problems earlier and with closer reference to contexts. The third expect the sunnounting of a social work that only acts reactive-compensatorily to be gained by a new set of instruments ("competence of action"). These and other, often singularly and contrastingly handled, attempts to find solutions stand behind the tenn of prevention as an approach to optimize efficient and effective social work. However, it will all depend on structuring social work with respect to these reorientations in such a way that organizational, professional, and the clients' interests are equally taken into account.

168

2.

Gaby FI6sser

The Research Issue and the Design of the Study

Taking up these general formulations of the need for institutional development, the research program, the results of which will be the focus of discussion in the following, concentrates on two central structural features of social work: organization and profession. The program's title "administrative and professional prerequisites of preventive youth services" already implies that the resultant effects of concrete determinations of the relation between profession and organization within social administrations are of primary importance. The empirical investigation is guided by the following premises: Social work action in the field of youth services - especially in public educational services - is characterized by an internally contradictory unity of bureaucratic and professional elements of action (see, e.g., Blau and Scott, 1971; Bohnisch and Losch, 1973; Otto, 1973). This unity is contradictory because bureaucracy and profession follow two conflicting rationalities of action: While the type of bureaucracy follows a rather calculatedly rational, functional orientation, the professional conception of action is rather dominated by value-rational, communicative criteria ("code of ethics"). This conflictladen! basis of institutionalized social work, however, cannot be resolved in favor of the one or the other side; neither are youth services identical with "what is there as an organization" (see Wohlert, 1980, p. 148), nor can social bureaucracy work without measures that are predictable and can be controlled (see Gross, 1982, p. 33). A bureaucracy-theoretical spelling toward a "mechanical" administration is therefore as obsolete as a profession-theoretical building of indicators that follows the conventional ideal of a free-lance legitimation of action. Organization-theoretically, it is thus a matter of analyzing the latest findings with respect to social organizations or social institutions (see Plake, 1981); profession-theoretically, the profession-sociologically interesting stage of development in the work of services must sui generis be made the topic of an analysis that is not drowned in the distortions of a false fixed point of the so-called full professions (see Olk, 1986). As ideal-type theorems, however, "bureaucracy" and "profession" can only be helpful for locating social work in the network of organizations of social services: Their relationship is usually characterized as inverse in organization- or profession-sociological discourses. Organizational dysfunctions are suspected behind an extension of professional standards, and - the other way round professional deficits (e.g., discontent, lack of work ethic, alienation) are

Innovation Despite Bureaucracy?

169

assumed in a dominance of bureaucratic routines among social work actions (see Hall, 1968; Benson, 1973). With reference to the field of an institutionalized social work, this determination of relation seems to be decided in favor of the latter argumentation of a regulating and regimenting bureaucracy. The complaints about administrative constraints that stand in the way of realizing the "good" (client-oriented) intentions of the social workers belong to the fixed conventions in profession-specific definitions of position. This conception of a subordination of the profession and a priority of administration that cannot be compensated has been promoted not least by the concept of "semiprofessions" (Etzioni, 1969). Out of these considerations, the research interest is focused on how professionality develops under the conditions of organization. The crossover of organizational and professional conditions of preventive youth services is of main interest for an empirical reconstruction of these two forms of control. It will be important in this context to reconstruct the administrative processes of equalizing and balancing and to analyse them for possible potentials of innovation. For this purpose, an investigation was carried out in 28 youth authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia. With detailed complexes of questions on the field of organizational framework conditions and on professional orientations of action, the aim was to gain information on the conditions and chances of development of administrative social work from the social workers employed in this institutional setting. The investigation was carried out with 375 social workers who mainly work with 14- to 18-year-old adolescents in public education outside of closed or open institutions. The sample of social workers to be questioned was gained from personnel lists using a stacked quotation procedure: The number of people to be questioned depended on the size of the respective authorities; at least 10 but no more than 35 people from each authority were selected. This procedure was chosen so that the smaller authorities would also be represented sufficiently in the investigation. Among the examined fields of work were: general field work, family and educational support, advisory services, social work at schools, facilities for unemployed adolescents, juveniles asking for asylum, and homeless adolescents. The social workers questioned amounted to 33% of the total of 1,125 social workers in the selected fields of work. The representativity of the investigation can thus be assumed.

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Gaby FIOsser

The instrument of investigation was a standardized questionnaire that was filled in by the social workers themselves in groups of no more than four persons with members of the project present; the average time for each interview sequence was 2 hours. The investigation took place between February and August 1987.

3.

Developmental Trends Within the Setting of Social Work Action

Beside the social challenges that justify a need for development of social work, at least two internal, structural changes give cause to redefine the relation between bureaucracy and profession. These refer to (1): the structure of staff in the field of youth services; and (2): the status reached by the reorganization of social services. 1. The development of staff can be taken as an indication that the field is becoming increasingly professionalized, that is, that the staff consists of more and more trained people, socio-pedagogically trained specialist staff, and of an increasing number of experts who have graduated from universities (see Rauschenbach et al., 1988, p. 191). Against this background, it can be assumed that an implementation of the knowledge of the social sciences into the actions of social workers has taken place, and that this will lead to the successful generation of a professional identity. 2. Although the current state of reorganization cannot in any way be judged as sufficient (see Otto, 1991), the internal administrative processes of restructuring and change at least reflect the attempt to create a compatibility of organizational toward professional objectives (see Japp and Olk, 1981). This thrust of development in the personal and organizational prerequisites of person-orientated services can cause two reformulations with respect to the relationship between bureaucracy and profession: The first possibility, which is described as "passive professionalization", means that in the context of reorganization there is a delegation of formerly administrative and rational routines of action to the professionals' sphere of competence resulting in a partial alignment of the bureaucratic with the professional standards. The driving force in these changes is to be seen in the consequences of functional deficits of the organization.

Innovation Despite Bureaucracy?

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The contrary trend of professional and bureaucratic routines of action coming closer has been initiated by the professionals themselves and is therefore described as a process of "active professionalization". The integration of rational administrative tasks into the repertoire of social work action refers to a professional identity that does not restrict itself to the classical role of an educator and helper whose constitutive feature is to reject any form of administrative tasks that are "foreign to the subject". Calculatedly rational

Professional bureaucracy

Bureaucracy

~

Developmental trends

Passive professionalization

SemiProfessional

Active professionalization

Ii

ValueRational

Bureaucratic professional

Classical professions

Fig. 1: Developmental trends in the setting of social work

The determinants of position against the background of the suggested developmental directions within the setting of social work imply specific consequences for each of the relations between profession and organization.

4.

Three Types of Organizational Programming

The empirical operationalization of the determination of the relation between profession and organization was carried out with the help of "programming" the dominant aspect gained in the analysis of factors. This term describes the measures of coordination that are supposed to guarantee the participation and cooperation of the social workers under the given organizational framework conditions. However, it is not a matter of a detailed determination of concrete processes and effects of action, but of working out the general pattern of the (correct and useful) course of action (see Hegner, 1976, pp. 240-251). Programming itself is differentiated into different levels (laws, organizational regulations, cooperative self-eoordination) according to the grade of formaliza-

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Gaby Flooser

tion and generalization on the one hand, and with respect to the modus, the contextual reference that it regiments and defines (aims, causes, measures), on 2 the other hand. The highly complex picture of organizational controlling influences on the professional forms of action that result in fully differentiated levels and modes of programming in youth authorities could be separated into three different types of control by cluster-analytical methods. Both the questioned social workers and the selected youth authorities represent these three types in a proportion of 1 : 2 : 1.3 The types reflect three different structural patterns of organizational rationality whose quantitative and qualitative features make it possible to refer to chances of development of the profession as well as to draw conclusions about preventive potentials. The cluster analysis essentially provides some information on the quantitative feature of the programming density. The three types are differentiated correspondingly: 1. First, there is a highly programmed type (n = 85), characterized by the fact that the three levels of programming are dominated by an outstandingly high performance of control through the organization. The cooperative self-eoordination falls behind the other two levels of programming (see Table 1: Results of programming for Type I). This can be explained in accordance with organization-sociological theories by the fact that obviously only little relevance is attached to the communicative forms of control when a high rate of programming is put down in writing (see Kieser and Kubicek, 1983). 2. A second type (n = 198) of organizational programming is characterized by an altogether low density of programming. On all three levels of programming, the organization's performance of control is below the mean (see Table 1: Results of programming for Type II) so that it can be assumed that the professional scope of action is relatively great under these circumstances. 3. The third type (n = 82) shows the lowest density of programming on the levels of programming put down in writing but the highest on the level of cooperative self-coordination. The altogether low extent of performance of control on the levels of legal and organizational programming is compensated by a high proportion of communicative agreements (see Table 1: Results of programming for Type III).

173

Innovation Despite Bureaucracy? Tab. 1: Means of Organizational Types of Program Type I

Type

n

m

Type

M

Levels of programming

Laws

9.3

6.9

6.0

7.4

Organizational regulations

9.2

6.6

6.0

7.3

SelfCoordination

8.2

5.5

8.7

7.5

Modes of programming') L

0

S

M

L

0

S

M

L

0

S

M

Aims

3.0

2.9

2.8

2.9

2.2

2.1

1.8

2.0

1.8

1.9

2.9

2.2

Causes

3.2

3.3

2.9

3.1

2.4

2.3

1.9

2.2

2.2

2.1

3.0

2.4

Measures

3.0

3.0

2.7

2.9

2.3

2.2

1.7

2.1

2.0

2.1

2.8

2.3

Noce: a)

The foUowing abbreviations refer to !he levels of programming: "L" stands for laws. "0" for organizational regulations. and ·S· for self-coordination.

"Semiprofessionals"

The construct of "semiprofessions" chosen for a characterization of this type of administrative rationality carries central implications for the development of institutionalized professionality: A functionally differentiated social administration defines the framework conditions, starting points, and limits of social work action (see Mok, 1969; Daheim, 1982). According to this context, the legitimization of the relevance of social work interventions in the case of certain socially produced problems does not result from a specific monopoly of competence, but from the claiming of certain problems - that seem suitable for being handled through the organization of social help itself. The concrete form of organization regulates the responsibilities of social work, while the measures of coordination (referred to as programming here) mark the professional scope of action, discretion, and decision. Under these circumstances, professionality is limited to producing organizationally defined services.

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This limited status and the executing role of social workers find their expression mainly in the small extent of the scopes of discretion and action that are made available to the professionals (see Table 2). Tab. 2: Scopes of Discretion and Action (t test) Semiprofessional

Bureaucratic professional

Professional bureaucracy

... fully exhaust scopes of discretion

1.46-

1.75

1.79

... flexibly handle roles and official regulations

1.45-

1.62

1.71

... only use the scopes of action that are given by laws and regulations

1.6~

1.41

1.40

I can ...

Poles: No p = .00

= 1.0; Yes = 2.0

• = significant differences to the other two types

A further indicator of the subordinate role of profession is that it is only slightly involved in the definition of the problems that constitute the content of social work. Tab. 3: Distribution of Competences of Defming

p

Legal requirements

Organization/ Youth authority

Clients

Staff

Semiprofessional

lJ

38

%

45.2

16 19.0

27 32.1

3 3.6

Bureaucratic professional

lJ

%

69 35.2

28 14.2

93 47.4

6 3.1

Professional bureaucracy

%

16 20.3

17 21.6

42 53.2

4 5.1

= .02

c (contingency coefficient)

lJ

= .22

Innovation Despite Bureaucracy?

175

From the perspective of the "semiprofessional" (see Table 3), the greater part of the power of defining is due to external, codified definitions of problems that do not necessarily correspond to professional criteria. It is obvious that the professionals (3.6%) who are involved in the interactive process as constitutive elements of professional action are confronted with outside definitions of their problems. The legal codification (45.2%) of the background of relevance of professional action, however, can necessarily only claim some validity through the formalization and standardization of problems. Thus, an individual and possibly flexible understanding of a case, which results from the privileged position of the social worker, is withdrawn from the sphere of competence of the responsible official. The legally inherent individualization of social problems, however, prejudges a scheme of problem definitions that underexposes the existing interdependences (see Luhmann, 1981, p. 87). The regimentation and curtailment of professional competence, as it has become clear as unilaterally oriented toward the functional interests of the organization, is judged as negative by the professionals themselves. Under these circumstances, standards of professional action can only be applied to a restricted extent. With the example of the interactive relation in processes of problem negotiation, it can be clarified that the pushing through of the hierarchic relations that are prevailing in the organization is also demanded in the relation to the clients, although the professionals prefer communicative forms of problem solution. An index of expertocratic forms of behavior toward adolescents, that is, pushing through organizational forms of expectations and demands, is negatively correlated with an index of communicative modes of problem solving (r = - .18), thus showing that these types of behavior are opposed to each other. On the whole, it can be stressed that legal implications (r = - .13) as well as organizational framework conditions (r = - .22) rather prevent the development of a "new professionality". while the cooperative self-coordination corresponds to the collective professional identity (r = .30).

s.

"Passive" Versus"Active" ProfessionaJization

While a great proportion of theoretical and practical conceptions on the implementation of preventive strategies in social administrations make the type of the "semiprofessional" the starting point of their considerations, the results of this study indicate that two-thirds of all the social workers asked find themselves in entirely different working conditions. These can be put down especial-

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Iy to the organization partially abstaining from directive control influences. For the use of the professional scope of action developing this way, the processes of "passive" or "active" professionalization are of a decisive importance: Obvious differences appear, especially in the reflection on the subjectively claimed status and the evaluation of one's own competence: In the case of the "bureaucratic professional", professional competence becomes a feature of the personality that determines capabilities and forms of the responsible social worker's dealing with the individual case. The proportion of individual decision making is appropriately high (see Table 4). Problem solutions are hardly ever prepared or discussed among the colleagues (15.9%); the subjective estimations and standards of evaluation of problems (68.8%) are central factors influencing problem solutions. The exposed role that falls on the personality of the social worker in dealing with problems also becomes obvious when looking at the relation to the clientele. Although capabilities to recognize the problem solutions of the adolescents are not the decisive factor for choosing strategies of problem solution, these are nevertheless negotiated in a process of dialogue. "Persuasiveness instead of rules of conduct", could be the shortened fonnula for the design of the interactive relationship between the "bureaucratic professional" and the adolescents . Tab. 4: Scopes of Decision Semiprofessional

Bureaucratic professional

Professional bureaucracy

.. . after prior consultations with superiors

7.2%

7.0%

6.9%

... after prior consultations with colleagues

20.0%

15.9%*

21.4%

... after prior consultations with superiors and colleagues

11.5%

8.3%

8.4%

... autonomously

61.3%

68.8%*

63.2%

100%

100%

100%

I make decisions ...

P=' .05

• significant differences between this group and both other groups

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Innovation Despite Bureaucracy?

In contrast to the semiprofessional, who has to obey administrative imperatives against personal action orientations, the "bureaucratic professional" develops a profile of competences that bears central compatibilities with administrative interests. This finds its expression primarily in the dominating orientation to individual cases in dealing with problems. The amicability with organizational forms of control is obvious here, since even for the models of reorganization it must be stressed that they are first of all interested in the solution of problems but rather less interested in an analysis of social and individual causes and their abolition (see Baum, 1987, p. 461). Hence, it is not the dominance of bureaucratic elements of professional action that justifies the characterization as "bureaucratic professionals" in the first place but rather the "voluntary" arrangement; the "internalization" of organizational expectations and demands. Without a provable exertion of influence and directives through explicit factors of control, social work practice remains "what it has always been".

18.5% 21.1 % 11.8%

semiprofessional

20.3%

bureaucratic professional

20.3%

7.4%

professional bureaucracy

~

Controlling influences by the head of the department

~

Controlling influences by the head of the youth authorities

M;j;j;~;1;~;1

Nonacceptance or revision of decisions by superiors

Fig. 2: Influences of control in different types of professional rationalities

Even the concept of "professional bureaucracy" as a result of processes of "active professionalization" implies a shift of main interest in this type of administrative rationality. While, in the former characterizations of types, the professionality of the individual social worker came to the fore in their forms of conflict or of the arrangements with organizational framework conditions, the relation between bureaucracy and profession cannot be resolved in favor of the one or the other side in this case. The change of perspective therefore takes

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place from the person toward the profession. A developed professional identity documented by an extent of cooperative self-coordination that is well above average (see Table 4) is confronted with clear influences of control through the organization. The importance of the group of colleagues within "professional bureaucracy" generates new challenges for the organization. The guarantee of the professional's loyalty gains some centered importance for the organizational tasks. It could be shown that this happens primarily through controlling examinations of decisions and measures. Shifts and supplements of the traditional repertoire of action have become apparent: The work with groups, the support of self-help potentials, as well as the coordination and assistance of district activities play a much more important role in the everyday work of "professional bureaucracy" than in the other two types. It has been shown, however, that traditional forms of handling are not neglected. The trend to expand social work action beyond the limits of traditional single-case work finds its counterpart in the interactive behavior with adolescents. Beside supporting assistance, the causes and conditions of the development of problems are included in the considerations of an adequate handling of the case. From the perspective of the professionals, the background of experience made in the individual social environments of the adolescents plays an important role in this context. This expansion of conventional social work practice is opposed by the guarantee of service facilities from the organization. Here, it is especially the legal regulations that mark the limits of the professional scope of action. The fact, however, that even alternative forms of solving and dealing with problems are considered, shows that an exclusively pragmatic adjustment to the codified tasks of social work cannot be noticed.

6.

The Self-Misunderstanding of Social Work

The presented analysis of the framework conditions of social work action, as well as the implications they carry for attitudes and patterns of orientation in the professional dealing with problems, call for a critical reformulation of the relation between profession and organization. The differentiations in the organizational structures on the one hand, and in the professional patterns of orientations on the other, as they were described here, with its consequences of conformity, the equalization of deficits (that brings with it a rational, onesided dealing with problems), and a critical look at the framework conditions

Innovation Despite Bureaucracy?

179

constituting the place of work, imply the necessity of a revision of the building up of static fronts between profession and organization. Instead of going on to promote the incompatibility of the two conceptions of rationality, there is rather a need for most differentiated analyses of the arrangements that characterize the social administrations. In this context, an essential fact that could be worked out is that the optimizing of dealing with social problems, which is hidden behind the everyday attempt to redefine the status of social work action, cannot be thought of as a quasi-automatic process. Very often

Often

..... -----

Rarely

.... - - .. ..... --~ ----." ." ..'. ~" . ............

.

"

Never Reacting to atypical behavior

Dealing with the causes of problems

Considering personal networks

Activating social environment

Participating in local policy making

_ _ _ _ Semiprofessional _ _ _ _ _ Bureaucratic professional . . . . . . . . .. Professional bureaucracy Fig. 3: Frequency of institutional forms of coping with problems differentiated according to

administrative patterns of structure

Neither thrusts of innovation through the reorganization of social services, nor just the gain of knowledge reached as a result of attempts of professionalization found their expression as immediate consequences in the practical fields of social work. The dominating handing down of established practices, however, must be critically evaluated, especially from the perspective of new challenges for social work. A pragmatic implementation of profession into social administrations that are defined from outside and that fulfill the organizational demands - as it has been described for the type of the bureaucratic professional - promises only little change with respect to anticipatory, preventive problem solutions. However, a radical renunciation of the conventional patterns of social work orientations and action could not be shown for any of the other

Gaby FlOsser

180

administrative rationalities either. After all, some signs and chances of development in supplementing and widening the traditional repertoire were to be seen. That this must not necessarily be accompanied by a neglect of the traditionally offered services is explained once again in Figure 3. The merely weak shifts verify that the functional interests of the organization are not threatened in any of the three causes. Absolutely new qualities of professional action therefore do not only result from internal administrative constellations. A developed professional identity, on the one hand, can be mentioned as an indication of innovative trends that are primarily characterized by a renunciation of a clinical, curative ideal of the profession. Developments of organizations that strive not only for an increase of their internal efficiency but also for a changed perception of and relation to their environment, therefore require some professionalization. In contrast to classic models, the professional is not primarily the competently acting practitioner but someone with the capability to contrast genuinely professional standards of problem definitions and solutions with those of the organization. Against the background of a still necessary process of finding a consent, conflicting formulations of interests promise a more dynamic relation between profession and bureaucracy. Especially with respect to the evaluation of possible preventive potentials, a social work that is thus institutionalized gains chances of not getting stuck in the mutual prejudices of dichotomic rationalities.

Notes This "conflict thesis" is summarized by Davies as follows: "Profession and bureaucracy were thought to be antithetical both at the level of structural principles for organising work and at the level of motivation and compliance. The attempted insertion of 'professionals' into 'bureaucratic organisations' was a readily recognisable sociological problem. Terms such as 'strain', 'conflict', 'accomodation', 'adjustment' were central." (Davies, 1983, p. 177). 2 The indices of the factor "programming" were built with the help of the items: How often does it happen in your fields of work that laws, organizational regulations,

informal rules and arrangements ...

make it impossible for you to decide independently on the causes for taking action; do not allow you any scope with regard to selecting various measures; do not allow you to make your own definition of aims.

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Innovation Despite Bureaucracy? 3

To protect the anonymity of the respondents, we will only list the distributions with the group of the social workers here. An analysis of specific youth authorities could not be made since the small number of people questioned in the smaller authorities would not guarantee anonymity. However, the types correspond to a dominating form of control within the individual youth authorities, as the organizational unit correlates to a large .43; p .00). degree with the assignment of social workers to one of the types (c

=

=

References Baum, D. (1987). Die Bedeutung der Organisationsentwicklung Sozialpolitik. Zeitsehrift rur Sozialreform, 33, 449-471.

rur eine integrative kommunale

Benson, K.J. (1973). The analysis of bureaucratic-professional conflict: Functional versus dialectical approaches. The Sociological Quarterly, 14, 376-394. Blau, P.M., and Scott, W.R. (1971). Professionelle und biirokratische Orientierung in formalen Organisationen - dargestellt am Beispiel der Sozialarbeiter. In H.-U. Otto and K. Utermann (Eds.), Sozialarbeit als Beruf. Auf dem Weg zur Professionalisierung? (pp. 125 -139). MOOchen: Juventa. Boehnisch, L., and LOsch, H. (1973). Das Handlungsverstiindnis des Sozialarbeiters und seine institutionelle Determination. In H.-U. Otto and S. Schneider (Eds.), Gesellschaftliche Perspektiven der Sozialarbeit, Vol. 2 (pp. 21-40). Neuwied: Luchterhand. Daheim, H.-J. (1982). Zu einer Zwischenbilanz der Soziologischen Berufsforschung. In G. Schmidt et al. (Eds.), Materialien zur Industriesoziologie, Sonderheft 24 der KOIner Zeitschrift rur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 373 - 384. Davies, D. (1983). Professionals in bureaucracies: The conflict thesis revisited. In R. Dingwall and Ph. Lewis (Eds.), The sociology of the professions (pp. 177-194), London: Macmillan. Etzioni, A. (1969). The semi-professions and their organization. New York: Free Press. Gross, P. (1982). Der Wohlfahrtsstaat und die Bedeutung der Selbsthilfebewegung. Soziale Welt, 33, 26-48. Hall, R. (1968). Professionalization and bureaucratization. American Sociological Review, 33,

92-104.

Hegner, F. (1976). Strukturmerkmale organisierter Handlungssysteme. In D. Bl1schges (Ed.), Organisation und Herrschaft (pp. 226-251). Reinbek: Rowohlt. Japp, K.-P., and Olk, T. (1981). Zur Neuorganisation sozialer Dienste. In Projektgruppe Soziale Berufe (Ed.), Sozialarbeit - Problemwandel und Institutionen, Expertisen II (pp. 82 -115). MOOchen: Juventa. Kieser, A., and Kubicek, H. (1983). Organisation. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Luhmann, N. (1981). Politische Theorie im Wohlfahrtsstaat. MOOchen: Olzog. Mok, A. (1969). Alte und Neue Professionen. KaIner Zeitsehrift psychologie, 21, 770 - 781.

rur

Soziologie und Sozial-

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Olk, T. (1986). Abschied yom Experten. WeinbeimlMiinchen: Juventa. Otto, H.-D. (1973). Professionalisierung der gesellschaftlichen Neuorientierung. Zur Transformation des beruflichen Handelns in der Sozialarbeit. In H.-D. Otto and S. Schneider (Eds.), Gesellschaftliche Perspektiven der Sozialarbeit. Vol. 2, (pp. 247 - 261). Neuwied: Lucbterhand. Otto, H.-D. (1991). Sozialarbeit zwischen Routine und Innovation. Professionelles Handeln in Sozialadministrationen. BerlinlNew York: de Gruyter. Plake, N. (1981). Die Sozialisationsorganisationen. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Rauschenbach, Th., Bendele, D., and Trede, W. (1988). Mitarbeiter in der Jugendhilfe. Struktur und Wandel des Personals in sozialen Diensten. Archiv fUr Wissenschaft und Praxis der sozialen Arbeit, 19, 163 -197. Wohlert. F. (1980). Jugendhilfe und Organisation. Frankfurt: Haag and Herchen.

Normalization of Eroded Daily Life: Methodizing Everyday Life in Institutional Contexts Regine Gildemeister

1.

Psychosocial Work in Transition

Social work applies in the broad sense to people whose lives have become problematic, finding themselves in a situation that they cannot change (or want to change) by themselves or alone. Yet the opinions on the essential characteristics of "problems" diverge widely. For modem societies "life problems" are increasingly being understood in psychosocial categories. At the same time such problems are still defmed as "disturbances" or "deviations." In the last few decades an enormous expansion of such psychosocially oriented work in prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation has taken place; particularly in the course of and in the wider context of psychiatric reform in the Federal Republic of Germany, a far-reaching institutionalization of the way such problems are handled can be seen. A relatively independent, multifaceted field of "psychosocial care" has come into its own in which prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation, however, can hardly be individual categories. In the following, the transformations in this field are briefly sketched and related to the current debates on "individualization." Mterwards some of the results of an ethnographically oriented field research in relevant institutions are described on the basis of "thick descriptions" (Geertz, 1973). Finally, some conclusions are drawn on what has been developed.

An Oudine of Psychiatric Reform in the Federal Republic of Germany

One main emphasis of the reform goals was to avoid excluding people "suffering from psychological disturbances" from the mainstream of life. Outpatient and partial inpatient institutions were to be set up instead of "asylums." The respective services were to be oriented to the psychological, social, and material needs of the life world of the disturbed; these facilities were to deal

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with psychological disturbances and emotional suffering in the larger context of the social situation. The key words were: dismantling the "medical view," decentralized care within a conununity on a practical level, cooperation of various professional groups (multiprofessionality), and coordination and planning of care and provision offered on the basis of requirement assessments. The reform, however, preserved the dominance of the medical experts, in that the treatment primacy of qualified doctors and clinics was legally defined, whereas the complementary care speciality was prohibited from treating people. Nonetheless, a number of care centers developed in this speciality area, ranging from contact clubs, advice centers, day clinics, and workshops to homes. One can say that above all this area of complementary provisions has become the major field for various approaches to reform. These care centers are supposed to stabilize the social and job situation of emotionally disturbed people without infringing on the areas of competence of doctors/therapists: However, where the boundary lines should be drawn between "consultation," "looking after," "therapy," and "treatment" cannot be answered yet in the current discussion. The discussion on the forms of psychosocial care was related to a large extent to the question of organization (decentralization-centralization, differentiationdedifferentiation, etc.) It was primarily oriented to the structure of the care provisions offered but less to what happened in this field. As a result, the microstructures of what was being done professionally and institutionally were examined in less detail; the perspectives of the clients in these institutions and their concrete problems suffered the same fate. These aspects, however, are becoming more and more important; for not only is the structure of the provisions offered in transformation but also what manifests itself or is seen as "psychological suffering" seems to be undergoing transformation.

Recent Epidemiological Results and Their Discussion Recent epidemiological studies indicate that changes are taking place in the scope and the way psychological suffering occurs (Dohrenwend et al" 1980; Hinterhuber, 1982; Dilling et al., 1984; Hafner, 1985; Will, 1985; Cremerius, 1985). If one excludes the problems of predetermined psychopathological categories, then these changes result in a phenomenon called "demoralization" that arises in conjunction with "classical" emotional disturbances and addictions. Demoralization consists of attitudes and basic positions such as hopelessness, anxieties

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185

about the future, helplessness, low self-esteem, and so forth. More and more people suffer from emotional disturbances without displaying specific, narrowly prescriptive symptoms. "Gray-zone illnesses" arise: diffuse suffering, anxiety, disturbed learning and performance, disturbed relationships and behavior, depressive means of coping, and new addictions. These "gray zones" have in fact become part of widespread social nonnality. At the same time, the perception of problems is being put into individualized categories: Social and economic problems represent problems of the individual and result in or demand corresponding forms of dealing with and reacting to them (Piven and Cloward, 1979). The increase in such individualized forms of coping and the loss of collective forms of resistance and combatting crises represents a central trend in the current discussion that is unrefuted as a phenomenon but whose origins need further explanation. The present discussion on "individualization" as a historically new form of socialization has by no means been concluded (see Kohli and Robert, 1984; Beck, 1986; Brose and Hildenbrand, 1988). Above all, it is unclear what individualization actually means and to what extent this term is used in various meanings that are not synonymous (see Kohli, 1988, pp. 34-36). A large degree of consensus, however, is found above and beyond these various positions in the view that individuals are being "freed" from traditional social bonds, that life-styles are becoming pluralized and segmented, and that one must assume a decreasing obligation for traditional ways of understanding life expectations and forms of identity to orientate themselves in a given way. This means that individuals are, to a much larger extent than ever before, structurally left to themselves and must therefore take on difficult tasks of societal processes (Vergesellschaftung) of integration. This confirmed process of becoming "free," which also includes opportunities for dissent and (increases) potential for deviation, corresponds to processes of flexibilized discursive control. This is related to the expansion of so-called "soft" processing modi of psychologically and therapeutically oriented services and provisions, mentioned above. This discussion on the ever more subtle controls in the "therapy society" is also by no means finished (see Castel et al., 1982; Hellerich, 1985; Wambach, 1983; Bopp, 1985). The following is important for our purposes: During the course of psychological disturbance, people drop out of the normalcy categories of the social world around them; they cannot or will not conform to the integration norms demanded of them. This is not just a simple problem of adjustment It is much more the multifaceted structure of social reality that can no longer be transferred to an individual life. Individual forms of inner experience, modes of

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Regine Gildemeister

action and life-styles, meaningful patterns of behavior of a superior quality, and heteronomous demands for action collapse. A sense of loss of the "natural evidence" of everyday patterns of life arises. This is a fundamental orientation problem of balancing and integrating contradictory expectations in various dimensions in a "successful," "meaningful" living of life.

The Institutionalization of Normalization Work Using the tools of early diagnosis and correction, psychosocial work has the task of bringing about this balance, of encouraging the development of appropriate competences, of filling in deficits in orientation and, in the end, of making itself superfluous. The strategies of social work take effect in daily patterns of life, daily patterns of meaningfulness, and daily self-references in which "distortion," symptoms, and "deviation" are identified. Whether prevention, intervention, or rehabilitation, any kind of care is always "normalization work." Here we must assume the self-evident "nature" of society's ideas of normalcy - they are the basis of every kind of "prevention" and "intervention. " From a functional perspective, the guaranteeing of normal societal conditions has crystallized out as the central significance of social service work (e.g.,

Japp, 1986). Little is said, however, about the normalization work that must be done here. On the one hand, the individuality and uniqueness of situations and persons must be taken into consideration, and, on the other hand, the results must produce a condition that corresponds to the generally accepted principles of order and values. These two opposing objectives are independent of the respective field of work on which social service work in general is based but apply particularly to the institutions providing reformed psychosocial care studied here. Contrary to the case of detention and custodial institutions, the institutions aiming at prevention and therapy as "processes of removing disturbance" must solve or try to solve the problems of psychological deviation by enabling the individuals who have gone beyond the ideas of normalcy, and have thus been pushed to the outer fringes of society, to be able and to want to (again) fulfill the integration norms society expects of them. Various types of institution have developed against the backdrop of the call for "care closely associated with everyday life." These institutions are primarily characterized by their dual nature: They are formal organizations bound within a "system" of psychosocial care institutions, yet on the other hand are considered by their members to have the qualities and character of a "real" life

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187

world. And not just in a general sense: namely, as psychosocial institutions in which the creation and guarantee of a "communal communicative environment" is a central aim. Let us make this more pointed: The common denominator of psychosocial work can be characterized by the management of the erosion of daily life: the loss of certain qualities needed for everyday living by the people affected.These qualities are to be corrected. The erosion or the loss is defined as the consequence of a "disturbance," a deficiency in the individual. The aim of the work is then to "un-disturb" the disturbed; to normalize them. Here, too, this is not to be understood as a "simple" adjustment but rather as a balance between the two "opposing objectives" outlined above. In the course of the increasing complexity of living within a changing society described above, the requirement and responsibility profiles of the "individualized person" are very demanding. This makes the work on and with "individualized persons" all the more difficult. The institutions working in this area are, so to speak, themselves subject to a "paradoxical institutionalization" . It is assumed that a (threatening) "disturbance" exists. The removal of that disturbance, the normalization of the person has to take place, has to be achieved. For a formalized organization to provide a field of communication of "life world quality" in this context means relating to persons who, in this very aspect, by defmition have been attributed with deficits. In the next step of my argumentation it is important to note that in these institutions the circumstances of the "disturbance" or "deviation" are transformed into the normalcy of everyday life. This transformation of deviation into the normalcy of daily life must be made permanent, it must be institutionalized. The methodical reference to "the day-to-day routine" and "everyday life" and not to, or less so to, symptoms as in the classical approach, becomes the essential feature of the "reformed" institutions. This reference, however, takes place in very different ways.

2.

Paradoxical Institutionalization at Work: Two Examples

In the following I would like to use two examples of institutions for psychosocial care to illustrate the different forms of daily life in institutional 2 contexts.

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Bound Together by Rules

The first example is a halfway house for the emotionally disturbed. The clients are primarily young adults; the principle goal is to prevent (renewed) hospitalization in inpatient psychiatric wards. The institution provides therapeutic groups of people living together with work and occupational therapy and training in practical day-to-day living. The basic principle is psychosocial work within a community. In this institution, those living there are not defined as "patients," that is, as "ill," but rather as "residents." The institutional framework is not devoted to the "treatment of illness" but rather to the life-world support of a person with the aim of "normal participation" in the areas of day-to-day living, work, and leisure time. The "illness" or "disturbance" is not made an explicit topic - at the same time it is always present, particularly because the employees devote a good deal of attention to the "expression of disturbance." Hence, a kind of "dual structure" results, that is, assumed normalcy with simultaneous centering on the expression of emotional disturbances. This dually constructed normalcy pervades the entire everyday routine of the institution. The lowest level or the basis for the creation and guarantee of normalcy, which at the same time is assumed to be "present," is seen as gaining control over everyday life or the organization of daily life, that is, regulating the vital functions of eating, drinking, sleeping and getting up, dressing, cleanliness, and personal hygiene, regularity, punctuality, sociableness, and so forth. "Control of daily life" is considered a kind of basic prerequisite for an "ordered life" that will sooner or later lead to a "normal" ability to work and perform and a rational ability to make decisions. Usually, the routine nature of daily patterns of orienting oneself and taking action, the collection of experiences that occur again and again, this "iterating nature" of daily life, can be regarded as some of the essential factors in "managing daily life." Everyday life and familiarity are created through "typicalness," that is, the occurrence of "typical situations" and coping with them by using typical routine patterns of action. This is also the prerequisite for making acting in the everyday context less burdensome, namely, that less energy is absorbed when action is taken. Almost the entire institutional process is devoted to providing a realm of experience in which above all the routine preoccupation with "daily life" is en-

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couraged and demanded. The analysis of such "typical situations" - preparation of meals, eating together, groups for taking care of the household, cleaning duty, leisure activities, and so forth - shows, however, that only rudimentary "typical" and routinized patterns of action occur. The essence of the entire institutional structure is much more the permanent and circular "struggle with daily life" and with "making nonroutine routine. " Coping with and organizing daily life is, as said above, a "goal in itself" and not a vehicle for more far-reaching processes; it is regarded as the basis of the desired integration into social networks. Those factors that intrude upon daily life as symptoms of "emotional disturbances" (anxiety, suicidal thoughts, paranoia, etc.) and express themselves in certain behavioral patterns - for example, retreat, unresponsiveness, denial, even aggression - are actively monitored, so that a specific behavioral pattern can be openly pinpointed as insufficient competence in coping with daily life. The attempt to convey a basic feeling of orderedness, security, and stability through the mere organization of daily life is at the same time the only stable orientation for the working day of the social worker. As opposed to "job integration", which depends on events in the labor market, and to "treatment of illness," which is the domain of physicians and clinics, the organization of daily life is the area to which the institution has direct access and for all intents and purposes it is unavoidable: kitchen duty, cleaning duty, and so forth. However, owing to the fact that "coping with daily life" must be started anew every day, large parts of the interactive and communicative potential of the residents as well as of the professionals are absorbed; the basic schemes of action must be redesigned again and again; the processes start at the beginning again. Along with the "dual structure" of assumed normalcy in conjunction with centering on the expression of emotional disturbance mentioned above, the process of daily life also develops a dual structure. Extreme uncertainty arises on the one hand, and on the other a high degree of reliability; yet not from the fact that the residents become more competent in taking action, but rather more from the knowledge that they will be called upon to perform the basic events of daily life - be it setting the table, clothing, personal hygiene, social contacts, dealing with authorities, or whatever. All these things are and make "problems." The social workers must keep both their eyes and ears open: They guarantee the creation of the appropriate situation and also make sure that it is managed by trying to monitor and record everything that might tum into a problem.

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The day-to-day living and familiar routines of the residents are less a product of the natural acquisition of the responses needed for coping with daily life and the "typical" problems arising from this but are more a product of the delegation of these problems. A certain expectation of demands as well as the resistance to demands becomes habitual. Interactions are in a sense void and meaningless. What happens every day can be described as "playing at normalcy". The question "why are we here?" (the "emotional disturbance") and the question "why do these requirements and obligations exist?" are not topics of conversation for those involved. In the concrete activities of daily life in the institution, one avoids such issues. The question "what are we going to do today?" in which practical training and work or occupational therapy are balanced out by responding to needs and interests in order to make them visible and let the group deal with them, always routinely fails if no need or no interest is expressed in the group. And this situation is the "typical" one in the institution: more or less silently sitting next to each other, killing time, and being bored amidst the obligatory activities prescribed by the institution, which, however, are difficult to catalogue or which remain diffuse in their "significance". Conceptually fixed structures are permanently undermined. Professional response is reduced more or less to skillful "muddling through." The fact that social workers cooperate amongst themselves but, in the context of psychiatric interpretation, permanently explain, describe, anticipate, and forecast the behavior of the residents and certain circumstances in the house, brings success in giving this "muddling through" some structure, which at least relieves them. The following holds for the "residents" and the interaction between social workers and residents: Normalcy or the creation of normalcy in the form of "coping with daily life" is not a topic that would provide a continuous point of reference or would center interaction in any way - daily life loses substance; it becomes meaningless. The reference to the concept of normalcy - "coping with daily life" - creates instead an atmosphere of waiting, and all the stronger, because although the residents know they are "not normal", that they "deviate," they do not know in which way, but rather only in so far as "they can't make it." No relationship is established between "not making it" and the available services and demands in the institution - on the part of the residents. However, such a menanigful relationship appears to be absolutely necessary: The consequence of the dual construction of "normalcy" outlined above is obviously a far-reaching emptying of the social dimension itself. Intersubjectively constituted reality appears to be suspended in most areas. The "effect" of the work in this institution appears to be the "dependent client."

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This client is, on the one hand, anxiously fixated on the future, while at the same time placing all hope on an event outside the self, which will give him or her a job and the ability to work again. "Coping with daily life" is not seen as the means toward this aim.

Bound Together by Feelings The second example is an institution that is closely connected to the anonymous self-help groups, a clinic for persons who have joined such self-help groups or have accepted this as a condition. Here, too, it is not the "illness" or "disturbance" that is in the foreground: The respective symptoms are understood more as a "message," the message that there is an "inadequate relationship to life." Accordingly, the institution describes itself as "the school of life, " with the purpose, according to the professionals and residents, of "learning to live." This is an important difference to the first institution we described: There were no congruent perspectives between professionals and residents. Hence, in learning to live, it is not surprising that here, too, daily life is the central issue, not as "managing," but rather in its social-emotional aspect. Learning to live means being embedded and anchored in a dense, very personal, emotional and emotionalized network of relationships. I cannot go into the analysis here in any more detail; I simply wanted to use the example of this second institution as a contrast to the first institution. But it should be made clear that this second institution is based on the principle of an artificially created community in a societal environment; this implies the removal of structural differentiation in society, such as the division of labor or the separation of people and their roles. Purely rational and strategic forms of action are explicitly excluded. Spontaneity, authenticity, and emotional involvement are the desired skills; emotionally-based self-expression is the prevalent form of communication. Against this background, this means that rituals must constantly be created so that a "communal spirit" is produced. Rituals clarify with the use of symbols the conditions under which the individuals have or can attain membership status. Rituals are formalized activities that prescribe certain behavior patterns for those involved - in rituals, feelings in particular receive a form for their expression and articulation. Feelings are allowed and at the same time "harnessed." By being strictly ordered, they provide security when things are done. Various techniques and qualities can be applied here that come from healing rituals of simple societies. Exaggerating slightly, this means that the entire day is ritualized, that "community" rituals are constantly being renewed:

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general assemblies, early morning meditation, evening dances, arrival and departure, and finally the ritualization of emotionally-based self~xpression in professions of belief and confessions, that is, permanent self-discJosure. With this permanent self~xamination and self-disclosure, the individual develops on the one one hand a heightened sense and awareness of self. Convictions and confessions enable the interior world of the individual to become in a new wayan "object" for oneself and for others. On the other hand, the ritualized form in which this occurs contains a de-individualization: What is possible in terms of self-expression is prescribed by the form. The individual is drawn into and held by the "community" experience. Concentration in the institutional process on emotional social coherence, which means rejecting structures with formal membership roles, leads to the situation that feelings are the only important dimension. In a certain way the forms of social coherence that have developed in the life world are so overemphasized that the emotional components are removed from the practice of daily life in which they as a rule represent an essential by-product. This leads to the problem that this kind of living disappears from sight. The social relationships established on the basis of this normative process become a medium of specific self-reassurance: They relate to a role and yet are related to the entire person; that is, they are, from a sociological point of view, oriented toward the qualities of primary groups. To stress the point, "being a person" is learned as a "role." The entire setting is characterized by the fact that the negotiability of identity and identity criteria is generalized by its relation to the emotional dimension and through this generalization is emptied of content and "practical" life. The "modal personality type" that arises here is highly flexible and at the same time dependent, namely on the social world of "real life," which is in fact put on stage by formal institutions.

3.

The Common Ground in the Different Approaches

Both institutions are involved with people who bring "problems" with them, problems that make the self~vident nature of their daily life become eroded or lost - naturally in different ways.

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Focusing on Deficits The institutions of psychosocial work, as socially differentiated areas of processing the respective problems, react by seeing the "problem" as an expression of a deeper-lying deficit in the person. They react by overfocusing specific dimensions of the deficit and by establishing an institutionally constructed reality on the basis of this. Such focusing is a reference to "everyday routine" as well as to the problematic fonns of social bonds associated with it. The reference point of the developing institutional realities with regard to the theme of nonnalcy and everyday life is not a concept of normalcy in the sense of what is held by society or common sense to be "nonna}" but instead a specific, implicit, practical social anthropology; latent views of man with pretheoretical constructs about the "place of man in the world" and the "nature" of the problem to be answered. The various types of focus are in themselves an explanation of the differences between the institutions and at the same time what they have in common. In other words: The focusing of institutional work, which sets out by defining the deficits in the person, is not concerned with the person and the person's identifiable or specifiable "symptoms" but rather the person's abstract-concrete "mode of life," the control of which within the institutions is in turn linked to pretheoretical concepts of "naturalness," "humanity," and so forth. And this leads to the second common denominator in the differences in approach.

Methodizing Everyday Life They approach a problem from a perspective that has been important ever since Max Weber's analysis of the Protestant Ethic: the systemization of everyday life in the transfer to the modern consciousness as a reaction to the fact that everyday life has become "reflective"; the anchoring of the personality by means of a socially supported nonnality whose "taken for granted" nature is no longer secure. Instead it must be created through the application of a certain method, in the case of Weber's Protestantism analyses: by calling on religious parameters. The methodization of everyday life and one's own self within this everyday life marks a central source of crisis potential, because the self-evident nature of everyday life and day-to-day routine are lost to the same extent as the

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supporting normative "superstructure" is weakened. Integration mechanisms based on the community are suppressed. The loss of a reference point for "normalcy" and "normalization," which is at the same time also a point of departure for the problem to be answered, is apparent in the institutionally established "everyday life" in all forms. There arises in this institutional field a range of selecting rules of action that can be associated with differing social-anthropological concepts and the methodization principles based on them. The two types of institution presented want to solve the same problem, that is,

to establish a normalization context via a methodization of everyday life in view of diffuse processes of suffering that are expressed in an erosion or destruction of everyday routine. In the background is not a syndrome model but rather a model for the treatment of how life is practiced. Involved here, among other things, are the changes addressed under the key word individualization. The new social forms and bonds arising in this framework have yet to be studied adequately, and the appropriate terminology is still being developed for it. 3 In contrast to, say, the Protestant forms of methodization in the Max Weber analysis, the construction here must carry itself as a construction, while, in the other case, construction principles in a metaphysical point of reference were presupposed. It is exactly such basic structures for creating an everyday routine that have become eroded in society: Everyday life has lost its substance. What arises is circular in nature, in that as a result of integration into the everyday life of the institution, possibilities for the expression of problems are provided, and these types of expression that arise confirm, in turn, the assumptions about the structure (and "nature") of the problems. With the first institution as an example, it was shown how changes in the way the problem is seen in social psychiatry in fact exclude the problem itself and how a formalized normative structure is passed off as "life world" and how "coping with everyday life" is methodized so that a meaningful construct cannot come into being. The example of the second institution shows how attempts are made to establish emotionality as a norm and for a normative order to make the inherent disturbance factors explicit, yet to make these so "everyday" that the (institutional) normative order is not disturbed, or to construct the normative order in such a manner that acting out emotions "here and now" is possible.

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The methodization forms outlined here represent a type of generative rule: basic patterns of problem recognition that establish themselves institutionally and that, conversely, through the experience of the institutional everyday routine, are brought home to the client and learned. However, it should not be misunderstood here that clients are merely "passive objects" being worked on by professionals. The clients also help to structure their own situations themselves. Yet they do this only within the spectrum made accessible and possible by the dimensions of the focusing undertaken. What counts for the institution examined is that they are "successful" in the sense that the clients are socialized into becoming members of the institution. Above all in the final phase of the residence, the indivudual is "normal" in the sense that he or she is able to live and function within the respective institution. However, the skills acquired and/or put into practice here and the orientation patterns and so forth appear to a great, albeit varying, extent to be dependent on a given context. With reference to the "outside world" of the institutions, there is the effect that an anomie tendency in the situation and structure is created, a kind of "normative vacuum." With their respective focusing and methodization of everyday life, the two institutions form two poles that occur again and again in the whole area of psychosocial care, especially in the complementary areas. The institutionalization of the not-normal as normal has to rely on defmitions of deficits and their respective focusing and methodization; in other words, it must cancel out the other part. The institutionally methodized reference to the qualities of everyday life runs the risk of reproducing the cause of the effect - namely the missing or insuflicient everyday routine. Nor is this problem solved by bringing forward into the area of everyday life itself the point at which intervention begins. Even such measures of prevention and intervention contain within themselves the quality of the noneveryday routine, even if the participants perhaps become accustomed to them: Its basis is above all definitions of deficits and the splitting up and separating off of phenomena, hence creating the problem. Such an analysis leads first and foremost to a quandary: 1. Regardless of how committed the intervention IS 10 its ever more subtly differentiated field of action, the actual causes and one's own context of action remain essentially inaccessible; and moreover: 2. Seen purely logically, there appears to be no way out of the dilemma; fundamental problems of socialization can be identified with regard to social

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prevention and intervention, their consequences can be made less difficult, a number of things can be improved upon - and yet they cannot be work.ed on in the sense of a structural healing. On the contrary, sophisticated approaches to the problems involved help to produce and reproduce these problems anew. Ultimately it seems to be a matter of degree, of finding and maintamlng a balance between the extremes of influencing policy and - on the other hand allowing quasi-everyday therapeutic and pedagogic milieus to become detached not least in the form of life-style reform movements or even sectarian groups.

Notes 1 See the so called "Psychiatrie Enquete," a study on the situation of psychiatric care in the FRG for the Federal Minister for Youth, Family, and Health (Bundesminister fUr Familie, Jugend und Gesundheit) in 1975. The discussion of the study's flDdings in the following years can be found in Mutz (1983, pp. 249-262) who outlines and provides a critique of the various positions. 2 The two cases are derived from a project of ethnographically oriented field research "Institutionalization fonns on the border between health and illness." As a "participating observer," I visited various institutions of this kind for several months. The data collected - observation protocols, tapes, interviews, and group discussions - are the basis of this case study. The evaluation oriented itself on the principle of the "thick description" method (Geertz, 1973). A detailed presentation of the material and its analysis can be found in Gildemeister (1989).

3 Interesting attempts in this area are found in the tradition of "analyse institutionelle" of French educational science and sociology (see Weigand, Hess, and Prein, 1988).

References Beck, U. (1986). Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfun: Suhrkamp. Bopp, J. (1985). Psycho-Kult - kleine Fluchten in die groSen Worte. Kursbuch 82,61-74. Brose, H.J., and Hildenbrand, A.B. (Eds.) (1988). Vom Ende des Individuwns zur Individualitit ohne Ende. Opladen: Leske und Budrich. Bundesminister fUr Familie, Jugend und Gesundheit (1975). Bericht iiber die Lage der Psychiatrie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Psychiatrie-Enquete). Bonn.

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Castel, F., Castel, R., and Lovell, A. (1982). Psycbiatrisierung des A1ltags. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Cremerius, J. (1985). Krankheitswandel oder Verlagerung und Umscbichtung der Neurosen im medizinischen Versorgungsbereich? Praxis der Psychotherapie und Psychosomatik 30,

60-71. Dilling, H., Weyerer, S., and Castell, O.W. (1984). Psycbische Erkrankungen in der Bevolkerung. Stuttgart: Enke. Dohrenwend, B.P. et al. (1980). Mental illness in the United States. Epidemiological estimates. New York: Praeger. Gildemeister, R. (1989). Institutionalisierung psychosozialer Versorgung. Eine Feldforschung im Grenzbereich von Gesundheit und Krankheit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Gildemeister, R., and Robert, G. (1987). Identitiit a1s Gegenstand und Ziel psychosozialer Arbeit. In H.P. Frey and K. HauBer (Eds.), Identitiit (pp. 219-232). Stuttgart: Enke.

Geertz, C. (1973). Thick descriptions: Towards an interpretive theory of culture. In C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures. Selected Essays (pp. 3-30). New York: Basic Books. Hafner, H. (1985). Sind psychische Krankheiten hiiufiger geworden? Nervenarzt 56,120-133. Hellerich, G. (1985). Homo Therapeuticus. Der Mensch im Netz der Helfer. Bonn: Psychiame-Verlag. Hinterhuber, H. (1982). Epidemiologie psycbiamscher Erkrankungen. Stuttgart: Enke. Japp, K.-P. (1986). Wie psychosoziale Dienste organisiert werden, Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Kohli, M. (1988). Normalbiographie und Individualitiit: Zur institutionellen Dynamik des gegenwiirtigen Lebenslaufregimes. In H.J. Brose and A.B. Hildenbrand (Eds.), Vom Ende des Individuums zur Individualitiit ohne Ende (pp. 33-54). Opladen: Leske and Budrlch. Kohli, M., and Robert, G. (Eds.) (1984). Biograpbie und soziale Wirklichkeit. Stuttgart: Enke. Mutz, G. (1983). Sozialpolitik aIs soziale Kontrolle am Beispiel der psychosozialen Versorgung, MUnchen: Profil Verlag. Piven, F.F., and Cloward, R. J. (1979). Sozialpolitik und politische Bewufltseinsbildung. Leviathan, Vol. 7 (pp. 283-305). Wambach, M.M. (Ed.) (1983). Der Mensch aIs Risiko. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Weber, M. (1920). Die protestantische Etbik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. In Max Weber (1920). Gesammelte Aufsitze zur Religionssoziologie, Vol. 1 (pp. 17 - 206), Tiibingen: Mohr. Weigand, G., Hess, R., and Prein, G. (Eds.) (1988). Institutionelle Analyse. Theorie und Praxis, Frankfurt a.M.: Athenaum. Will. H. (1985). Selige Gesundheit. Systeme der TherapiegeseUscbaft. Kursbuch 82, 9-33.

Advances in Research on Social Support and Issues Applying to Adolescents at Risk Benjamin H. Gottlieb

During the past 15 years, enormous strides have been taken toward understanding the relationship between the connections and transactions people have with the social environment and their physical and mental health. With respect to people's connections to the social ecology, a number of careful epidemiological studies have provided convincing evidence that social ties of both a personal and public nature confer a considerable measure of protection against morbidity and mortality (for reviews, see Berkman, 1985; House, Landis, and Umberson, 1988), suggesting that there is something about human attachments that offsets the hardships and adversities of modem life. As Berkman (1985) observes, the social networks in which people are embedded may protect physical health in several ways: by modeling, encouraging, and reinforcing positive health behaviors; by prompting early and appropriate use of health services; by engaging in a variety of practical caregiving activities that hasten recovery from illness; and by bringing peer pressure to bear on self-injurious health behaviors. In addition to altering these behavioral risk factors, social ties are also implicated in health because their absence, and particularly the loss of significant relationships, potentiates psychological and emotional responses that affect neural, hormonal, and immunologic control systems.

1.

Refinements in Knowledge About Social Support

Psychological research on the topic of social support has refined our knowledge about the character of the resources that flow through the links people maintain to their social ecology. First, we have learned that it is important to draw distinctions between several types of supportive provision that people exchange, including such forms of support as advice, practical or instrumental assistance, emotional support, socializing and companionship, and appraisal or esteem 1 support. House (1981) distinguishes between three main types of supportive resource: aid, which consists of practical services and material benefits;

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affirmation, which has to do with feedback that promotes self-esteem and validates identity; and affect, which has to do with affection, caring, and nurturance. These distinctions are reflected in the several measures of social support that have appeared in the past several years, including Sarason's Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (Sarason, I.G., Levine, Basham, and Sarason, B.R., 1983) and the Social Support Appraisals Scale developed by Vaux and his colleagues (Yaux, Phillips, Thompson, Holly, Williams, and Stewart, 1986). Studies applying such multidimensional measures of social support to various populations at risk have brought a second insight pertaining to the complicated relationship between sources, types, and needs for support. Specifically, there is growing recognition that different stressors arouse needs for different types of support from different actors in an individual's social network. In other words, stress moderation is predicated on the "goodness of fit" between the supportive resources supplied by particular relationships and the needs aroused by the demands of different stressors (Cohen and McKay, 1984). Moreover, when we recognize that the stressful demands of certain life events change over time, often bringing concomitant changes in the composition and structure of the individual's social network, we are in a better position to design interventions that carefully match the resources of different support providers to the changing needs of the recipient. Such life events as marital separation and job loss, and such transitions as retirement and the birth of a first child, create considerable turbulence and disruption in the affected parties' social fabric. Moreover, since these events unfold over time, dynamic changes in the social ecology trigger needs for different types of support from different sources at different stages. The nature, sources, quantity, duration, and timing of support thus make a great deal of difference to its impact upon the recipient, but they do not make all the difference. Their impact is mediated by the personality and cognitions of the recipients. Cognitively, they must first interpret the behavior and communications of their associates in a manner that confers supportive meaning on their words and deeds and then bring their personal liabilities and resources to bear in order to benefit from others (Eckenrode, 1983). In short, we are learning that the recipients of support are not vessels into which support is poured but actively filter communications and then combine them with their own unique ways of coping.

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Social Psychological Influences on the Recipient's Reactions to Support

Indeed, from a social psychological perspective, we now appreciate at least four features of the interpersonal context that influence the recipient's reactions to behavior that is intended to communicate support (Fisher. Nadler. and Whitcher-Alagna, 1982). Each of them can be spotlighted by a question that recipients ask themselves about the provider or about the provider's behavior. The first question is: "Will I feel uncomfortably indebted to this person if I accept his/her help?" Support that is costly to the provider and extended by people whom one has neither benefited in the past nor who one expects to benefit in the future is likely to be suspect. The norm of reciprocity leads to an interpretation of this behavior as charity. not support. The second question is double-barreled because it addresses two related attributional issues of concern to the recipient: "Why is this person offering me help. and why do I need the help?" If helping is perceived to be involuntary or motivated by reasons ulterior to the welfare of the recipient. or if the offer of aid carries pejorative implications about the recipient's competence, then it is not likely to be construed as supportive. The third question goes directly to the potential social control that accompanies supportive behavior: "Will my acceptance of this help threaten my present or future freedom and independence?" Support-intended communications that constrain behavior or narrow options for decision-making are not likely to be interpreted as supportive. Two examples that epitomize the latter social psychological feature of interpersonal helping, known as reactance (Brehm. 1966). come from research on the expressed emotion construct and from research on family caregiving to the elderly. Brown and his colleagues (Brown. Birley, and Wing. 1972) found that chronic schizophrenics who live with relatives who place undue pressure on them to be more active, and do so by leveling critical comments at them. relapse at much higher rates than do those living with relatives who display a lower level of expressed emotion. Similarly. it has been found that family care of the elderly collapses and triggers institutionalization of the elderly when many restrictions are placed on the elderly person's or the caregiver's freedom of action and decision making in the home (Goldin, Perry. Margolin. and Stotsky. 1972). Finally. the fourth question invokes the fundamental character of the relationship between the would-be supporter and the would-be recipient: "What does this offer of help mean about the nature and direction of the relationship between us?" Offers of support can be interpreted either in terms of endearment, as ways of reaffirming bonds of affection and trust and priming the relationship's future development; or in terms of dependence. Considered

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together, these four social psychological features of the helping context condition the recipient's interpretations of the supporter's behavior, either conferring supportive meaning upon it or coloring it negatively.

3.

Individual Differences in the Impact of Social Support

Behaviors and communications that occur under social psychological conditions that favor supportive, subjective interpretations still may not have a salutary impact on coping and health. In order to benefit from support, recipients must be equipped to capitalize on the resources extended by members of their social field. For example, Sandler and Lakey (1982) found that only those support recipients with a high internal locus of control were cushioned from the impact of stressors, suggesting that support is of less benefit to people who believe that there is nothing they can do to ameliorate their feelings or their predicament. Similarly, when people rely on denial or repression to cope with adversity, they are unlikely to capitalize on certain forms of support that are inconsistent with or disrupt such cognitive avoidance strategies. More generally, it should be acknowledged that social support's positive impact depends on what individuals do to make it available in the first place, to mobilize it when needed, and to profit from its expression. In short, the health protective impact of social support is predicated on the interaction between the traits and coping responses of the person and the coping assistance rendered by the social ecology in which the person is embedded.

4.

The Detenninants of Social Support

Recent research has therefore turned to the investigation of social support as a dependent rather than as an independent variable. There is much interest in the determinants of social support, including research on the personality characteristics, social skills, and attitudes that give some people greater access to social support than others and that give some people a stronger psychological sense of support than others (Gottlieb, 1985). For example, social skills may be implicated because people who do not know how to initiate and maintain social ties or how to express empathy, show cooperation, and reciprocate are not likely to be engaged as recipients or providers of support. Moreover, recent research suggests that sensitivity to the feelings of others may be just as important in getting support as it is in giving support. Specifically, Lehman, Ellard, and Wortman (1986) found that people know what kinds of support to

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offer to someone who is bereaved but do not seem to be able to bring it off effectively when they actually interact with the bereaved. It appears that when they come into face-to-face contact with the bereaved, they are contaged by the distress the bereaved display and end up saying and doing things they later regret. For example, they provide false reassurance about the future, they try to cheer the person up, or they try to distract the person irom focusing on the loss. Peters-Golden (1982) reports that much the same types of miscarried helping occur in the interactions between cancer patients and their family and friends. Perhaps because the threat of cancer looms so large, and because the patient is visibly distressed, network members avoid discussion of the illness altogether or, again, express inauthentic optimism and oversolicitous attitudes. My point here is that social skills and such personality characteristics as self-monitoring (Coates and Winston, 1987) may come into play with respect to the ways people both express their distress and react to the distress of others. If people cannot maintain a modicum of control over their feelings, they are likely to threaten would-be providers of support. Conversely, if potential support providers overempathize with others - if they feel with the other too strongly - they are likely to become emotionally overinvolved and aggravate their own and the other party's distress. In a series of studies examining people's reactions to someone who is clinically depressed, there is evidence that depressive affect diffuses to the nondepressed party, resulting in withdrawal from, hostility toward, and even rejection of the depressed partner (Coyne, 1976; Gotlib and Beatty, 1985; Howes and Hokanson, 1979; Strack and Coyne, 1983). At this point, we have only a rudimentary understanding of the effect that different ways of expressing distress have on the receipt of support. Moreover, once this process is better understood, questions arise about whether it is possible to instruct people about how to manage their distress in ways that do not alienate potential sources of support, or conversely, how to train people to contain their distress when they extend support to the distressed. Paradoxically, people may be most likely to seek support but least able to obtain it when they experience crises prompting a great deal of distress and when they display florid symptoms of emotional disequilibrium. It is also conceivable that the receipt of support is contingent upon the personal support resources that people bring to the coping process. Perhaps potential support providers are moved to close or join ranks with the distressed individual on the basis of their approval or disapproval of the manner in which he or she is coping with his or her predicament. Is support withheld from those

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who do not seem to be making enough effort on their own? Is it supplied only to those who are coping in ways that invite support? Dunkel-Schetter, Folkman, and Lazarus (1987) found that people were more likely to receive support when they engaged in more problem-centered strategies of psychological coping. such as "making a plan of action and following it." rather than when they used such palliative modes of coping as denial and minimization. Moreover. in a study of parents who were coping with children who had serious, chronic illnesses. Wagner and Gottlieb (1988) found that the mothers were censored by their spouses for displaying certain emotion-centered ways of coping that their husbands found too threatening. When the wives ventilated their feelings about the distressful aspects of their child's illness or about their worries concerning the child's future. their husbands would ridicule them for their immaturity, chastize them for their lack of self-control, and even threaten to abandon them. Some of the mothers adapted to this by behaving stoically and coping in a problem-focused manner when they were in their husband's presence; they allowed themselves to cope in more emotionally expressive ways only with female friends and with other parents of children with the same illnesses whom they met through local health-related voluntary organizations. In short. these women were doubly burdened; not only did they carry the bulk of the caregiving regimen for their children but they also had to manage the added tensions associated with modulating their public and private coping behaviors. They had to fake the way they coped to prevent their husbands from withdrawing physically. by spending more hours away from home. and psychologically. by leaving them emotionally isolated. The latter study not only reveals the fundamental interdependence between coping and social support but also spotlights gender differences in the need for. expression of, and receipt of support. 2 Because virtually all the studies of social support have been conducted among women. including intervention studies. we know relatively little about the meaning and determinants of social support for men. What precious little we do know suggests that, at least in monogamous societies. men tend to be quite exclusive in their source of support, typically relying on one close relationship for emotional support (Hobfoll and Stokes, 1988). Women knit themselves a broader network of confidants than men. which Stroebe and Stroebe (1983) suggest may account for their advantage in longevity upon widowhood. The relatively small number of widowers either die or remarry soon after their wives' death. So marriage appears to afford more protection for men than for women. More diffuse ties based on group-oriented activities appear to be more typical of men than of women. although it appears

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that women seek and benefit more from the emotional support derived from their contacts, while men seek and value the socializing and sense of belonging they gain from theirs (Hobfoll and Stokes, 1988). Interestingly, Reis, Senchak, and Solomon (1985) noted that although men generally limit the intimacy of their social ties, they are capable of intimate interaction when they choose to engage in it, such as in a prospective romantic encounter with a female. To date, there has been almost no research examining the dynamics of interspousal coping with both shared and separate stressors, leaving the social and transactional character of support obscure. With few exceptions (e.g., Pearlin and McCall, 1989), we know very little about the way spouses manage the stressors arising from both their domestic and their occupational lives and how these dynamics affect the mental health of the partners and the quality of the marriage. More generally, there is much to be learned about the ways in which the expression of support undermines and reinforces close relationships and, conversely, about the influence of the relational context on the meaning and impact of support. Regrettably, the study of social support has been decontextualized in much the same ways that the study of stressful life events was initially pursued without attending to the ongoing strains in people's lives and the larger social field in which the life events occurred. Social support cannot be understood without regard to the stage and conduct of personal relationships. By examining it in terms of the commerce of relationships, we are also more likely to recognize that its protective effect lies not in the variable but in the process (Rutter, 1987).

5.

Protective Processes Conferred by Social Support

What then is presently known about social support's protective processes? In Michael Rutter's (1987) terms, what are the protective mechanisms through which social relationships tum a "risk trajectory (into) one with a greater likelihood of an adaptive outcome?" (p. 318). While there is a set of general answers to this question, the precision necessary for mounting particular support interventions is as yet lacking. Our knowledge regarding the multidimensional nature of social support and the various contingencies surrounding its expression and receipt must be kept in mind in the process of planning interventions for specific populations at risk, situated in particular ecological niches, facing special stressful circumstances, and possessing particular personal assets and liabilities at a particular stage in the life cycle. For the time being then,

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I will briefly outline a set of protective processes that may be implicated in social support's mechanisms of action, highlighting the psychological processes unfolding under conditions of stressor exposure. One set of protective processes gravitates around the preservation or enhancement of positive self-regard and valued social identities. In his classic paper on the stress moderating functions of social support, Cobb (1976) referred to information leading persons to believe they are cared for and loved, esteemed and valued, and belong to a network of communication and reliable alliance. Stressful events that undermine valued goals, commitments, and identities, or that threaten them; and chronic hardships that gradually erode self-esteem, such as job loss followed by lengthy unemployment, can be powerfully mitigated by support that shores up valued identities and safeguards positive self-regard. Marital support in the face of long-term unemployment can sustain the motivation to continue the job search because it counteracts numerous frustrations and rejections, prevents the husband's role as breadwinner from submerging other valued social identities (e.g., spouse, father, coach, neighbor), and buttresses the job hunter's confidence in his face-to-face encounters with prospective employers. Similarly, for a couple undergoing the transition to new parenthood, the affirmation of their novel roles and identities provided by parents and by peers facing or adapting to the same transition provides critical validation and reassurance that they are equipped to master this social readjustment (Gottlieb and Pancer, 1988). As Swann and Predmore (1985) observe, ..... people's relationships exert a powerful stabilizing influence on their self-conceptions" (p. 1614), shielding them from self-discrepant feedback. Observations of the supportive processes occurring among members of self-help, mutual aid groups have been a rich source of information about protective mechanisms. These groups provide a social context conducive to emotional disinhibition and catharsis because they are composed of peers whose experiences naturally endow them with empathic understanding. In addition, the process of swapping experiences provides cognitive guidance about what can be expected in the future, the coping options that are available and that are likely to prove efficacious, and the obstacles to positive outcomes that lie in the way. The very fact that there are people in the group who have recovered, survived, or simply learned to live with their condition promotes hope and optimism. Indeed, the opportunities that the group provides for engaging in social comparisons, both downward comparisons with those who are worse off and upward comparisons with those who serve as models of successful coping, seem to exert a powerful impact on members' emotions and self-evaluations

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(Taylor, Falke, Shoptaw, and Lichtman, 1986). They serve as yardsticks for monitoring adaptational progress and for personal goal setting and reduce the uncertainty accompanying novel events and transitions. At a more general level, Arntson and Droge (1987) suggest that the very process of giving testimony and serving as a helper to others gradually restores a sense of personal control and self-efficacy, counteracting feelings of helplessness that often arise in the wake of life events that are uncontrollable. Many self-help groups also have particular ideological biases about the causes of their members' problem or affliction, helping them to reattribute the genesis of their adversity (Antze, 1976). For example, the ideology of some support groups for women who have been battered by their spouses uproots the members' tendency to engage in behavioral or characterological self-blame, shifting blame to cultural mysogeny; while self-help groups like Recovery, Inc. encourage mental patients to assume more personal responsibility for their mental health through the exercise of sheer willpower. Clearly, these psychological processes are not all predicated on participation in self-help or peer support groups but can arise in confiding relationships with peers. Moreover, many people would not think of joining a group of fellow sufferers who are strangers, either because they would feel stigmatized or because they might feel their social and verbal skills were deficient. It is noteworthy that studies investigating the characteristics of those who do join these groups find that their members are demographically much like the people who seek psychotherapy: verbal, middle-class, and fairly well educated (Lieberman and Videka-Sherman, 1986). In fact, a sizeable proportion of those attending have been referred by a health professional (Gottlieb, 1982). As for the impact of participation, evaluation research on mutual aid groups that are not led by professionals is spotty and methodologically weak. On the one hand, there is a substantial set of qualitative studies that provide rich descriptive accounts of what transpires in the groups (e.g., Levy, 1979), some adding information about member's subjective satisfaction with their group experience (Taylor, Falke, Mazel, and Hilsberg, 1988). On the other hand, there is a limited set of more rigorous outcome studies that use psychometrically sound measures but which often lack appropriate control or comparison groups. The most credible outcome studies have been in the area of widowhood and reveal that participation speeds adaptation (Barrett, 1978; Vachon, Lyall, Rogers, Freedmann-Letofsky, and Freeman, 1980), particularly among those who have more contact with members outside the regular group meetings (Lieberman and Videka-Sherman, 1986). With the advent of professionally led support groups, much more evaluation research is being conducted,

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particularly studies comparing the impact of support groups with other psychoeducational interventions (e.g., Brown and Lewinsohn, 1984; TeIch and TeIch, 1986; Zarit, Anthony, and Boutselis, 1987).

6.

The Mobilization of Social Support for Adolescents at Risk

A number of specific issues surround the planning of preventive interventions that involve the augmentation or marshaling of social support, particularly on behalf of adolescents at risk. First, it should be acknowledged that we do not yet have a sound contextual understanding of social support as it is experienced by adolescents. With the exception of Harter's (1988) recent work on the subject, we do not know what people in the adolescent's social world do or say that is interpreted as supportive, nor how it maintains or raises an adolescent's self-esteem or gives him/her a sense of belonging and reliable alliance. Because the peer group plays such an important role during the "Sturm and Drang" of adolescence, it is likely that socializing and companionship are critical in communicating a sense of inclusion and normalcy. Moreover, for adolescents who may find themselves on the social sidelines because they are mentally or physically handicapped or because they have become parents prematurely or dropped out of school, the support of peers, whether in a group context or through a close chumship, is probably an indispensable resource. Teenagers are particularly self-conscious and concerned about being accepted and perceived as normal, and they are therefore particularly reactive to stressful life events that make them stand out as deviant. Whether they withdraw from others of their own accord or are marginalized by others, such life events as parental separation often leave them emotionally isolated. An implication for intervention programs is that it is very hard indeed to draw adolescents in because of the risk of stigmatizing them further. Although more expensive, programs that are universal rather than targeted are clearly more desirable. An implication for research is that we need to gain a better understanding of the forms and sources of support that are most meaningful to adolescents in communities that differ along ethnic and socioeconomic lines. We also need to discern the kinds and sources of support that are valued by adolescents facing different life events and chronically stressful circumstances. Our data should be grounded in part on the perceptions of adolescents themselves, and in part on "natural history studies," studies of the natural ways in which the social ecology is engaged and engages vulnerable youth. Our interventions should be informed by these studies because they hold the promise of revealing

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naturally occurring sources and kinds of support that offset adversity and that promote adaptive functioning. For example, Rutter (1981; 1985), Garmezy (1985), and Beardslee and Podorefsky (1988) have independently conducted studies of the compensatory support that resilient children gain from external relationships. Beardslee and Podorefsky (1988) interviewed 18 male and female adolescents whose parents had major affective disorders, selecting them on the basis of their healthy functioning at initial assessment and an average of two and a half years later. Sixteen of the 18 described themselves as valuing close, confiding relationships and emphasized that these relationships were a central part of their lives. Nine of them specifically mentioned going to an identified other person during episodes when their parent was acutely ill in order to make sense of the experience or to derive comfort. Of course, other factors contribute to these adolescents' resilience, including their constitutional strength, self-understanding, and self-regard, and the way they think and behave, but these factors are typically harder to alter than environmental resources, particularly the quality and availability of social resources in the environment. In making progranunatic translations of what we learn from the natural ways

people use social support to turn a risk trajectory into an adaptive outcome, we should try to optimize their ecological validity. The programs must be embedded within contexts natural to the target group, and they must replicate features of natural helping exchanges. Evaluations of program outcomes should attend equally to the desirable and detrimental ways in which engineering support affects the participants' relationships with members of their natural networks. Preventive interventions for adolescents must not only marshal sources and types of support tailored to the particular needs aroused by different life events but they must also be developmentally appropriate. Gender and age differences among adolescents will affect the ways they give and gain support and the kinds of support they seek from peers and adults. Some years ago I developed a support group for 12- to 14-year-olds whose parents had recently separated. I learned that it was easier for them to air their personal feelings and experiences through role plays, exercises, and the work of creating a handbook about divorce for other children who might be faced with this event than through direct personal discussions. I learned that group cohesion was promoted more effectively by fulfilling their desire to have fun together, like going on a canoe trip, than by the group sessions themselves. Over time, I also learned that these teenagers were as interested in forming a closer relationship with

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particular group members as they were in comparing their own feelings and situations to those of many others whose parents had separated. In short, they appeared to benefit from both the intimacy afforded by private interaction with one peer and from the social comparisons they drew and the sense of belonging they gained from the more diffuse group ties.

7.

Social Support and the Social Ecology of Adolescents

Thus far, I have focused mainly on interventions that should be properly conceived as falling at the secondary level of prevention because they are strategies of moderating the impact of adversity and improving coping. But what about primary preventive interventions that maintain and promote the adolescent's well-being and competence? What can be done to make the social ecology more resourceful and conducive to meeting adaptational needs? Can we remove barriers to the expression of support and effect changes in the environment that improve people's access to it? Are there strategic settings in the lives of adolescents in which they learn about exchanging support and in which changes in roles, norms, and structural variables can be effected to optimize support? Children learn about social support in their primary socializing settings, first and foremost in their families and in the ties to others that family life brings, and secondarily in their neighborhoods and in their schools. It is here that they gain instruction about the kinds of support to offer others, the occasions when it is permissible to seek support, and the very importance of giving and getting support itself. Moreover, when we think about children who are vulnerable, either due to the chronic hardships created by poverty or the particular stressors they are exposed to, we must acknowledge that their vulnerability is in part a reflection of deficient or absent support from their families. Further, we should recognize that when children lack family support, it is likely that the support available to their parents is deficient as well, suggesting the need for family interventions that are responsive to the needs of both generations. The absence of support is a risk factor, hampering family adjustment, as much as it is a protective factor that facilitates it. Young children and adolescents are at risk of deficient parental support for many different reasons. First, their parents may not be well enough themselves to meet their children's needs for care and support, as in the case of parents who suffer from major mental illnesses including alcoholism. Second, parents may be preoccupied with their own personal problems, making them less

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available to their children or causing them to behave inappropriately with their children. For example, separation and divorce entail not only the loss of one parent's support but also can result in parents making supportive demands of adolescents that are impossible for them to meet on the basis of their developmental maturation. Other stressful family contexts that call for the delivery of support to those who care for children as much as to the children themselves include the death of a parent or sibling through illness or suicide (Sandler, Gersten, Reynolds, Kallgren, and Ramirez, 1988), chronic unemployment or repeated episodes of job loss, and the diagnosis of a serious or chronic illness occurring to the parent or child. Each of these life events and chronic hardships imposes special needs and demands for support on parents and children alike, and so collectively they form an agenda for planning initiatives that augment family support. Elsewhere, I have described many of these initiatives (Gottlieb, 1988a, 1988b), including support groups for teenagers whose parents have separated, peer helping programs in which older adolescents who are coping well with a chronic medical condition are matched to newly diagnosed younger adolescents, home visitor programs for single teenaged parents, and a variety of family support and education programs that are home and center based. These kinds of preventive intervention can optimize the affectionate care that parents impart to their children or at least compensate for the loss or temporary lapse of family support. In light of recent evidence suggesting that it is inadequate parental care rather than loss per se that predicts adult depression (BiFulco, Brown, and Harris, 1987; Brown, Harris, and BiFulco, 1986), such compensatory support interventions have the potential to change a risk trajectory into a more adaptive outcome. When children venture beyond the family, they are likely to learn that their access to social support depends a great deal on their demeanor and on the background they come from. In school, some children learn that they do not deserve the special kindnesses from teachers that their more advantaged peers seem to receive automatically. Children who do not fit into the mainstream by virtue of their socioeconomic status, etlmic origin, and demeanor do not receive the extra time and attention, praise and acceptance that naturally accrue to those who share the cultural values and norms of the school. The various ecological niches that students inhabit are as consequential for the support they gain as their placement in academic streams is for their future life prospects. It follows that primary preventive interventions in the community's social institutions must work on several fronts. School personnel must be urged to

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consider the ways in which they inadvertently invite and deny support to students on the basis of their cultural proximity and distance from them. Organizational policies and role defInitions must be reexamined in terms of their impact on the opportunities students have to gain recognition and leadership. For example, as Rutter (1987) points out, schools can create settings for more broadly interpreted support interventions. They can enlarge opportunities for success in extracurricular activities, afford students equal access to positions of responsibility in school clubs, and involve them in tutoring other students. Such experiences engender feelings of self-worth arising from the positive appraisals of others. Finally, Aronson and his colleagues (Aronson, Blaney, Stephan, Sikes, and Snapp, 1978) have shown that the everyday learning process that occurs in the classroom can be shaped to foster cooperative rather than competitive interaction. He has found that his method of classroom instruction, known as the "jigsaw classroom," in which students teach each other pieces of each lesson to be learned, facilitates empathy and friendliness.

8.

Conclusion

I began by spotlighting the many theoretical advances that have been made over the past 15 years in our understanding of the nature, measurement, and health protective effects of social support. I conclude by identifying what has yet to be learned about social support at three ecological levels. At the interpersonal level, we know precious little about how the conduct of relationships affects the meaning and expression of support, especially when one or both of the partners are engaged in the coping process. Related to this, we have only a rudimentary understanding of the mechanisms underlying social support's preventive impact, and how these mechanisms differ in such contrasting social contexts as confIding relationships and group relations. At the level of the social network, we need to discover how human attachments become structured as systems of support from one another and from outside sources. Such generative knowledge can provide the foundations for engineered support systems. Finally, at the organizational and community level, we have only a dim appreciation of the manner in which the major social institutions of the community systematically deny certain citizens the basic resources necessary for a decent standard of life, making it that much more diffIcult for them to render support to their family and neighbors. Above all, an ecological perspective reminds us that our personal resilience and social adaptation depend on the harmonious interplay between the assets we bring to life's challenges and the resources bestowed by the culture we inhabit.

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Notes See Tardy (1985) for a recent review of the dimensions of social support.

2 For reviews, see Nesunann and Schmerl in this volume; Belle (1987).

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Howes, MJ., and Hokanson, J.E. (1979). Conversational and social responses to depressed interpersonal behavior. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88, 625-634. Lehman, D.R., Ellard, J.H., and Wortman, C.B. (1986). Social support for the bereaved: Recipients' and providers' perspectives on what is helpful. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 438-446. Levy, L.H. (1979). Processes and activities in groups. In M.A. Lieberman and D.L. Bonnan (Eds.), Self-help groups for coping with crisis (pp. 234-271). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lieberman, M.A., and Videka-5herman, L. (1986). The impact of self-help groups on the mental health of widows and widowers. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 56,

435-449. Pearlin, L.I., and McCall, M.E. (1989). Occupational stress and marital support: A description of microprocesses. In J. Eckenrode and S. Gore (Eda.), Stress between work and family. New York: Plenum. Peters-Golden, H. (1982). Breast cancer: Varied perceptions of social support in the illness experience. Social Science and Medicine, 16, 483-491. Reis, H.T., Sencbak, M., and Solomon, B. (1985). Sex differences in the intimacy of social interaction: Further examination of potential explanations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1204-1217. Rutter, M. (1981). Stress, coping, and development: Some issues and some questions. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 22, 323-352. Rutter, M. (1985). Resilience in the fact of adversity: Protective factors and resistance to psychiatric disorder. British Journal of Psychiatry, 147,598-611. Rutter, M. (1987). Psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 57(3), 316-331. Sandler, LN., Gersten, J.C., Reynolds, K., KaUgren, C.A., and Ramirez, R. (1988). Using theory and data to plan support interventions: Design of a program for bereaved children. In B.H. Gottlieb (Ed.), Marshaling social support: Formats, processes, and effects (pp. 53-83). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Sandler, LN., and Lakey, B. (1982). Locus of control as a stress moderator: The role of control perceptions and social support. American Journal of Community Psychology, 10,

65-80. Sarason, 1.0., Levine, H.M., Basham, R.B., and Sarason, B.R. (1983). Assessing social support: The Social Support QuestioDDllire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 127-139. Strack, S., and Coyne, J.C. (1983). Social confumation of dysphoria: Shared and private reactions to depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 806-814. Stroebe, M., and Stroebe, W. (1983). Who suffers more? Sex differences in health risks of the widowed. Psychological Bulletin, 93, 279-301. Swann, W.B., and Predmore, S.C. (1985). Intimates as agents of social support: Sources of consolation or despair? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1609-1617.

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Taylor, S.E., Falke, R.L., Mazel, R.M., and Hilsberg, B.L. (1988). Sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction among members of cancer support groups. In B.H. Gottlieb (Ed.), Marshaling social support: Formats, processes, and effects (pp. 187-208). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Taylor, S.E., Falke, R.L., Shoptaw, S.J., and Lichunan, R.R. (1986). Social support, support groups, and the cancer patient. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 608-615. Teich, C.F., and Teich, M.J. (1986). Group coping skills instruction and supportive group therapy for cancer patients: A comparison of strategies. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 802-808. Vachon, M.I., Lyall, W.A., Rogers, J., Freedman-Letofsky, K., and Freeman, S.J. (1980). A controlled study of a self-help intervention for widows. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137, 1280-1284. Vaux, A., Phillips, J., Thompson, B., Holly, L., Williams, D., and Stewart, D. (1986). The Social Support Appraisals (SSA) Scale: Studies of reliability and validity. American Journal of Community Psychology, 14, 195-220. Wagner, F., and Gottlieb, B.H. (1988). The contingent nature of social support. Paper presented at the Second IowalInternational Conference on Personal Relationships, Iowa City, Iowa. Zarit, S.H., Anthony, C.R., and Boutselis, M. (1987). Interventions with caregivers of dementia patients: A comparison of two approaches. Psychology and Aging, 2, 225232.

The Lady is not for Burning The Gender Paradox in Prevention and Social Support Frank Nestmann Christiane Schmerl

A deluge of research on social health conditions in the last 15 years leaves no doubt that social support in social networks and relationships is a crucial factor in establishing and maintaining personal well-being, sometimes even more important than individual skills of coping with crises (Shumaker and Brownell, 1984; Shinn et al., 1984). In spite of the remaining conceptual ambiguities in the broad field of social support, the still unsolved problems in research design and measurement, as well as the evident lack of knowledge concerning the process of social support transactions, situational influences, and socioecological milieus, and so forth, we can be sure today that social support, in its structural, functional, and contextual dimensions, is necessary and important for all of us to sustain our physical and mental health, to protect us against a broad range of stressors, and to help us in coping with critical life events (Gottlieb, 1983). Elaborated models of social support show a variety of preventive aspects of this multidimensional construct. Only a few can be mentioned here: 1. Integration in social networks with supportive relationships in itself seems to reduce the stress of isolation and loneliness. Thus it is preventive. 2. In social relations and companionship with others we can find gratification of our needs for affiliation. In social interactions we develop and maintain self-identity and we may experience a growth in self-esteem. Supportive relationships in primary social ties or in wider social networks may prevent the appearance of or the exposure to certain stressors, so that stress does not reach us. 3. Preventive effects of social support can also be identified when we face a stressor - but social support moderates and buffers its impact on our reactions or on our state of health.

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4. In most cases, social support plays an important role in perceiving and evaluating an event as a stressor or not. This is called the "primary appraisal" function of social support. The "secondary appraisal" means the calculation of potential support resources and the calculation of which adequate resources can be used in coping and problem solving. S. Besides those appraisal contents of social support transactions, it is mainly emotional, instrumental/material, and informational support (House, 1981), as well as environmental action (Gottlieb, 1983) that forms the foundation of its stress-buffering functions. And these stress-buffering functions may be interpreted as "secondary prevention", taking into account that no such support may leave the individual alone and without help when facing a stressor and thus more vulnerable and in danger of suffering from stress reaction or health damage. 6. The special importance of social support in the area of "tertiary prevention" - for instance, in caring for the chronically ill and disabled, in reintegration and readaptation of the severely disturbed - demonstrates that social support structures and transactions are central preventive factors along the stress-coping process. Professional preventive efforts must realize the qualities as well as the deficits of these ubiquitous and everyday preventive social support processes if they want to compensate, stabilize, change, or foster them adequately, and if their goal is to maintain and improve the health and well-being of individuals or groups by developing and promoting social networks and social support. A closer investigation reveals that the question that has to be asked here is: Who gives and who receives social support, when, under which emotional, situational, social, and ecological circumstances, in which form, in which context, and with what effect? (Nestmann, 1990) Despite the general truth that the overall function of social support is to enhance the recipient's well-being, the discriminative variables and determinants of social support processes and their interaction must be taken into account to ensure the occurrence and effectiveness of attempted social support. Gender is such a central discriminative variable. Men and women in every period of their lives seem to differ considerably in support seeking and receiving, as well as in support giving. We want to point out some of those sex differences in support-taking and -giving that we think ought to be considered in professional preventive planning and practice.

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Women and Men as Seekers/Receivers of Social Support

Let us first consider the seekers', users', and receivers' side of informal help and social support. What do we know about gender differences here? Despite some contradictory results and some insignificant findings concerning gender differences, one may presume that women are at a considerable advantage with respect to the seeking, perceiving, using, and receiving of social support compared to men. When significant differences between men and women of the same age were found, they were all in favor of women, except rare cases attributable to specific research designs, populations, or definitions and measurements of social support (Leavy, 1983; Vaux, 1985). Let us quote some of the central and best proven gender differences in perceiVed support, support resources, and support behavior. 1. Women report having more supportive relationship and using and receiving more social support than men (Hirsch, 1979; Bell et al., 1982; Caldwell and Bloom, 1982; Cleary and Mechanic, 1983; McFarlane et al., 1983; Stone and Neale, 1984; Westbrook and Viney, 1983).

2. Not only has it been found that emotional support is especially more available to women (Hirsch, 1979; Stokes and Wilson, 1984), but also general social support and other supportive aspects like advice and guidance have sometimes been found to be more available to women (Vaux, 1985). 3. Women report more, more intimate, and more stable supportive ties (Ingersoll and Depner, 1980; Miller and Ingham, 1976). 4. Women are more likely to establish and maintain confident and intimate relationships (Lowenthal and Haven, 1968). 5. Intimate friends and confident peers are (besides their more frequent kin ties) special support sources for women (phillips, 1981; Vaux, 1985; Bell, 1981; Wong, 1985), whereas men seem to rely exclusively on their wives (as we will see; Wong, 1985/86). On the other hand, male happiness and well-being seem to be fostered in wider social network ties (e.g., with colleagues) and in a larger amount of more casual and extensive social relationship (Phillips, 1981). 6. Social support in work environments seems to be more significant for men than for women (Holahan and Moos, 1981; LaRocco et al., 1980; House, 1981). For women - whether they go out to work or not - family support (which they often report to be missing) is more significant in

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securing psychological and physical health (Holahan and Moos, 1981; Brown et al., 1975; Paykel et al., 1980; Roy, 1978). 7. Some studies found women to be advantaged in several support dimensions, such as global support measures, network size, similarity of its members, emotional support, and perception of friends' support (Burda et al., 1984; Vaux, 1985; Hirsch, 1979). Like individual support histories during the life cycle (Antonucci, 1985), it seems that gender differences in social support in general are relatively stable and constant from childhood on to adolescence, adulthood, and the later years of life. In his summary of group differences in social support, Vaux (1985) pointed out that sex differences, as mentioned above, emerge even more consistently among adolescents and young people. This is of special interest when discussing intervention and prevention in childhood and adolescence. Social support benefits both girls and boys - for instance, in their socioemotional functioning, in development of self-identity and self-esteem but also functions as a buffer against school problems, school transition, family conflicts, divorce of parents and so forth (Wallerstein and Kelly, 1980; Wolchik et al., 1984; Berndt and Hawkins, 1984). But sex differences between boys and girls already exist in seeking, perceiving, and receiving support. From related research fields we know that boys in childhood and adolescence seem to have larger friendship networks, especially at school (Douvan and Adelson, 1966; Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974), and that they prefer interacting and playing in groups of three or more (Lever, 1976; Tietjen, 1982; Waldrop and Halverson, 1975; Savin-Williams, 1980). Girls in contrast seem to seek more intimate relationships and (as do women in later life) they already turn to others more frequently in stress situations and crises than boys (Wolchik et al., 1984; Douvan and Adelson, 1966; Fischer, 1982; Belle and Longfellow, 1984). Girls and boys hold a preference for relationships with the same sex from the age of 3 onward (Jacklin and Maccoby, 1978), but girls are more inclined to spend their time in peer dyads and in the family, to look for intensive and emotional relationships, to be sensitive to negative network qualities, to give expression to their feelings - also negative feelings - and so forth (Fischer, Sollie, and Morrow, 1986; Tietjen, 1982). Boys on the other hand more frequently seek activity-oriented contact to more peers. Their friendships are more extensive than intensive, and the relationships they seek to peers and adults (grandparents, neighbors, etc.) seem to be more casual and less intimate than those of girls.

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Bryant (1985) was able to confirm that these different levels of intimacy were also differently supportive and protective for boys and girls. Boys profit from the more casual and extensive relationship they seek; girls profit from their more intensive and intimate social bonds. Most studies concentrating on supportive interactions and perceived support in adolescence (Cauce et al., 1982; Burke and Weir, 1978) were unable to find gender differences in parent or family support and in the support of formal authorities like teachers. But compared to boys, informal support from peers and from other adults was better for girls. Girls were more likely to inform peers of their problems, they felt free to discuss more problems, and they were more satisfied with the support they received. A study of Russian adolescents by Kon and Losenkov (1978) shows us that these differences are international, and that we can find them in different societies. They too found needs for intimate and emotional relationships especially among girls (between the ages of 14 and 20), who stressed the importance of sympathy and mutuality, and the lack of intimacy more than the boys of the same age. The results of several studies of help-seeking, readiness to participate in intimate communication, and self-disclosure to others show women of all ages, from childhood on, in better positions than men of the same age (Butler et al., 1985). A large amount of literature demonstrates women seeking and using more professional help (see the summary by McMullan and Gross, 1983). The same seems to happen regarding natural support systems. Women seek more informal help and ask for more social support. They perceive more support in their social environment, and outside of partnerships and family they get more informal help and support. They are generally more expressive with respect to their feelings and direct emotions, and they disclose themselves to others more frequently (Jourard, 1961; Jourard and Lasakow, 1958; Jourard and Richman, 1963) and at a higher level (Cozby, 1973; Hood and Bach, 1971). Since self-disclosure, help-seeking, and emotional expressiveness are necessary assumptions for each of us to seek and gain support from one's social network regardless of age, Belle, Burr and Cooney (1987) investigated these behaviors in boys and girls in a recent qualitative interview study. In "Boys and Girls as Social Support Theorists" they interviewed children aged 7, 10, and 13 in order to explore gender differences in the perception of the

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benefits, costs, advantages, and obstacles of seeking support. The boys and girls were asked to complete stories about children of the same and opposite sex who were confronted with different stressors of loss, conflict, frustration, and so forth (school failure, bed-wetting, etc.). In the content analysis of the answers children gave to questions (whether the child in the story would tell anyone about the experience; what he or she would say; and why he or she would do so), the authors found an impressive parallel to the support resources worked out in research on adult support relationships and processes emotional, practical, informative, advisory support, and so forth. There were other reasons for confiding in somebody as well: for instance, just to tell someone about an experience in the sense of pure information or to tell something because it ought to be told or because the other person would find out anyway. For our question, the gender-specific vanabons are important. It was found that boys and girls differed regarding the goals and concerns of the children they imagined. Girls described children who confided in others in order to seek help, mostly practical help, whereas in the stories of the boys, telling experiences to others seemed to be just giving information or telling it because others would discover it anyway. Belle et al. (1987) see their results as corresponding to those reported for adults with "males avoiding the direct expression of the need for help and describing the sharing of personal experiences as a relatively emotionless exchange of information, and females willing to make direct request for help... " (p. 663) and expressing their feelings openly. Most of the authors concerned with the topic of gender specifics in social support and its consequences for personal well-being see explanations for the gender differences in socialization theory and in role/role constraint theory. Men and women experience a different socialization in our society. Their actual feelings, thinking, and behavior is largely shaped by the norms prescribed by gender. Considering the usual role qualities associated with masculinity as being independent, rational, competent, assertive, and strong; and, on the other hand female role attributes to be supportive, warm, nurturing, and compassionate (Bern, 1974), the above-mentioned advantages for women in social relations and in seeking and using social support seem evident. Masculine values make the seeking, using, and receiving of support an unmanly affair in most cases and interactions. The roles of the ill or of the distressed, of those unable to help themselves do not fit the masculine image. This is not the case for female

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roles: Here self-disclosure, help-seeking, and using support are positively valued and are expected as norms from childhood on. An unsolved paradox remains: Women have often been found to have more distress (Kessler, 1979) and higher incidences of psychological disturbance than men (Gove and Tudor, 1973; Pearlin, 1975; Weissman and Klennan, 1977), while on the other hand they seem to be considerably advantaged in getting social support, one of the most important stress buffers.

It is unlikely that this paradox results from women either not or inadequately using the support resources they have. In contrast, women use support more often and better than men. Social support could also be more effective and profitable for men, but research does not show anyone-sided, significant difference in social support effectiveness in their favor. Women, because of higher self-disclosure, may just report a greater amount of stress and healthrelated problems than men. But treatment rates and some studies on stress events and illness in the life of men and women show that there is no such artefact via self-report measurement. Perhaps the social support advantages of women are balanced out by certain coping deficiencies, for instance, the lack of social competence and problem-solving skills or learned helplessness, but studies like those of Rosario et al. (1988) show that these deficiencies cannot be verified. Comparing men and women, there were no sex differences in coping responses: They shared the same roles and thus the same role potentials and constraints. So it seems that for individual coping it is usually the social sexrole nonns and their special constraints for women in our society that produce these sex differences. On the other hand, despite the role identity in this study, perceived support was better for women. So in the case of social support, socialization theory seems to provide a more adequate explanation of sex differences. The authors conclude that the higher rates of distress and psychological disturbance should not be "blamed on the victims" and their poorer coping skills but on the "more severe hardships" of women's roles. And again a paradox - these hardships may result from the women's role in giving support; for women are primary carers and supporters.

2.

Women and Men as Providers of Social Support

If women have larger social networks, this does not mean that they are better protected against stress and social burdens. Social networks also demand individual efforts from their members. Women not only dispose of more social

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support and use it more intensively than men, but they also provide more social support. Since women have more potential and real social ties than men, the probability of demands on them increases as well as the readiness to help in case of emergency and the threat of "contagion" from the stress of others. Although social support is defined in ideal terms as something reciprocal and neutral, the empirical research in this field has unanimously shown women providing more social support in relationships of family, kinship, neighborhood, and professional relationships than men, and women receiving less social support than they provide - the "support gap", as it is called. That means, a lot of the classic interhuman efforts of social support in family and neighborhood are not neutral or genderless performances of a huge social net, but, viewed more closely, can be seen as typical female performance. The following caring and supporting activities are predominantly or exclusively provided by women as mothers, wives, grandmothers, daughters, daughtersin-law, sisters, and sisters-in-law, for example: baby care, minding preschool and school children, housekeeping, care of spouses, nursing of sick family members, caring and nursing of old parents, as well as caring and nursing of handicapped children and spouses. The fact that they receive less social support than they permanently provide for others, and get back less than they need to complete their own tasks and burdens, represents a permanent source of stress for women that has immediate consequences for their physical and mental health. There are many studies providing evidence of this in different fields. Well-known is the classic research (Bernard, 1971; Gove, 1976, 1979; Belle, 1980; Maracek and Ballou, 1981) showing husbands having better mental health, lower rates of suicide, and fewer problems with substance abuse and with delinquency than either single men or married women, while reversed relations are reported for women. Wives do not gain any health protecting advantages from being married; on the contrary, they often seem to be more disadvantaged compared with unmarried women. Some studies showed the highest rates of mental disorders and depression in women caring for small children. The permanent providing of support and care for small children without receiving social support in return often results in frustration and depression (Brown et al., 1975; Pearlin and Johnson, 1977). This is in agreement with results showing that women evaluate their husbands and their marital relationships least positively when there are small children at home (Campbell et al., 1976; Brown et al., 1975). Caring and fostering of elderly parents and

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in-laws is also a duty mostly fulfilled by daughters and daughters-in-law and rarely by male family members. All this shows that in the classic realms of women - marriage, family, children, invalids, and the elderly - social support is provided in a one-sided manner by women and is not reciprocated. Women often give voice to their discontent about the social support they receive (Trueblood, 1984) and their disappointment in their husbands when these do not give the amount or quality of social support that they are capable of providing (Cook and Weigel, 1983). One further source of social stress for women is the already mentioned "contagion of stress": Women experience, together with their own and direct stress, the burdens and negative life events of their loved ones as additional stress. Besides their own stress and the stress through contagion, it is mostly the permanent "support gap" that harms the physical and mental well-being of women - and thereby the well-being of those dependent on them. Exhausted, overburdened, and depressive women (mothers) are less attentive, provide less nurturance, are less affectionate with their children, and more punitive, neglectful, and indifferent. The more extensive social networks of women and the construction, maintenance, and exploitation of these networks compensate in part for these shortcomings, but they also require time as well as physical and mental energy. The apparent paradox of women mobilizing more social support and using larger social networks than men, but getting and receiving too little and too unsatisfying social support, can be solved by the realization that stress and overburdens do not exist in spite of larger networks, but that these larger networks are necessary and urgently needed because of social burdens, because of missing reciprocal social support. That means, women have to maintain relations to other adults beyond their nuclear family in order to get at least the minimum of necessary help and support. Of course, men also provide social support; men too act as social supporters in family, kinship, and neighborhood. Even the sort of help they provide is in most cases similar. Some studies indicate, however, that there are at least three typical differences in the amount and quality of social support provided by men compared to women: 1. Men engage less and more seldom in social support than women (Kessler et al., 1985).

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2. The circle of social support offered by or demanded from men is smaller and more confined to the intimate family (Kessler et al., 1985). 3. Out of two possible ways of giving social support (an instrumental "doing" style versus an expressive, facilitation style), men prefer the instrumental style more strongly than women, even though women also prefer the "doing"mode in helping. Women more often than men provide some sort of combination of both styles, that is, they are more flexible and more sensitive in their helping behavior, adjusting it to the situation. In addition, women more often initiate social support by themselves while men more often react to demands for social support (patterson, 1987). For the relations portrayed so far - women providing more social support and being more stressed by providing it, men providing less social support but gaining more of it from their wives - there exist some fitting explanations for both sexes. As far as men are concerned, there are recognized structures and constraints of employment preventing them from caring for children and elderly persons proportionately; on the other hand, what is most often mentioned for women is the female socialization in their willingness to help, their higher sensitivity to social interactions, and above all their vulnerability to demands, emergencies, and distress in their social environment, even in their more peripheral environment. Even though these two explanations are not wrong - for they surely describe observable facts - they become wrong if they are taken as a single or unique explanatory theory for the differences in male and female helping behavior.

Explanation No.1: Professional constraints as obstacles preventing men from providing social support. It is completely evident that men provide less social support in the conventional female realms - children, family, elderly, sick and handicapped persons - because of the structures of their jobs and professions (resulting from their absence from the home for the full day). As well as being a description of the state of affairs, this is at the same time a convenient explanation, demanding no change or modification on the part of men. Disproportionate support-giving of women and men is not a consequence of job constraints alone, as can be observed in several instances. Working wives and mothers provide still more support than working husbands and fathers and not less than other women. Working husbands and fathers are not prepared to help despite the existing opportunities to give support alongside their job structures. It is well known that the increasing employment of women has not resulted in a corresponding increase in the husband's support in the household. Moreover,

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there is clear evidence that husbands invest no or only unsatisfying or less social support in their marriage partnership - that means they are contributing no or very little own support in a domain that is - being conceived of as a "partnership" - in no way just one person's affair, and also not just a "female" affair like children and the family as mentioned above. In addition, we have not yet heard about men making serious attempts to change the structures of employment; impulses in this direction are coming more vehemently only from women.

Explanation No 2: When referring to women, it is more convenient to stress their specific female socialization. In this field we always find remarks about women's stronger emotionality and sociability. Women are thought to be more interested in people, more sensitive to human distress, as having more interest in the loved ones's in their social network. They are contagious to stress and more vulnerable to emergencies in their environment. Taken as a description of facts, these circumstances are correctly reproduced. In many areas there are psychological differences between women and men; what has often been called the "female social character". These observations - incontestable in appearance - tum into a wrong, if one-sided explanation, if they are interpreted as the main cause of imbalanced sex ratios in social support. Such interpretations are often not uttered explicitly, but one finds them clearly written between the lines. If, for example, the greater "emotionality", the greater "vulnerability" of women, as some sort of self-hindering or self-overburdening style of perception and behavior, is contrasted with the healthier strategy of men, it sounds like a self-inflicted, self-responsible weakness of women. If the "greater vulnerability of women to loved one's events" (Kessler et al., 1985, p. 500) is contrasted with the "greater ability (of men) to maintain emotional distance", if it is remarked that "men may be more successful at preventing involvement from becoming overinvolvement" or "men ... are emotionally affected only by the events that occur to the few people to whom they feel emotionally close" (Kessler et al., 1985, p. 498), then the inverted conclusion can be applied to women: They are emotionally too concerned with more distant events. In connection with men, one reads the words "success", "ability", and "prevention", while "emotionality", "love", "vulnerability", and "overinvolvement" are associated with women. Women are lacking - not incidentally - in ability, success, and preventive, self-protecting behavior. The revealing choice of words suggests the conclusion that women produce their social burdens, their social stress, for the most part by themselves, because they are too emotional and too sensitive. They meddle with too many affairs or get involved because they lack the healthy self-protecting abilities of men and their skilled defense mechanisms. There is no doubt that this may happen in concrete cases

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or that this may occur at an individual level. The interesting question is rather, if this offers us simultaneously a global and structural explanation for the problem of socially necessary but very unequally provided social support. The problem of social support being provided in society predominantly by women and the resulting greater risk for the physical and mental health of women and the persons dependent on them is not solved by appeals to women to let these demands rebound and not to provide these supports - however desirable this might be in individual cases. On the one hand, it is evident that these extensive social support activities are absolutely necessary for the social, physical, and mental well-being as well as for the maintenance of every community. Women and their supporting activities are not only the lubricating oil in the engine but they are also the fuel keeping alive - together with other "combustible material" - the whole social machine. Should we cut only a fraction of their supporting contributions, there would have to be an immediate substitute. The unavailability of a substitute is the main reason why women are susceptible to social blackmail: They know they cannot discontinue their supportive actions, because the persons dependent on them - children, the elderly, and the sick - are more or less helpless. Let us provide another example for the incorrect attribution of "too much emotionality, sociability, or vulnerability" as a sufficient explanation for the unequal distribution of social support. The above-mentioned, one-sided, overburdened situation of women resulting from demands of social support is made even worse by two additional conditions: poverty and old age. The disadvantages of women in education and profession keep them at the lower end of the labor market and in higher percentages of unemployment compared with men. Increasing divorce rates and 90%-rate of custody arrangements for mothers additionally push a lot of women and their children below the subsistence level. The increasing "feminization of poverty" has a dramatic effect on the social networks of the women concerned, on the available social support, and on the social support they have to provide in exchange. The "Stress and Families Project" with low-income mothers by Deborah Belle (1982b) has shown, and explained why, in cases of extreme social burdens, these women are desperately in need of their social networks, because it is only there that they get the social support - material and immaterial - so necessary for survival. Because of their economic constraints, these women have no freedom of choice; they have to sustain these networks, and the coercive nature of this necessity often means additional stress. There are no degrees of freedom to withdraw at least temporarily from the not just beneficial but also costly and compressing networks, if they do not want to risk the probability of being unsupported themselves. "Economic stress reduced options and essentially

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coerced women into relationships which they might otherwise avoid" (Belle, 1982b, p. 142). These examples of extreme social need reveal that the central operator in the predominantly female support achievements is the real mutual aid and not so much the exuberant female tendency to meddle with the affairs of friends and kin. These women often would prefer a greater degree of distance but literally cannot afford it economically. Old age for women may also be an example illustrating the fact that women are more often inclined to social support by distress than by disposition. Not only isolation and poverty in old age make women dependent on social networks and social support, but also the caring and nursing of their even older parents is often expected of them, thus making older women the more dependent on some voluntary aid. Especially in those cases, it becomes clear that there is a direct need for social support, because the financial resources are so desperately low - to pay for a babysitter in the first case, or to pay for a nurse for several hours a day in the latter. In these cases the female supportive performances cannot be explained by "overinvolvement" or by "emotional vulnerability", which would seem grotesque, because of the evidence of the absolute necessity for a social net in which they have to invest in return. Even if the individual woman does not provide her social support by calculation but by a sense of responsibility, duty, or friendship, this does not change the operating mode of mutual support systems. If one intends to change the unequal distribution of burdens of social support not only on behalf of women but at least to prevent the collapse of necessary support systems and their achievements for physical and mental health, then it seems important to identify the causes not only in the objective obstacles confronting nonsupportive men and in the subjective obstacles of the burdened women. Professional helpers of both sexes should rather consider the "objective" conditions of the support-providing and support-needing women. Besides their social networks, they need offers of material help and relief - for example nurseries, babysitters, professional assistance in caring for the sick and the old, and so forth - and they need information about the available help services. Regarding the men and husbands, it would be helpful if the "subjective" conditions of their withdrawing from or neglecting social support were no longer viewed just as self-protection but also as a deficit requiring compensation through learning. At the latest, this self-protection will be brought home to them in their old age: They will have fewer friends and social connections, because they did not care about support like women did. And the pervading self-refrain from providing psychological support for their wives should also be clearly recognized as lack of sensitivity and not be euphemized

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as "male objectivity" or "male instrumentality". If the standard male socialization is the reason for this, then socializing efforts should also concentrate here and not only on the side of women. If male socialization is taken into consideration, it seems desirable to let boys and men also learn to seek social support in extended relationships beyond the "family", that is, in wives and mothers. This would be beneficial for their own mental health, especially in old age; it would relieve their wives, and it could let them learn that social support means giving and taking. Finally - and intentionally in this position - it is possible to consider how, in cases of clear exceptional stress, women could learn to recognize in advance when and which demands of support are definitely too much, where they can get additional help, and where demands have to be refused. When discussing female socialization, one should be reminded of the important socialization processes taking place even in adulthood. This means, adult women can and do relearn when they are provided with new roles and new fields of experiences. Qualified vocational education and qualified professions for women will let them correct a lot of one-sided support demands by themselves. The three strategies mentioned above - help and relief through material support and social services, compensating male socialization deficits, improving the chances for female development - should be taken seriously by professional helpers in view of the decreasing "natural resources" of self-evident and invisible female support - because of the profound preventive effect it has on family and society. When the preventive social supporters par excellence women in family and neighborhood - are continually "burned out", then one day the warmth and the comfort they provide will be exhausted without replacement.

References Antonucci, T. (1985). Social support: Theoretical advances, recent findings, and pressing issues. In G. Sarason and R. Sarason (Eds.), Social support: Theory, research, and applications (pp. 21-38). Dordrecht: Nijhoff. Bell, R. (1981). Worlds of friendship. Beverly Hills: Sage. Bell, R., LeRoy, J., and Stephenson, J. (1982). Evaluating the mediating effects of social support upon life events and depressive symptoms. Journal of Community Psychology, 10, 325-340.

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Belle, D. (1980). Who uses mental health facilities? In M. Guttentag, S. Salasin, and D. Belle (Eds.), The mental health of women. New York: Academic Press. Belle, D. (1982a). The stress of caring: Women as providers of social support. In L. Goldberger and S. Bresnitz (Eds.), Handbook of stress (pp. 496-505). New York: Free Press. Belle, D. (Ed.)(1982b). Lives in stress: Women and depression. Beverly Hills: Sage. Belle, D., Burr, R., and Cooney, J. (1981). Boys and girls as social suppon theorists. Sex Roles, 17,657-665. Belle, D., and Longfellow, C. (1984). Turning to others: Child's use of confidants. Paper presented at the APA-Meeting Toronto 1984. Bem, S. (1974). The measure of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42,155-162. Bernard, J. (1971). The paradox of happy marriage. In V. Gornick and B. Moran (Eds.), Women in sexist society: Studies in power and powerlessness. New York: Basic Books. Berndt, T., and Hawkins, J. (1984). Friendship as social suppon for children during school transitions. Paper presented at the APA-Meeting Toronto 1984. Brown, G.W., Bhrolcbain, M., and Harris, T. (1975). Social class and psychiatric disturbance among women in an urban population. Sociology, 9, 225-254. Bryant, B.K. (1985). The neighborhood walk Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sources of suppon in middle childhood.

Burda, P., Jr., Vaux, A., and Schill, T. (1984). Social support resources: Variation across sex and sex role. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 119-126. Burke, R., and Weir, T. (1978). Sex differences in adolescent life stress, social suppon, and well-being. Journal of Psychology, 98, 277 - 288. Butler, T., Giordano, S., and Neren, S. (1985). Gender and sex role attributes as predictors of utilization of natural support systems during personal stress events. Sex Roles, 13, 515-524. Caldwell, R., and Bloom, B. (1982). Social suppon - Its structure and impact on marital disruption. American Journal of Community Psychology, 10,647-668. Campbell, A., Converse, P., and Rodgers, W. (1976). The quality of American life: Perceptions, evaluations, and satisfactions. New York: Russel Sage Foundation. Cauce, A., Feiner, R., and Primavera, J. (1982). Social suppon in high-risk adolescents: Structural components and adaptive impact. American Journal of Community Psychology, 10,4,417-428. Cleary, P., and Mechanic, D. (1983). Sex differences in psychological distress among married people. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 1983,24, 111-121. Cook, A., and Weigel, D. (1983). Relocation and crisis: Perceived sources of suppon. Family Relations, 32, 267-273. Cozby, P. (1973). Self-5

No data

9.3 2.4

5.8

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Meta-Analysis and Social Prevention Tab. 2: Description of the Studies (continue) Type of family characteristics Structural family characteristics (e.g., broken home) Sibling position Functional family characteristics (relationships, climate) Educational style (goals, attitudes, practice) Mother professional Mental illness/substance abuse of parents Social class Other characteristics (e.g., religion, urban-rural, parents' nationality, living area, etc.) No data

Multiproblem milieu 45.3 2.1

22.1 2.3 75.6

32.6 41.9 18.6 32.6 41.9 33.7 1.2

Source of information on family characteristics Parents Teacher Child Physician Other persons (e.g., kindergarten supervisor, social worker, psychologist) No data

Yes No No data

Operationalization of family characteristics 32.2 8.1 59.3 9.3 11.6 4.7

Case data Standardized questionnaire Open questionnaire Interview (Non- or semistructured) Other No data

22.1 58.1 3.5 24.4 8.1 5.8

Number of operationalizations of family characteristics 1 2 3 4 >5 No data

65.1 9.3 11.6 4.7 2.3 7.0

The same was true of the multiple disorders, which are so frequent in child and adolescent psychiatry, and the presence of cumulative stressors in the sense of a multiproblem milieu. There was a large variety in the type of operationalization for both disorders and the socialization characteristics. However, in a majority of over 50%, structured questionnaires prevailed. Equally, only one method of

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data access was used in more than 50% (disorders) or 65% (socIalization characteristics) of the studies, while the children/adolescents represented the single source of information in a similarly high percentage of studies. Effect sizes. The values for the calculation of the effect sizes according to the three different models are summarized in Table 3. Tab. 3: Results of the Calculation of Effect Sizes for the 86 Studies

M

SD Md Range Confidence interval (95 %)

Modell

Model 2

Model 3

.219 .186 .146 .012 - .935 .179 - .258

.269 .187 .210 .056 - .935 .229 - .309

.350 .188 .326 .056 - .935 .310 - .390

Although there was a great range of variation of the findings in the single studies, the variance of 0.03 showed that the majority of the relations were relatively similar and ranged from low to moderately high. The somewhat lower medians compared to the means indicated that high r m values should be considered more as "outliers." The three integration procedures only led to moderate differences. As defined, Model I produced a more conservative, and Model III an optimistic estimation. An r m score of .269, or between .229 and .309, proved to be the most reliable estimation of the effect size (confidence interval of Model II). When the Hunter et al. (1982) procedure was used to estimate the portion of variance caused by the sampling error, we obtained a value of circa 7%. Therefore it is adequate to study systematic moderator effects (see the section on the relationship to other study characteristics below). However, as the size of the total sample was strongly influenced by the small number of studies with a very high N, and to some extent dependent samples were also present, we did not attach much significance to the estimation of the sources of variance in the ES differences. Tab. 4: Validity Rating Scores and Their Relation to the Effect Sizes

Statistical validity Internal validity Construct validity External validity Descriptive validity p


100 Clinical sample Unselected sample

.371 .221 .290 .233 .289 .262

.200 .164 .178 .202 .205 .176

25 53 52 26

.269 .227 .277 .263

.195 .106 .173 .167

39 21 60 54

0.69

Mono-method (disorder) Multi-method (disorder)

.277 .243

.192 .178

40 34 .

0.80

Mono-method (family) Multi-method (family)

.257 .269

.188 .177

51 22

0.31

Childhood sample « 12 years) Adolescent sample (> 13 years) 1 Externalizing syndrome 2 Internalizing syndrome 3 Functional family characteristics 4 Structural family characteristics

3.26" 1.21

29

44

0.60 0.94

Notes:

I

Delinquency. antisocial behavior. general behavior disorders

2 Anxieties. depressions. general neuroses J 4

•

Including variables of educational style Including sibling position p

< .01; all others: p > .05

Discussion The present study exemplifies a series of problems in the practice of metaanalyses. For example, it becomes clear that it is necessary to specify a great nwnber of details if the method is to be relatively objective. In addition, it points out the sometimes extreme deficits in the docwnentation of procedures and findings on the primary study level. Despite the common problem of lack of space in journals for the provision of more complete and uniform reports, this is one of the most important stimulations from meta-analyses for the cwnulative integration of knowledge. In this context it is also noticeable that the greatest variance between the studies is to be found in our category of descriptive validity. As far as the effect size is concerned, there is only a moderate relationship between the two fields of characteristics. The recent phase of relevant research, which is more directed toward the flexible and differential processing of structural and functional characteristics or constructs such as coping, stress re-

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sistance, resiliency, invulnerability, hardiness, and so forth, is supported by our data on the variance explanation of traditional deficit models. At a first glance, our most reliable ES estimation of r m = .27 even seems disappointing, as the corresponding determination coefficient still remains below .10. This recalls the frequently cited "magic" value of r = .30 in the criticism of trait-oriented personality research, and perhaps reveals limitations in the explanation of variance through specific domains of characteristics. Findings on the relationships between social support and health also show such features (see Schwarzer and Leppin, 1988). However, the following should not be overlooked: The primary studies we meta-analyzed often only investigated single, relatively rough and static relationships. The dichotomization of variables already decreases the effect sizes (see Losel and Wittmann, 1989). The probability of developing disorders only appears to increase markedly in a stronger accumulation of risk factors (e.g., Thomas and Chess, 1984). In tum, these disorders are in themselves only relatively stable (see Rutter, 1989). Furthermore, there is easily a danger of underestimating the size of the observed relationship. This is revealed if a Binomial Effect Display Size Interpretation (BESD; from Rosenthal and Rubin, 1982a) is performed. According to this interpretation, arm coefficient of .20 applied to a fourfold table means, for example, that the success rate in a control group experimental design increases from 40% (without treatment) to 60% (with treatment) (Rosenthal, 1983). For our findings, this means that circa 27% more children and adolescents who originate in unfavorable family conditions show behavioral or emotional disorders compared to others. If we take into account the numerous reliability and validity problems that exist both in the operationalizations on the primary study level and within the meta-analysis, the relationship can even be considered to be remarkable. This result is relativized by the correlation between effect size and statistical conclusion validity. The fact that, in contrast to the other aspects of validity, a weak negative relationship is found here, suggests an overestimation of the effects through studies that are statistically less valid. The clear moderator effect of sample size also agrees with this finding. That large study samples produce lower effects does not, however, necessarily have to be due to a lower reliability of "smaller" studies. It may also be due to content characteristics, as a low N tends to be found more frequently in studies with clinical samples (r = - .19, n.s.). In line with expectations, these tend to show higher ES scores (see Table 5). The statistical validity correlated with the study characteristic "clinical sample" with - .33 (p < .01). The relation between clinical type of

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sample and effect size became more marked when the impact of the statistical validity was taken into account (partial correlation = .22, P < .05). Vice versa, the partial correlation between statistical validity and effect size decreased to - .16 (n.s.) when the type of sample was taken into account. We consciously refrained from studying multivariate moderator effects in the present study, as no hypotheses were explicated, and interaction effects are often hard to replicate. In all, the tested relationships between effect sizes and the methodological and content characteristics of the studies only suggest moderate differences. This agrees with meta-analyses in other areas, in which the "main effect" is also generally the most conspicuous. Most of the differences we observed took the expected direction and could probably reach statistical significance if there were a larger number of studies and their documentation were more complete. The trend toward higher ES scores in studies with multiple operationalizations does not contradict the usual pattern, as our expectation probably referred too onesided1y to the aspect of the methodological quality of the multimethod approach. However, it could also be true that "selective" significant findings are reported when several instruments are used (see also the correlations between ES and statistical conclusion validity).

When faced with far-reaching speculations about such relationships, one of the most important limitations must be pointed out, particularly from a metaanalytical perspective: We did not study the relationship between characteristics of family socialization and behavioral/emotional disorders in children and adolescents, but only one - even though according to explicit rules - selected sample of German-language journal articles. Our selection procedure was also restricted for economic reasons; yet, especially in this field, it is necessary to assume different intercultural and historical relationships (see Mattejat, 1985). But even within our limited German-language domain, we excluded relevant studies that were not to be found in the bibliographies assessed or were not published in journals. The need, even in meta-analyses, to be very careful with generalizations should therefore be stressed (Bullock and Svyantek, 1985). Like all empirical research, meta-analyses are subject to an old methodological principle: "Evidence comes by replication."

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Notes 1 These two steps as well as the subsequent interpretation and presentation of results are similar for all variants of meta-analysis. Therefore they will not be dealt with in this paper. 2 For reasons of space, the list of analyzed studies is not presented in this paper. It is available from the authors on request.

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Coping With Threats to the Validity of MetaAnalytic Findings: A Reanalysis of GermanLanguage Psychotherapy Outcome Studies Georg E. Matt

1.

Introduction

Meta-analysis refers to a type of literature review that makes explicit use of quantitative methods to analyze the results of a large collection of individual studies (Le., primary studies) for the purpose of integrating the findings (Glass, 1976; Glass, McGaw, and Smith, 1981; Hedges, 1987). In contrast to traditional narrative reviews, meta-analyses provide conceptual and statistical frameworks that guide the fonnulation of review questions, the location and selection of studies, the extraction of findings from within studies, and the aggregation of findings across studies. Since its first large-scale application over a decade ago, literally hundreds of research reviews have been conducted using meta-analytic methodology in the social and health sciences. There is also a growing theoretical and empirical literature on research into metaanalysis (e.g., Hedges and Olkin, 1985; Landman and Dawes, 1982; Matt, 1989; Orwin and Cordray, 1984). The major outcomes of meta-analyses of experiments and quasi-experiments are generalized, descriptive statements about the size and robustness of the presumably causal effects of classes of intervention or prevention projects. Examples for such effect estimates are: the effects of psychoeducational intervention on length of hospital stay (Devine and Cook, 1983), the effects of weight-loss treatments on essential hypertension (Hovell, 1982), the impact of leisure-time television on school learning (Williams et aI., 1982), or the impact of psychotherapeutic interventions on mental health (e.g., Smith, Glass, and Miller, 1980; Wittmann and Matt, 1986). Meta-analytic statements about the size and robustness of effects are believed to be superior to the findings of individual primary studies. The argument goes that effect estimates of each primary study are affected by methodological weaknesses, a unique set of contextual conditions, and conceptual irrelevancies.

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Thus the effect estimate of a single primary study is likely to provide a biased effect estimate of the class of interventions under review. However, in the entire population of primary studies, the effects of such methodological shortcomings and unique contextual conditions on effect estimates will balance each other out. To probe whether meta-analytic findings are indeed more valid than findings of individual studies, meta-analysts have developed a number of strategies to identify, eliminate, or minimize the impact of threats to the validity of their findings. This paper examines some of the better known threats to the validity of causal effect estimates based on meta-analyses and illustrates approaches used to cope with such threats. I will first examine the assumptions made to rule out the effects of plausible threats. Next, I will reanalyze the meta-analysis of German-language psychotherapy outcome studies conducted by Wittmann and Matt (1986). I will examine several threats to the validity of their average effect estimate and will illustrate some of the techniques to rule out and eliminate threats to the validity of meta-analytic findings. Finally, I will examine some of the factors that currently limit the validity of causal claims based on metaanalyses.

2.

Ruling Out Threats to the Validity of Meta-Analytic Findings

Meta-analysts base their evidence in support of the validity of their findings on three different approaches. First, they assess potential validity threats (e.g., differential attrition, low treatment implementation) and study whether these threats counterbalance each other across studies. Second, meta-analysts assess the degree of bias caused by validity threats that did not cancel each other out and weight effect estimates to eliminate the bias. Third, if validity threats did not counterbalance each other and the degree of bias cannot be validly assessed, meta-analysts rely on sensitivity analyses in which reasonable boundaries are established for an effect estimate based on worst and best case scenarios.

Counterbalancing Cook and Leviton (1980) point out that to dismiss threats to the validity of meta-analytic effect estimates, meta-analysts have to make one of two assumptions.

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The counterbalancing assumption entails that "one has to assume that irrelevancies that inflate a relationship in one direction in some studies are counterbalanced by equally potent irrelevancies inflating it in the opposite direction in other studies" (Cook and Leviton, 1980, p. 455). Counterbalancing may occur because of two processes. First, a single conceptual irrelevancy may result in the overestimation of effects in some studies and in the underestimation of effects in other studies. For example, experimenter expectancies may lead to positively biased estimates in studies in which the experimenter is in support of a particular intervention. A negatively biased estimate may result in studies in which the experimenter was opposed to a particular treatment. However, across a number of studies these biases caused by one conceptual irrelevancy may cancel each other out (Le., counterbalancing across studies). Second, a single conceptual irrelevancy may result in a consistent overestimation or underestimation in all studies. For instance, unreliable outcome measures will always lead to the underestimation of an effect. Similarly, selective reporting of statistically reliable findings will tend to lead to the consistent overestimation of an effect. For counterbalancing to occur here, equally strong additional irrelevancies inflating effects in opposite directions have to be operating (Le., counterbalancing across irrelevancies).

Weighting Alternatively to counterbalancing, meta-analysts have to resort to the weighting assumption requiring that "the degree of bias can be validly estimated, and that studies can be weighted to eliminate the bias" (Cook and Leviton, 1980, p. 455). For the weighting technique to have its desired effect, one has to assume that (a) the potential irrelevancies are known, (b) their impact on the effect estimates can be validly estimated, and (c) studies can be weighted to eliminate the bias.

Sensitivity Analyses A third approach to ruling out threats to the validity consists of establishing reasonable boundaries for an effect estimate based on plausible worst- and best-ease scenarios (e.g., Light and Pillemer, 1984). A potential threat to the

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validity of an estimate is considered to be implausible or trivial if the effect estimate appears to be robust to plausible levels of the threat or if unrealistic scenarios have to be made up in order to change the effect estimate appreciably.

3.

Methods

Meta-Analysis of German Language Psychotherapy Outcome Studies Some 10 years ago, Smith, Glass, and Miller (1980) published the first large scale meta-analysis in which they reviewed almost 500 English-language studies on the benefits of psychotherapeutic interventions. Their major findings were that, first, psychotherapy has positive and - compared to other interventions - large effects across a variety of different disorders, outcome measures, and treatment modalities. Second, classes of interventions did not appear to differ in terms of their effectiveness. Third, the quality of study design did not appear to have an effect on study outcomes.

In an attempt to replicate and expand the Smith et al. meta-analysis of English-language psychotherapy outcome studies, Wittmann and Matt (1986) conducted a meta-analysis of German-language psychotherapy outcome studies. In accordance with Smith et al., psychotherapy "was defined as the informed and planful application of techniques derived from established psychological principles by persons qualified through training and experience to apply techniques with the intention of assisting individuals to modify such personal characteristics as feelings, values, attitudes, and behaviors which are judged by the therapist to be maladaptive." (Meltzoff and Kornreich, 1970, p. 4). Unlike Smith et al., Wittmann and Matt (1986) restricted their meta-analyses to studies that used a control group design, excluded dissertations and unpublished studies, and restricted their literature search to studies published between 1971 and 1982. Based on computer-assisted as well as manual search strategies, 76 studies were identified that included 86 treatment comparisons and that met the above requirements. From these treatment comparisons, 428 effect sizes were extracted. A Glassian type effect size (referred to as g) was calculated for each treatment effect, and a mean effect (referred to as g.) was estimated as a simple, unweighted, arithmetic average. Hedges (1981; Hedges and Olkin, 1985)

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examined the sampling properties of the Glassian effect estimate and showed that it has a slight bias when it is based on small samples of subjects (n < 10 per group). This led to the formulation of an unbiased effect estimate (referred to as d) which, under fairly general conditions, has a sampling distribution that is approximately normal with mean 0 (Le., population effect size) and variance v. . Subsequent work indicated that the most precise way of combining effect estimates is a weighted average that takes into account the sampling variances v of each effect estimate d (the weighted average is referred to as d.).

In the following, I will examine a number of threats to the validity of Wittmann and Matt's average effect estimate for German-language psychotherapy outcome studies. First, validity threats will be examined for which counterbalancing appears to have failed. The unbiased weighted mean estimate (Le., d.) will be compared to the biased unweighted mean estimate (Le., g.) and the effect of statistical nonindependence, truncation of outliers, experimenter blinding, measurement reactivity, and measurement sensitivity on these estimates will be studied. Second, validity threats will be briefly described for which counterbalancing appears to have occurred. Finally, average effect estimates will be adjusted for two major potential validity threats: publication bias and unreliability of outcome measures.

4. Results Instances Where Counterbalancing Appears to Have Failed Statistical nonindependence and truncating outliers. The unit of analysis underlying Smith et al. 's meta-analysis is the single effect size. Based on this effect size unit of analysis, Wittmann and Matt found the unweighted mean effect estimate g. (Le. unweighted average) for the sample of 428 effect sizes to be .481. A closer look at the effect size distribution revealed that one study produced effect sizes of 18.4 and 19.6 standard deviation units. A reexamination of this study suggested that these effect sizes should be excluded, leading to a revised mean effect estimate of .394. Most studies allow the calculation of more than one effect size which creates problems of statistical nonindependence among the units of analysis. Nonindependent units of analysis can be created if effect sizes are averaged within independent treatment comparisons (for statistically more appropriate ways to deal with nonindependence see Hedges and Olkin, 1985; Rosenthal and Rubin,

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1986; and Strube, 1985). Following this procedure, the mean study unit effect size for 86 treatment comparisons becomes .618. If the previously mentioned outlier study is excluded, the unweighted mean effect estimate based on the study unit of analysis drops to .401. The weighted treatment effect d. based on effect size unit estimates is .306 regardless of the exclusion of the two extreme outliers. The two extreme outliers were based on relatively small samples and the weighting procedure appears to have successfully minimized their influence on the overall effect estimate. The treatment effect based on study unit effect estimates is .334 if outliers are included and .333 if they are excluded. The sampling variance is .000848 which results in a x 2 (df = 1) of 680.2 indicating that the treatment effect is reliably larger than zero. Note also that the study unit estimate hardly differs from the effect size unit estimate, suggesting that the weighted mean estimates are robust concerning extreme outliers and violations of statistical independence among effect estimates.

Experimenter blinding. Each study was rated as to the degree of experimenter blinding (Rosenthal, 1976). A low level of blinding was coded when the experimenter (Le., research staff involved in study design and assessment) was also directly involved in treatment delivery. An intermediate level of blinding was coded when the experimenter was not directly involved in treatment delivery but was most likely aware of a subject's status as control or experimental. A high level of blinding was coded when experimenters and therapists appeared to have been independent and there was no evidence that experimenters were aware of the control and treatment status of their subjects. Tab. 1:

Un weighted (g.) and Weighted (d.) Average Effect Estimates and Standard Error (SE) for Three Levels of Experimenter Blinding.

Low Intermediate High

g.

d.

SE

.553 .381 .278

.526 .321 .222

.065 .041 .054

Notes: SE: Standard Error (SE =

.fv.)

g.: unweighted mean effect estimate (see text for explanation) d.: weighted mean effect estimate (see text for explanation)

v.: variance of sampling distribution of d.

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If an experimenter bias was operating and counterbalancing did occur, or, if no bias was operating, effect estimates are expected to be the same for all three groups of studies. If an experimenter bias was operating and counterbalancing did not occur, effect estimates are expected to be different. Table 1 gives the unweighted and weighted mean effect estimates and standard errors for the three levels of experimenter blinding.

Unweighted average effect estimates based on studies with low experimenter blinding are about twice as high as effect estimates based on studies with the strongest experimenter blinding (.553 versus .278). Studies that employed at least some experimenter blinding show intermediate effect estimates (.381). Weighted average effect estimates show even more extreme differences between studies with and without experimenter blinding. Studies in which experimenter blinding was strongest show mean effects of .222 standard deviation units. This compares to an average estimate of .526 for studies in which experimenter blinding was weakest. Reactivity of Outcome Measures An outcome measure is considered to be reactive if the measurement process

itself affects the measurement outcome. In such a case, the obtained measures are partly invalid and do not correctly reflect the intended attribute. Instead, the obtained measure may be influenced by certain demand characteristics of the measurement situation (Le., making a good impression as a treatment or control group subject) or response sets (e.g., social desirability, acquiescence). Table 2 gives unweighted and weighted effect estimates based on outcome measures of different reactivity. Tab. 2:

Low Medium High

Unweighted (g.) and Weighted (d.) Average Effect Estimates and Standard Error (SE) for Three Levels of Measurement Reactivity. g.

d.

.213 .342 .492

.254 .278 .459

SE

-

.027 .027 .035

The unweighted average effect estimate based on outcome measures rated to be highly reactive is .492, that for moderately reactive measures is .342, and that for the least reactive measures is .213.

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The results based on the weighted average effect estimates parallel those of the unweighted estimates. Nonreactive measures produced a mean effect estimate that is roughly half the size of outcome measures rated to be reactive (.254 versus .459).

Insensitivity of Outcome Measures Boruch and Gomez (1977) discuss the detrimental impact of insensitive measures on effect estimates. Briefly put, to detect a treatment effect, response variables have to be relevant to the treatment's content and objectives. To the extent that response variables are not suited to the treatment, the study will fail to detect treatment effects even with strong treatments. By design, trait inventories are concerned with personality attributes that are relatively stable over time and are supposed to be relatively insensitive to interventions. Roughly one third of all outcome measures in this meta-analysis were relatively insensitive trait inventories. Table 3 depicts unweighted and weighted effect estimates based on personality trait inventories and behavior observations. Both classes of outcome measure have also been rated as not being reactive. Tab. 3:

Unweighted (g.) and Weighted (d.) Average Effect Estimates and Standard Error (SE) for Three Levels of Insensitive (Le., Personality Trait Inventories) and Sensitive (Le., Behavior Observations) Outcome Measures.

Sensitive Insensitive

g.

d.

SE

.463 .180

.456

.144

.055 .034

It comes as no surprise that effect estimates based on trait inventories are the smallest. Unweighted mean effect estimates are .180 for personality trait inventories and .463 for behavior observations. The weighted mean estimates are .144 and .456, respectively.

Instances Where Counterbalancing Appears to Have Occurred If counterbalancing occurred, effect estimates based on studies in which the presumed bias was operating and those in which the bias was not operating should not differ more than could be expected by sampling error alone. The assumption made here is that studies subject to a presumed bias have been correctly identified.

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Examinations similar to the ones presented above were conducted for a number of other plausible validity threats. The results - which cannot be reported here in detail - suggest that effect estimates are not affected by (1) attrition from experimental and control groups, (2) random and nonrandom assignment of subjects to treatment and control groups, (3) type of control group, (4) length of treatment, and (5) therapist experience. While each individual study's effect estimate may have been affected by differential attrition, nonrandom assignment, or insufficient implementation of treatment and nontreatment conditions, overall, these biases appear to have balanced each other out.

Coping With Potential Biases: Adjustment, Weighting, and Bracketing Publication and reporting biases. Studies published in the behavioral sciences are likely to be a biased sample of the studies that are actually carried out. The bias is likely to be of such a nature that statistically significant findings (i.e., relatively large effects in the expected direction) are more likely to be submitted and accepted for publication than statistically nonsignificant findings (i.e., relatively small effects or effects pointing in the opposite direction). An extension of the publication bias appears to affect the reporting of research

results in published research. Researchers frequently do not report all outcomes but censor the presentation of results that are not statistically significant or do not fit an expected pattern. As a result of these reporting and publication biases, effect estimates based on reported results in published studies may be seriously biased. Hedges (1984) shows that this bias can be substantial if sample sizes are small and the true effect estimates are small but nonzero. For instance, if the true effect size is .50 and sample size per group is 20 - which is not untypical for psychotherapy studies - the bias of the effect estimate based on statistically significant findings only (p < .05) is nearly 75 %. That means, a meta-analyst can expect to observe a treatment effect of .87, while the true effect is .50. The first approach to investigate the impact of a possible publication bias is to compare the effect estimates derived from published and unpublished sources. Because Wittmann and Matt's meta-analysis was only based on published studies, this approach is not applicable. Also, such comparisons are problematic because the source of the study is likely to be confounded with other study characteristics (e.g., serious design flaws, low sample size).

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A plausible fail-safe number. A second approach to deal with a publication bias favoring statistically significant findings was suggested by Rosenthal (1979; see also Orwin, 1983). Although no definitive solution to what Rosenthal called the file drawer problem is available, he suggests that one can establish reasonable boundaries on the problem and estimate the degree of damage. The method involves calculating the number of new, filed, or unretrieved studies (Le., analysis down to a barely significant level (e.g., p > .10).

The rejection of the file drawer hypothesis as a plausible rival hypothesis depends on the number of studies it would take to bring the effect estimate to a nonsignificant level. If the number of studies in file drawers appears to be implausibly high, the file drawer hypothesis would be rejected. Since no general guidelines can be given as to what constitutes an implausible number of studies, the validity of Rosenthal's approach depends on the arguments that can be made against the existence of a given number of file drawer studies. Such arguments are usually based on the relative size of the number of retrieved and presumed file drawer studies, a thorough understanding of publication practices and research activities, and the effort that has been made to locate unpublished studies. Tab. 4:

Fail-Safe Numbers for d. = .33 as a Function of Critical Effect Size, Different Critical Effect Sizes ESc'" and Assumed Average Effect Among File Drawer Studies ESt. . .20

.10

ESt. .00

-.10

-.20

Inf 56S

Inf 566 283 189

566 283 189 142 113

189 142 114 9S 81

114 95 81 71 63

.OS ESCIit

.10 .15 .20 .25

Table 4 gives the number of file drawer studies (Le., fail-safe number N,) necessary to reduce the weighted observed effect estimate d. = .333 to a critical level (ESeriJ. The number of file drawer studies is presented as a function of the average effect size of the file drawer studies (ES,J and the critical effect size level (ESeriJ. Depending on the assumptions one is willing to make about ES" and ESerif' the fail-safe sample sizes differ considerably. Table 4 indicates that 566 studies with an average effect of zero have to be hidden in file drawers in order to

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reduce the observed effect estimate of .333 to .05. Or, 81 studies with an average effect of - .20 have to be hidden in file drawers to reduce the observed effect estimate of .333 to .15. A plausible scenario could look like this: The average intervention effect has to exceed E5crit = .10 to be considered clinically significant. File drawer studies fail to reach this intervention effect and are likely to average between + .10 and - .10. More than 142 of such file drawer studies are required to render the observed effect estimate of .333 clinically insignificant; that is, to reduce the effect estimate to .10. Based on our understanding of research activities and publication practices, it is judged to be highly unlikely that 140 studies or more exist on the effects of psychotherapy that have not been included in this metaanalysis.

Adjusted mean estimates. A third approach involves Hedges's (1984) corrections for estimation of effect size under publication bias. This correction is applicable under the condition that all results reaching a significance level of, for instance, .05 are being published while all results that fail to reach this level of statistical significance end up in file drawers. In most practical situations, the correct censoring rule will be unknown and is likely to be more complicated than the one underlying Hedges's model. However, these corrections may provide a reference point for a prototypical censoring rule and may serve as a plausible worst case scenario. The observed unweighted mean estimate for German-language psychotherapeutic interventions based on 184 statistically significant findings (p < .05) is .717. The average sample size underlying these effect estimates is approximately 25. If one is willing to assume these 184 are the only statistically significant findings and all other findings on the effectiveness of psychotherapy are statistically insignificant (p > .05), then the maximum likelihood estimate for the population effect size (based on all published and unpublished effect estimates) is .309. The observed weighted mean effect estimate for the same 184 effect sizes that reached statistical significance (p < .05) is .584. The maximum likelihood estimate for the population effect size based on all statistically significant and insignificant effect estimates is .154. Note that this is a rather conservative estimate because it assumes that none of the unpublished studies yield effect estimates reaching statistical significance.

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Adjustment for unreliabmty of outcome measures. Measurement theory predicts the detrimental effects of poor measurement on the size of effect estimates. Briefly put, the poorer the reliability of a measurement instrument, the smaller the effect it can indicate even with strong treatments. Consequently, the unreliability of outcome measures represents another potent candidate for a constant negative bias in meta-analyses. To compensate for this bias, Hunter, Schmidt, and Jackson (1982) suggest that meta-analysts correct the obtained effect estimate for imperfect measurement. The reliability of each outcome measure was rated on the basis of estimates provided in the research report, test manuals, and vJler rating conventions. Correcting each effect size for the rated unreliability of the underlying outcome measure yields an unweighted effect average of .465 and a weighted effect average of .369. In other words, if outcomes had been assessed with perfectly reliable measures, a mean effect estimates of .465 and .369 could be observed.

5.

Discussion

The Robustness of the Effect Estimates Table 5 summarizes the mean effect estimates corrected for various biases and limited to studies judged to be least subject to certain validity threats. Overall, the German-language literature suggests that the class of psychotherapeutic interventions examined here has a positive effect on mental health. This positive effect is rather robust across various validity threats. The observed positive intervention effect cannot be ruled out as the consequence of reporting and publication biases, reactivity of outcome measures, lack of experimenter biases, nonrandom assignment of subjects to treatment conditions, differential attrition, and other validity threats. While the overall positive effect of psychotherapeutic interventions appears to be rather robust, the size of this positive effect is not. Unweighted effect estimates are consistently larger than the weighted effect estimates. Hedges's work on the sampling distribution of the weighted and unweighted estimates suggests that these differences are due to an overestimation bias of the unweighted average effect estimates. The average effect estimates do not only provide preferable mean estimates but are also less affected by extreme outliers and statistical nonindependence.

Validity of Meta-Analytic Findings Tab. 5:

345

Unweighted (g.) and Weighted (d.) Average Effect Estimates Based on Different Units of Analysis, Truncated and Complete Distributions, and Corrected for Various Validity Threats.

Effect size unit Outliers included Outliers excluded Study unit Outliers included Outliers excluded Corrected for: - Unreliability of outcome measures - Reporting and publication bias Effects based on studies with: - Sufficient experimenter blinding - Sensitive outcome measures - Nonreactive outcome measures

g.

d.

.481 .394

.306 .306

.618 .401

.334 .333

.465 .309

.369 .154

.278 .463 .213

.222 .456 .254

The unweighted mean estimates vary between .20 and .60 with a central tendency around .40. The variations in effect estimate appear to be partly a function of validity threats that did not cancel each other out in the sample of studies entering the meta-analysis. The study unit mean effect estimate is rather sensitive toward the truncation of only one extreme outlier study. If the single outlier study Is excluded, the mean estimate drops by 35 percent. The study unit mean effect estimate is also sensitive to three major validity threats: sensitivity of outcome measures, experimenter blinding, and reactivity of outcome measures. If effect estimates are based on studies in which these threats can be ruled out, mean estimates vary between .20 and .50. The weighted average effect estimates vary between .18 and .46 with a central tendency around .30. Compared to the unweighted mean estimates, the weighted average is not affected by the extreme outlier study. However, the weighted mean estimates also indicate that several biases did not cancel each other out. Studies in which experimenter blinding was weak and outcome measures were reactive produced far higher effect estimates than other studies. A bias pointing in the opposite direction was found in studies in which insensitive outcome measures were used. The size of the unweighted and weighted mean effect estimates is relatively insensitive to a number of other validity threats such as unreliable outcome

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measures, the nonrandom assignment of subjects to treatment conditions, differential attrition, and deficient implementation of the treatment condition that did not appear to influence the mean effect estimate.

Counterbalancing Assumptions Cannot Be Made Routinely

To rule out threats of constant bias, meta-analysts partly rely on the assumption that biases counterbalance each other in their impact on effect estimates. The data reported here indicate that this assumption cannot be made routinely. The counterbalancing assumption will frequently not hold because primary studies entering a meta-analysis tend to share a variety of conceptual irrelevancies and are under similar external constraints. Unfortunately, many of these shared irrelevancies and constraints (e.g., experimenter blinding, unreliability of outcome measures) are not independent of intervention effects. In the meta-analysis of German-language psychotherapy outcome studies, several constant biases have been identified. Lack of experimenter blinding and the use of reactive outcome measures results in the overestimation while the use of insensitive outcome measures leads to the underestimation of the population effect estimate.

It should also be pointed out that conceptual irrelevancies do not have to be shared by the entire population of studies to cause a constant bias. Instead, shared conceptual irrelevancies resulting in constant biases may affect subsets of studies only. This is likely to occur if independent program and research traditions exist in a particular area. For instance, in the German-language literature, studies of humanistically oriented therapies had by far the strongest preference for trait inventories, resulting in a particularly strong constant negative bias for effect estimates for such interventions.

Not All Biases Can Be Adjusted For by Weighting

If there is reason to believe that the counterbalancing assumption does not hold, meta-analysts attempt to estimate the degree of bias from a particular source and to eliminate its impact on effect estimates by weighting studies differentially. In its most basic form, this policy has been applied in numerous traditional reviews when so called low-quality studies are given a weight of zero and are thus eliminated from a review.

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The success of this approach hinges on a series of assumptions. First, all potential candidates of constant bias have to be known. Second, the influence of such biases has to be probed for in the entire population of studies as well as in all subsets of studies for which separate effect estimates are to be obtained (e.g., different types of intervention). Third, reports of primary studies have to contain all necessary information to validly assess the possible operation of a bias. Fourth, meta-analysts have to code the relevant information reliably. Finally, a weighting scheme has to be designed that effectively eliminates all biases but does not affect a study's counterbalancing role. It is highly unlikely that any meta-analysis can meet all of the above assumptions. The limitations do not lie in the meta-analytic techniques themselves but rather in the less than ideal context in which they are used. In many metaanalyses, the above assumptions will simply not hold because of deficient reporting quality in primary studies. Despite the many contextual limitations of this approach, meta-analysts have successfully used some weighting techniques in dealing with some potential biases. Common to these biases is that they belong to the better understood validity threats in experimental and quasi-experimental research, that most primary studies do report relevant information on these biases, and that they can be coded relatively easily. The unweighted average effect estimates g. can be corrected for small sample bias and weighted by their individual sampling variances to yield a better average effect estimate (Le., d.). In this meta-analysis, the weighted mean estimate d. is roughly 2S percent smaller than the unweighted mean, indicating a constant negative bias in g.. Note that this weighting procedure is only applicable if studies report the sample sizes of their experimental and control groups. Effect estimates can also be corrected for the unreliability of the outcome measure. If this correction is employed, the weighted average effect estimate of .33 increases by some 10 percent to .374. Note that this weighting technique hinges on the availability of reliability estimates for each measurement instrument employed in a study. Unfortunately, this is not the case in most studies.

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Current Limitations to Ruling Out Threats Deficient reporting in primary studies. The valid assessment and successful elimination of bias is limited by the infonnation provided in a particular study. The previous discussion of validity threats focused on a subset of all plausible threats partly because study reports did not provide the necessary infonnation to validly assess other threats. Consequently, the effect of a number of plausible and likely threats to the validity could not be examined adequately. The number of potential biases that could not be adequately assessed and eliminated is likely to outnumber by far the biases that can be assessed and eliminated. Some of these potential biases may be powerful. Similar to the effect of poor outcome measures, poor implementation of treatment as well as nontreatment conditions can lead to insensitive tests of intervention effects (Boruch and Gomez, 1977; Cook and Campbell, 1979). Unfortunately, information crucial to the evaluation of this potential bias is generally unavailable and the operation of a potential bias cannot be ruled out. Differential attrition from treatment and control conditions is another candidate for potential constant bias. Unfortunately, the infonnation necessary to determine whether differential attrition occurred and may have had a constant effect across the population of studies is generally insufficient. A particularly pervasive candidate for a potential constant bias in quasiexperimental evaluation studies is selection biases and interactions with selection. Selection biases occur when effect estimates are influenced by differences between the kinds of people in one experimental group as opposed to the other. If a number of studies share the same differences between experimental groups (e.g., the more severely disturbed, the more verbally skilled are more likely to receive a particular treatment), chances are that a constant bias is operating. Unfortunately, the information necessary to determine whether this is indeed the case is most frequently unavailable in research reports.

Deficient codings by meta-analysts. Extracting infonnation from primary studies is a coding process in which meta-analysts carefully examine each research report to code relevant pieces of infonnation, such as characteristics of interventions, clients, and the research design. This coding process has not received much attention in research on meta-analysis, but there is growing evidence that deficiencies in this process may lead to biased effect size estimates.

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Research by Stock et al. (1982) and Orwin and Cordray (1984) indicates that unreliability in the coding process introduced through deficient reporting and coding degrades the integrity of meta-analyses and can lead to spurious findings. Another issue concerns several judgmental issues involved in a meta-analyis, such as the meta-analyst's decision on which effect sizes from a particular study to include or to exclude. In the area of psychotherapy outcome studies, several rules have been advanced to guide this decision. They advise metaanalysts to exclude effect sizes based on redundant or unreliable outcome measures, to exclude outliers, or to include only those effect estimates on which independent coders can agree. A recent study by Matt (1989) indicates that the different rules tend to produce quite different effect estimates. That means, each single rule is likely to introduce its own constant bias. Moreover, these decision rules are difficult to implement reliably because of reporting deficiencies in primary studies and coder errors introduced through imperfections in the coding process. Some potential biases are not well understcxx1. Meta-analysis cannot in and of itself rule out threats to its validity. Meta-analysts have to carefully scrutinize their conclusions for plausible rival hypotheses. However, rival hypotheses can only be examined if they have been recognized as potential threats and if additional evidence can be collected to examine their impact. Discussions of publication bias tend to focus on biases for statistically significant findings (e.g., Atkinson, Furlong, and Wampold, 1982; Coursol and Wagner, 1986; Fagley and McKinney, 1983; Greenwald, 1975). However, other biases than those for statistically significant findings are likely to operate but have not been thoroughly studied. For instance, Abramowitz, Gomes, and Abramowitz (1975) studied the susceptibility of editorial decisions in the social sciences to cognitive bias and found that the probability that a manuscript would receive a very firm publication endorsement was a good deal greater when it was sent out to an ideologically sympathetic referee than to an unsympathetic one. Current meta-analytic methodology requires conformity with a certain research paradigm. For instance, to be included in the meta-analysis discussed here, controlled group studies had to be conducted and 1-df contrasts (e.g., t or Z tests) have to be reported. In the field of psychotherapy outcome studies, classes of interventions are not independent of research paradigms. Unfortunately, some of the interventions and their research paradigms emphasize single-

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case studies over group studies and may even decline quantitative assessments and statistical treatment of assessment data. Consequently, these intervention studies will not be included in a meta-analysis. Moreover, the few studies that may have been conducted will not be representative of the class of interventions, which can lead to a biased effect estimate for a particular class of interventions (e.g., psychodynamically oriented interventions). An additional complication may result if classes of interventions have different practices of disseminating research findings, such as favorite journals, publications of limited circulation, and professional conventions. If these different publications have different probabilities of being included in a meta-analyses, biased effect estimates may also result.

This brief discussion of current limitations to meta-analysis should not draw attention away from its major contributions to the debate of psychotherapy outcomes. There is overwhelming evidence now that the classes of reviewed psychotherapeutic interventions have robust positive effects on patients' mental health. Thanks to meta-analytic reviews, the current debate has shifted away from the question whether this effect is statistically different from zero. Instead, the current debate is about the size of effects, the clinical relevance of the observed effects, better ways of designing outcome studies, methodological and substantive factors that influence observed effect estimates, and improved dissemination of research. Like other research methods, meta-analysis is conducted in less than ideal contexts and by imperfect researchers. Metaanalysts are in the process of learning how to cope with the multiple potential threats to the validity of their findings.

References Abramowitz, S.I., Gomes, B., and Abramowitz, C.V. (1975). Publish or politic: Referee bias in manuscript review. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 5, 187-200. Atkinson, D.R., Furlong, MJ., and Wampold, B.E. (1982). Statistical significance, reviewer evaluations, and scientific process: Is there a (statistically) significant relationship? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 29, 189 - 194. Boruch, R.F., and Gomez, H. (1977). Sensitivity, bias, and theory in impact evaluations. Professional Psychology, 8, 411-434. Cook, T.D., and Leviton, L.C. (1980). Reviewing the literature: A comparison of traditional methods with meta-analysis. Journal of Personality, 48, 448-4n.

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Cook, T.D., and Campbell, D.T. (1979). Quasi~xperimentation. Design and analysis issues for field settings. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. Coursol, A., and Wagner, E.E. (1986). Effect of positive fmdings on submission and acceptance rates: A note on meta-analysis bias. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 17, 136 -137. Devine, E.C., and Cook, T.D. (1983). Effect of psycho-educational intervention on length of hospital stay. A meta-analytic review of 34 studies. In R.J. Light (Ed.), Evaluation studies review annual: Vol. 8 (pp. 417-432). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Fagley, N.S., and McKinney, I.J. (1983). Reviewer bias for statistically significant results: A reexamination. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 30, 298-300. Glass, G.V. (1976). Primary, secondary, and meta-analysis of research. Researcher, 5, 3-8.

Educational

Glass, G.V., McGaw, B., and Smith, M.L. (1981). Meta-analysis in social research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Greenwald, A.G. (1975). Consequences of prejudice against the null hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 82, 1-20. Hedges, L.V. (1981). Distribution theory for Glass's estimator of effect size and related estimators. Journal of Educational Statistics, 6, 107 -128. Hedges, L.V. (1984). Estimation of effect size under nonrandom sampling: The effects of censoring studies yielding statistically insignificant mean differences. Journal of Educational Statistics, 9, 61-85. Hedges, L.V. (1987). Issues in meta-analysis. Review of Research in Education, 13, 353398. Hedges, L.V., and Olkin, I. (1985). Statistical methods for meta-analysis. New York: Academic Press. Hovell, M.F. (1982). The experimental evidence for weight-loss treattnent of essential hypertension. A critical review. American Journal of Public Health, 72, 359-368. Hunter, J.E., Schmidt, F.L., and Jackson, G.B. (1982). Meta-analysis: Cumulating fmdings across research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Landman, J.T., and Dawes, R.M. (1982). Psychotherapy outcome: Smith and Glass' conclusions stand up under scrutiny. American Psychologist, 37, 504-516. Light, R.J., and Pillemer, D.B. (1984). Summing up: The science of research reviewing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Matt, G.E. (1989). Decision rules for selecting effect sizes in meta-analysis: A review and reanalysis of psychotherapy outcome studies. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 106-115. Meltzoff, J., and Kornreich, M. (1970). Research in psychotherapy. Chicago: Atherton.

Orwin, R.G. (1983). A fail-safe N for effect size in meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Statistics, 8, 157-159. Orwin, R.G., and Cordray, D.S. (1984). Effects of deficient reporting on meta-analysis: A conceptual framework and reanaylsis. Psychological Bulletin, 97, 134-147.

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Rosenthal, R. (1976, rev. ed.). Experimenter effects in behavioral research. New York: Irvington. Rosenthal, R. (1979). The "file drawer problem" and tolerance for null results. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 638-641. Rosenthal, R., and Rubin, D.B. (1986). Meta-analytic procedures for combining studies with multiple effect sizes. Psychological Bulletin, 99, 400-406. Smith, M.L., Glass, G.V., and Miller, TJ. (1980). The benefits of psychotherapy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Stock, W.A., Okun, M.A., Haring, M.J., Miller, W., Kinney, C., and Ceurvorst, R.W. (1982). Rigor in data synthesis: A case study of reliability in meta-analysis. Educational Researcher, II, 10- 20. Strube, M.J. (1985). Combining and comparing significance levels from nonindependent hypothesis tests. Psychological Bulletin, 98, 595-599. Williams, P.A., Haertel, E.H., Haertel, G.D., and Walberg, H.J. (1982): The impact of leisure-time television on school learning. A research synthesis. American Educational Research Journal, 19, 19-50. Wittmann, W.W., and Matt, G.E. (1986). Meta-Analyse als Integration von Forschungsergebnissen am Beispiel deutschsprachiger Arbeiten zur Effektivitiit von Psychotherapie. Psychologische Rundschau, 37, 20-40.

Methodological Aspects of the Synthesis of Social Prevention Research Larry V. Hedges

1.

Introduction

One of the most significant developments of the last decade is the growing consensus that the review and synthesis of a body of research evidence is a vital part of the generation of scientific knowledge. Research synthesis provides a mechanism for extracting knowledge from a collection of research evidence that is often widely scattered and seemingly contradictory. Because it has become clear that the procedures used in research synthesis have an effect on the conclusions drawn from syntheses, the methodology of research reviews can be conceived in tenus of Cooper's (1984) five stages of procedure for research synthesis: 1. The first stage is problem fonnation - the selection of questions or hypotheses to be addressed. Constructs must be identified and operational definitions must be specified. 2. The second stage is data collection - the development of procedures to find possibly relevant research studies. A sometimes neglected aspect of this stage of research reviews is that data collection is often a sampling activity. Generalizations are constrained by the representativeness of the sample evidence. Different reviews of the same body of evidence sometimes reach different conclusions because they sample different subpopulations. 3. The third stage is data evaluation - this involves decisions about what retrieved evidence should be included in the review. The reviewer must establish criteria for the quality or validity of research studies to decide which studies may provide reasonably dependable research evidence. 4. The fourth stage is analysis and interpretation - here the reviewer must make inferences about the literature as a whole by synthesizing the results of the research studies that are believed to provide valid evidence. S. The fifth stage is public presentation - here the reviewer produces the report of the research.

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The choice of five disjointed stages of a research review are something of an oversimplification. It does, however, suggest that methodological procedures that are designed to ensure the validity of each stage of original research have parallels at each stage of the research review. There are, of course, some differences between research tasks in reviews and in original research. For example, in original research the investigator usually chooses one or at most a few different operationalizations of anyone construct. The reviewer is forced to choose from the many operationalizations that may be used in different research studies. The problem of delineating the set of operationalizations to be admitted is not an easy one, but it requires the same kind of reasoning as does the choice of operations by the original researcher.

A great deal could be said about each stage of the literature review. In fact there are now eight books on meta-analysis (Cooper, 1984; Fricke and Treinies, 1985; Glass, McGaw, and Smith, 1981; Hedges and Olkin, 1985; Hunter, Schmidt, and Jackson, 1982; Light and Pillemer, 1984; Rosenthal, 1984; Wolf, 1986). These books provide substantial discussions of the first three stages of research synthesis, which should be examined by any scholar interested in systematic research synthesis. However, with the exception of Hedges and Olkin (1985) the available books on research synthesis do not extensively discuss the details of state-of-the-art methods for data analysis and interpretation. Consequently, I now consider problems in the analysis and interpretation stage of research synthesis. For most of the following, it is helpful to make the simplifying assumption that we are dealing with the synthesis of simple experimental studies. This simplification is not entirely unrealistic in that many research reviews are concerned with effects that arise as one-degreeof-freedom contrasts in experimental designs. By focusing on a single effect, the complexity of the experimental design is lost, but the contrast that is the object of the inquiry is highlighted. Thus it is possible to illustrate crucial ideas and avoid the confusion of cumbersome notation and terminology. All of what follows can be extended to more complicated cases in a natural way. With that disclaimer, let us define a study as a two-group experiment in which one group of subjects (the experimental group) receives an "experimental treatment" and the other group of subjects is a control group. An outcome is measured for the subjects in each group, and the average difference between the outcome in the two groups is the "treatment effect. " The research reviewer is typically confronted with several or even dozens of such studies. Of course, even simple experimental studies are not all alike. The studies vary in operationalizations of treatment and outcome, types of subjects,

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and details of experimental procedure. The task of the research reviewer is to assess the evidence and decide what conclusions are consistent with that evidence. In particular, the research reviewer must detennine:

1. If the results of different studies are consistent - that is, if the treatment effect is the same across studies. 2. If the results are consistent across studies, then the reviewer must conclude something about the magnitude of the effect (is it large or trivial?). 3. If the results of different studies are inconsistent, the reviewer may do one of two things. He may try to fmd meaningful patterns that explain the variation of results across studies to develop sharp generalizations about treatment effects. Alternatively, the reviewer may recognize the variability in research results as intrinsic uncertainty that limits the precision of estimates of treatment effect. The immediate problem faced by the research reviewer in the social and behavioral sciences is that the outcome variable (and therefore the treatment

effect) is usually measured in different ways in different studies. That is, although the outcome construct is the same across studies, different studies usually use different operationalizations of the construct. The problem this poses for the reviewer is that different measuring instruments (tests, interviews, or observation scales) produce numbers (scores) that are not directly comparable. Since the treatment effect (the difference between experimental and control group means) is expressed in the scale of the measuring instrument, the treatment effects are not necessarily comparable across studies. Thus the reviewer cannot directly compare the treatment effects to detennine patterns in study results. Perhaps the most common strategy used to overcome the problem of treatment effects that are not directly comparable has been to aggregate information at the level of study conclusions. Although this may seem reasonable, I will argue that it can be problematic. When coupled with the use of statistical significance testing to generate study conclusions, this strategy can prove highly misleading. I will illustrate the problems that may arise and then show that meta-analysis may be a more constructive strategy for finding patterns in study outcomes.

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Problematic Strategies for Combining Research Results

First let us examine some problematic procedures that are often used in research reviews. One common practice is, in essence, to simplify the result of an experiment by treating all statistically significant effects as if they were essentially equal and likewise treating statistically insignificant effects as if they were equal. This simplification is the crux of the difficulty in several procedures that are commonly used in research reviews. Perhaps the most common difficulty arises in the use of the outcomes of significance tests to assess the consistency of results across studies. How should the outcomes of significance tests be used to determine consistency of research results? The answer seems obvious. If the outcome of the significance tests is the same in two studies (both significant or both insignificant), they produce consistent results. If the outcome of the significance tests differ (one significant and one nonsignificant), then one of the studies "fails to replicate." I have seen this logic used with distressing frequency: "Jones found a significant effect but Smith did not, so Smith failed to replicate." The argument is wrong. The fact that the outcomes of two significance tests are the same does not imply that the magnitude of the treatment effects is the same. The fact that one significance test rejects the null hypothesis and the other does not in no way implies that the treatment effects are different (see, e.g., Humphreys, 1980). A second problematic strategy for using the outcomes of significance tests involves counting study results that are significant (see Light and Smith, 1971). Such counts use the outcomes of significance tests to assess the overall efficacy of the treatment. If a large proportion of the studies reject the hypothesis of no treatment effect, the reviewer regards this as evidence that the treatment is effective. Conversely, if relatively few studies reject the null hypothesis, the reviewer sees this as evidence of a negligible treatment effect. How large a proportion of studies must find a significant treatment effect for the reviewer to believe in the efficacy of the treatment is a matter of judgement, but it does not seem unreasonable to require half or even two-thirds of the studies to show significant treatment effects. After all, how can a reviewer argue convincingly for the existence of a treatment effect if "most" of the studies do not find it? Sometimes this logic is formalized into a tabulation of significant and nonsignificant results (a so-called box score or vote count). More often, the logic is used informally in a narrative assessment, as evidenced by statements like

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"relatively few studies have found statistically significant effects of the treatment on achievement; consequently, the treatment must have a negligible effect." The problem with this plausible sounding logic is that it can be highly misleading. An analytic analysis of the situation shows that it is strongly biased toward the conclusion that the treatment is ineffective, even when the treatment has a real (population) effect in every study (see Hedges and Olkin, 1980). Because of the low statistical power of many otherwise well-designed social science research studies, it may be unreasonable to expect a large proportion (or even one-third) of studies to obtain significant results. The vote counting procedure essentially compounds the weaknesses of the individual research studies. The tendency of individual hypothesis tests to err by failing to detect real effects does not cancel across studies. Even when the treatment produces a consistent effect that is moderate to large and when the individual research studies have moderate sample sizes, the vote counting procedure has a high probability of leading to the conclusion that treatment effects are weak or inconsistent. In some realistic situations, it can be shown that vote counting decision procedures actually perform more poorly as the reviewer obtains more evidence! By this I mean that the probability of a correct decision about the efficacy of a treatment may tend to zero as the number of research studies available to the reviewer increases (Hedges and Olkin, 1980). The implication is that statistical significance of treatment effects is an unreliable guide to the overall efficacy or to the consistency of the effects of a treatment. Note that I am not asserting that every conclusion derived by vote counting methods is wrong. But I am arguing that the methods used to derive those conclusions are problematic.

The Effect Size If we cannot compare group means from different studies directly, and if we cannot use the outcomes of significance tests, then what can a reviewer do to compare and synthesize the results of studies? Gene Glass (1976) deserves considerable credit for noting that it often makes sense to represent the results of a research study by computing a standardized or scale-free index of effect size for each study. When the outcome measures from different studies measure essentially the same construct and when the designs of the studies are

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compatible, the effect sizes from different studies are comparable even when the studies use different instruments to measure the outcome. Thus the reviewer can calculate an effect size estimate from each study and use the effect sizes to determine the average study outcome and the consistency of study outcomes. There are three fundamentally different means of conceptualizing effect sizes that have not always been clearly distinguished. Two of these conceptualizations give the effect size different meanings within the contexts of a two-group experiment. The third relates the effect size to summary indices of outcome in different experimental situations. These three conceptualizations give rise to different interpretations of effect size analyses, and hence the conceptualization of effect size may influence both methodology and generality of conclusions in meta-analysis.

Effect Size as an Index of Overlap Between Distributions

One of the earliest conceptions of effect size is as an index that is related to the degree of overlap between distributions. For example, Cohen (1977) justified his choices of numerical values corresponding to small, medium, and large effect sizes by referring to the visible degree of overlap between distributions. He also explicitly used a transformation of effect size to an index U of overlap between distributions. Some of the early interpretations given by Glass (1976, 1978) and by Glass, McGaw, and Smith (1981) stress the notion of overlapping distributions or the equivalent notion that a given effect size implies that the average person in the treatment group would be at a specific percentile in the control group. For example "an 'effect size' of + 1 indicates that a person at the mean of the control group would be expected to rise to the 84th percentile of the control group after treatment" (Glass, 1976). The use of effect size as an indicator of overlap between distributions is actually a special (univariate) case of the more general idea of Mahalanobis' (1936) distance, which is used as an index of the overlap between multivariate distributions (see, e.g., Morrison, 1967). This conceptualization of effect size is important because overlap between distributions is a concept that has the same interpretation regardless of whether the distributions are distributions of measure of the same (or similar) constructs. Hence, in this conceptualization, effect sizes are comparable even when they are calculated on the basis of observations of such different variables as self-concept, IQ, mathematics achievement, or freedom from neuroses. This conceptualization is appropriate even when combining effect sizes based on a very broad array of outcome constructs.

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However, this conceptualization is only indirectly linked to the notion of a treatment effect on a (psychometrically) well-defined outcome variable. Thus, it may be appropriate to conclude that an average effect size of + 1 implies that the treatment moves the average person to the 84th percentile, but there may be no single, well-defined variable to which this percentile relates.

Effect Size as Scale-Free Treatment Effect The effect size has also been characterized as a scale-free index of treatment effect whose value does not change (is invariant) under linear transformations of the original observations (Hedges, 1981, 1982a). The importance of this conceptualization comes from the fact that in classical measurement theory. different measures of the same construct are linearly equatable (perfectly correlated). Different studies are liable to use different measures (different instruments) to assess study outcomes. However, if all studies actually measure the same outcome construct, then the outcome measures should be roughly linearly equatable. Because the effect size is scale invariant, it provides an index of treatment effect that does not depend on the particular outcome measure used. The effect sizes therefore are a way of putting treatment effects (on a particular outcome construct) from different studies on the same "scale". This scale corresponds to an equivalent (linearly equatable) version of the outcome that is chosen to yield unit variance within groups. Thus, the effect size is the treatment effect (mean difference) that would have been observed if a study has used an equatable outcome measure with unit variance. Note that this interpretation of effect size depends on the idea that the outcomes of different studies are measures of the same underlying construct. It is only appropriate when the reviewer uses a relatively narrow definition (set of conceptualizations) of the outcome variable. One advantage of this conceptualization of effect size is that a precise interpretation of the effect size is sensible within the context of classical test theory. A second advantage of this conceptualization is that effect size analyses can be justified as the natural analogue to pooling raw data (from all k studies) into a single two treatments x k studies analysis (see Hedges, 1984a; Hedges and Oikin, 1985).

Effect Sizes as Equivalent to Other Summaries Yet another conceptualization of effect size is as one of many equivalent ways to express the magnitude of a relationship between variables. For example,

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Cohen (1977) demonstrated a method to transfonn effect sizes into correlation coefficients. Similarly, Hyde (1981) used both effect sizes and Hays' index "i to express the magnitude of gender differences in cognitive abilities. Rosenthal and Rubin (1982a) showed how to construct a 2 x 2 contingency table (a binomial effect size display) in which the magnitude of the relationship corresponded to a given effect size. Although some have sought to exploit such transformations to simplify statistical analyses (Hedges and Olkin, 1985; Hunter, Schmidt, and Jackson, 1982; Rosenthal, 1984), the most important use of this conceptualization has been to aid in interpreting the magnitude of effects. Rosenthal and Rubin (1982a) demonstrated convincingly that treatment effects that looked small when expressed as effect sizes, correlation coefficients, or squared correlations (proportions of variance accounted for), often appeared to be much larger when expressed in the binominal effect size display.

3.

Statistical Methods for Research Synthesis Using Effect Sizes

Recall that the reason for using effect sizes is to find a summary of study outcome (an index of treatment effect) that is comparable across studies but that avoids the problems of significance tests. Effect sizes are numbers, but they could be used descriptively or even qualitatively. I argue that there are real advantages to using effect sizes in connection with statistical analyses to study the variations in treatment effects across studies.

What Can be Achieved by Statistical Methods in Research Synthesis

To understand what statistical methods can potentially do in research reviews, it is helpful to do a "thought experiment" about the ideal case for reviewing research. I would argue that the ideal case is when all of the studies produce data that are completely comparable. That is, all studies use the same instrument to measure the outcome variable, and the measurements have the same variance in each study. Thus if the original raw data were available, it could be pooled directly and standard statistical methods would be appropriate. Suppose that we have a series of k two-group experiments, each of which investigates the effect of a treatment using an experimental/control group design. Assume that each study measures a normally distributed outcome variable using the same instrument and the same sampling plan so that the within-group population variances of the outcome scores are identical.

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While this situation is idealized because all studies use the same instrument to measure the outcome variable, it preserves the other essential features of meta-analysis. The studies need not be exact replications but may have different sample sizes, use different types of subject, use different experimental procedures, use different variations of the treatment, and be conducted by different investigators. The only realistic requirement is that the studies use the same outcome measure. There are meta-analysis, in fact, that come very close to this idealization in that all studies use the same measure of the outcome variable (DerSimonian and Laird, 1983; Underwood, 1957). The situation defined in this idealization is one in which the raw data from the individuals in all the studies are directly comparable. Consequently, the outcome scores of the individuals can be combined and analyzed in one global statistical analysis. This is a format familiar to most social scientists, who would probably use the data from all individuals in an 2 x k (two treatments by k studies) analysis of variance. In our idealized case, the assumptions of the analysis of variance will be met. What does one learn from the analysis of variance? There are three omnibus F tests in the textbook analysis of such a situation. The F test for the main effect of studies tests whether the average value of the outcome variable (averaged over both experimental and control groups) differs across studies. This test is not particularly interesting in this context. The other two F tests are more interesting. The F test for the treatment factor tests whether the treatment group performs better than the control group on the average across all k experiments. The F test for the treatment-by-studies interaction tests whether the treatment effect is consistent across studies. The interpretation of the statistical analysis rests largely on these latter two tests. A large treatment produces a large consistent effect across studies. If the interaction is not negligible, then interpretations become more complicated. An interaction suggests that the treatment effect is larger in some studies than in others. Statements about the main effects must be qualified by the fact that treatment effects vary significantly across studies. A large or statistically significant interaction indicates that treatment effects are inconsistent. In this case the data analysis strategy will depend on the reviewer's conceptual model of between-study differences. There are two such conceptual models, which I call the fixed effects and the random effects models. Between-study differences might be conceived as a consequence of a small number of known characteristics (that is as fixed effects). Then the reviewer might "explain" inconsistency among results by finding differences

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(e.g., in treatment implementation, experimental procedures, conditions of measurement, or sample composition) in the studies that are related to the size of the treatment effect. That is, a reviewer might group together studies that share common characteristics and therefore produce groups of studies that have consistent effects. If a suitable explanatory variable were found, it should be included in the statistical analysis as another independent variable or as a (blocking) factor. The new statistical analysis would reveal (by an appropriate F test) whether the new variable accounted for a significant amount of variation in the treatment effects and whether variations in the treatment effect across studies within levels of the new factor remained substantial. That is, we can test whether a proposed explanatory factor succeeds in removing or "explaining" the variations in treatment effects across studies. This test is conceptually analogous to the original test for the treatment-by-studies interaction. An alternative conceptualization is that studies differ in innumerable or unknowable ways. This implies the random effects model that studies (and their treatment effects) are best conceived as sampled from a universe of possible effects. In this case the heterogeneity of effects is descriptive of the variability in this universe of treatment effects. The random effects analysis would therefore involve estimation and testing of a descriptive statistic (a variance component) to quantify this variation in underlying treatment effects.

In our idealized meta-analysis, where the raw data can be combined directly, the statistical analysis adresses four kinds of question:

1. What is the average treatment effect and does it differ from uro? 2. Are the treatment effects from different studies consistent? 3. Are explanatory variables involving differences between study characteristics consistently related to treatment effects? 4. Are the treatment effects from different studies consistent except for the effects of the explanatory variable? (That is, do the explanatory variables account for the variation in treatment effects in fixed effects models?) Or: How large is the variation in the universe of underlying treatment effects (in random effects models)? This examination of the idealized case of research synthesis demonstrates what is possible if the raw data from each study are available and can be combined into one analysis. It also illustrates the fact that most educational researchers would probably know both what statistical analysis was appropriate and how to interpret the analysis. In real meta-analyses, unfortunately, different studies

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rarely use identical outcome measures and thus raw data will not be directly comparable from study to study, even if it is available. Modern statistical methods for meta-analysis, however, permit the reviewer to answer essentially the same questions as can be answered in the idealized case. In contrast, conventional statistical procedures in meta-analysis fail to answer one or more of the questions of interest. Moreover, the use of some conventional analyses for effect size data frequently involves serious violations of the assumptions of these techniques. Thus conventional statistical procedures in meta-analysis are problematic for both conceptual and statistical reasons. Specific problems of conventional statistical procedures in meta-analysis will be discussed below.

Applications of Conventional Statistical Methods in Meta-Analysis Early statistical analyses in research synthesis were greatly influenced by the pioneering work of Glass. He suggested combining the results of studies by first calculating an estimate of effect size to put the results of each study on the same scale. He then suggested that the research synthesizer should combine these estimates across studies or treat the effect sizes as raw data for statistical analyses (analysis of variance or multiple linear regression) that relate characteristics of studies to treatment effects (Glass, 1976, 1978; Glass, McGaw, and Smith, 1981).

4.

Conceptual Problems With Conventional Statistical Methods in Meta-Analysis

Comparing effect size analyses with the idealized analysis reveals conceptual difficulties with the application of conventional statistical methods in metaanalysis. In the idealized case, the treatment effect (mean difference) corresponds to the effect size for the study. In conventional analysis, the effect sizes can be averaged to obtain an estimate of the average treatment effect and a t or F test can be used to test whether the average effect size is zero. Similarly, the effect of any particular explanatory variable can be tested using that variable as a blocking factor in an analysis of variance (or as a predictor in a regression analysis) that uses the effect size as the dependent variable. Thus the conventional effect size analysis can answer two of the questions addressed by the statistical analysis in the idealized case.

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However, the conventional analysis fails to answer two of the crucial questions addressed by the idealized analysis. First, it is impossible to directly test the consistency of effect sizes across studies in the conventional analysis. That is, there is no analog to the test for treatment-by-study interactions. The conventional analysis for testing systematic variation among k effect sizes has k 1 degrees of freedom for the grand mean, so that there are no degrees of freedom left over for estimation of the error or nonsystematic variation. Consequently, it is impossible in the conventional framework to construct a test to determine whether the systematic variation in k effect sizes is larger than the nonsystematic variation exhibited by those effect sizes.

In the conventional analysis, it is possible to construct a test for differences among the average effect sizes of two or more groups of studies, as long as at least one group contains two or more effect sizes. The multiple effect sizes within the group(s) serve as replicates from which an estimate of nonsystematic variance is obtained. Then the test is constructed by comparing "systematic" variance among group mean effect sizes to the "nonsystematic" variance of effect sizes within groups. However, such a test is conceptually and statistically perilous. How does the investigator know that the effect sizes exhibit only nonsystematic variability within the groups? If the investigator chooses the wrong groups, considerable systematic variance may be pooled into the estimate of the error variance. Moreover, conventional wisdom would suggest that there are many reasons to expect systematic variation between study results due to difference in study design, treatment implementation, and samples of subjects (see, e.g., Presby, 1978). The inclusion of systematic variation in the estimates of error terms decreases the sensitivity of the statistical test for systematic variation (Madow, 1948). The conceptual problem in the conventional analysis is that the amount of systematic variation among observed effect sizes is unknown. Further, even if the tests for specific contrasts among effect sizes were not conceptually problematic, such tests could not substitute for a direct test for treatmentby-study interaction. As was noted earlier, omnibus tests for treatment-bystudy interaction examine the hypothesis that all possible contrasts are zero, including contrasts not anticipated by the investigator.

In the conventional framework, precisely the same conceptual problem plagues an attempt to construct a test for the variation in effect sizes that remains after employing an explanatory variable. If the investigator tries to "explain" variation in effect sizes by grouping studies with similar characteristics (or using a

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linear predictor), there is no way to assess whether there is still variation (in addition to sampling error) among the effect sizes.

5.

Statistical Problems With the Application of Conventional Statistical Methods in Meta-Analyses

The analysis of effect sizes or correlation coefficients by using conventional statistical methods is also problematic for purely statistical reasons. Conventional statistical procedures (t tests, analysis of variance, multiple regression analysis) rely on parametric assumptions about the data. All of these procedures require that the nonsystematic variance associated with every observation be the same (the so-called homoscedasticity assumption). That is, if we think of each observation as composed of a systematic part and an error part, then the errors for all observations must be equally variable. In the analysis of variance, we check that within-cell variances are similar in value for all cells in the design. In regression analysis, we check this assumption by determining whether the residual variance about the regression line is reasonably constant for all values of the predictor variable.

In estimating the effect magnitude (either correlation coefficients or effect sizes), the nonsystematic variance of an observation can be calculated analytically. The nonsystematic variance of estimates of effect size is inversely proportional to the sample size of the study on which the estimate is based. Therefore, if studies have different sample sizes, which is usually the case, effect size estimates will have different error variances. If the sample sizes of the studies vary over a wide range, so will the error variances. In many metaanalyses, it is not unusual for the range of sample sizes to be on the order of SO to 1. In such cases, the error variances are substantially heterogeneous. The effects of heterogeneity of variance on F tests in analysis of variance (ANOYA) have been studied extensively (see, for example, Glass, Peckham, and Sanders, 1972). Furthermore, heterogeneous variances have only small effects on the validity of the F tests in a conventional ANOYA. However, the situation in research synthesis is usually quite different from that in which robustness of F tests is usually studied. Studies of the effects of heterogeneity of variance in ANOY A usually give a different variance to one or more groups in the design. Thus, every observation in the same group has the same variance, and there are at most two to three different variances in the entire experiment.

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In the case of research synthesis, the heterogeneity is usually more pronounced. Every observation (study) may have a different variance. Moreover, the range of variances studied in connection with the robustness of F tests is usually rather limited, often less than 5 to 1. The studies that examine the effects of very wide ranges of variance and groups of unequal size fmd that the F test is not necessarily robust to substantial heterogeneity of variance. For example, Glass, Peckham, and Sanders (1972) note that when the ratio of variances is 5 to 1 and the sample sizes are unequal, then the actual significance level of the F test can be six times as large as the nominal significance level, say, 0.30 instead of 0.05.

Thus, the violation of the homogeneity of variance assumption in the analysis of variance and in regression analysis is severe in research synthesis. Moreover, this type of violation of the assumptions has not been extensively studied. It is, however, mathematically equivalent to the type of violation of assumptions that occurs when error terms are correlated (that is, when observations are not independent), a violation of assumptions against which the F test is demonstrably not robust (see Box, 1954; Scheffe, 1959, pp. 359-360). Thus there is little reason to believe that the usual robustness of the F test will somehow prevail. The statistical problem of violation of the assumptions of conventional statistical procedures, and the potential problem of bias due to pooling of systematic variation into estimates of error variance, raise severe questions about the validity of conventional statistical procedures in meta-analysis. There is no rigorously defensible argument for the use of conventional t tests, ANOVA, or regression analysis to analyze effect sizes of correlations in most metaanalyses. These procedures can be misleading and should no longer be used now that there is an extensive set of valid statistical methods for meta-analysis.

6.

Modem Statistical Methods for Fixed Effects Meta-Analysis

Modem statistical methods for effect sizes overcome both the conceptual and the statistical problems that plague conventional statistical analyses. These methods exploit the properties of effect sizes and provide statistical analyses that are analogous to those provided by conventional statistical methods such as t tests, ANOVA, and multiple regression analysis. Only analyses based on effect sizes (standardized mean differences) are discussed below, but analogous procedures based on other indices of effect size (such as correlation coefficients) are available (see Hedges and Olkin, 1985). This section outlines the

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procedures available for fiXed effects meta-analysis, which are described in detail elsewhere (Hedges and Olkin, 1985).

Effect Sizes For meta-analysis in education, the effect size or standardized mean difference is the fundamental quantity in between-group studies. Let us begin by focusing on the effect size for a single study. Glass (1976) defined the effect size (estimate) as the difference between the experimental group mean and the control group mean, divided by the standard deviation of the control group: (1)

If there is no concrete reason to believe that the within-group variances differ, the standard deviation of the control group can be replaced by a pooled within-group standard deviation that has better statistical properties (Hedges, 1981).

The effect size estimate g can be decomposed into a systematic part, which reflects sampling error of the individual scores used to calculate the effect size. The systematic part is called the population effect size:

o=(pE

C

-1')/0',

(2)

where pE and Il are the population means of scores in the experimental and the control groups respectively, and 0' is the population standard deviation within the groups of the study. The Greek letters 0, pE, pC, and 0' are used to indicate that the population effect size 0 is a population parameter defined by population parameters pE, IF, and 0' of the observations in the study. The unsystematic part of the effect size estimate g is the within-study sampling error e = g - o. Thus, the decomposition of g follows directly as

g=o+e.

(3)

Note that the within-study sampling error of g is a consequence of the sampling error in the estimates fE, ¥, and S of pE, Il, and q. Therefore, this sampling error is totally determined by the sampling of subjects that occurs within a study.

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The decomposition of effect size estimates into population effect size and within-study sampling error is important because it highlights a crucial feature of meta-analysis. That is, all systematic relationships in meta-analysis are relationships involving 0, the population effect size. The sampling error f is nonsystematic by definition and, therefore, it has no systematic relationship to anything. The estimate of effect size g is useful only because it provides information about o. Thus, if the meta-analyst uses regression or ANOVA to study the relationship between study characteristics and effect size, the systematic relationship is between the study characteristics and population effect size. Investigation of the sampling properties of g shows that g has a slight bias when it is based on a small sample of subjects. Unless within-study sample sizes are very small (n < 10 per group), this bias is negligible, but it can be corrected by multiplication by a simple correction factor to give an unbiased estimator d via

(4) E

C

where n and n are the experimental and control group sample sizes, respectively (Hedges, 1981). Under fairly general assumptions, it can be shown that the effect size estimate d has a sampling distribution that is approximately normal with mean 0 and variance E

n v =

+ nC

nEnC

+

2(nE

ci

+

nC) •

(5)

Alternatively, we could say that the within-study sampling error is normally distributed with the mean zero and variance given in (5). The variance of d is completely determined by the sample sizes and the value of d. Consequently, the sampling variance of d can be computed from a single observation. The ability to determine the nonsystematic variance of d from a single observation of d is the key to modern statistical methods for metaanalysis. This relationship allows the meta-analyst to use all the degrees of freedom among different d values for estimating systematic effects, while still providing a way of estimating the unsystematic variance needed to construct statistical tests.

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7.

Combined Estimates of Effect Size

One of the first statistical questions that arises is how to combine estimates of E C effect size. Suppose that a series of k studies with sample sizes nlE, nl , ••• , n- , nCk provides k independent effect size estimates (i.e., effect size estimates based on independent samples) dl> ... , dk • One way of combining the estimates is simply to take the average d. The most precise combination, however, is a weighted average that takes the variances VI> ••• , Vk of dl> ... , dk into account. This weighted average, denoted d., is defined as follows: k

d. =

k

E Wi d E Wi'

(6)

i /

;=1

;=1

where (7)

If all k studies share a common population effect size 0, the weighted mean d. is approximately normally distributed with a mean of 0 and a variance of k

v. = 1/

E Wi'

(8)

;=1

that can be used to construct confidence intervals or statistical tests for approximate 100 (1 - a) percent confidence interval for 0 is given by d. -

Za/2

F

:5

0 s d.

+

Zal2

F'

o.

An

(9)

where Z 0'/2 is the 100 (1 - 0'/2) percentile point of the standard normal distribution. A chi-square test that is analogous to the F test for the main effect of treatment in the idealized analysis uses the test statistic (d?/v.), which is compared with the critical value of a chi-square distribution with one degree of freedom.

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8.

Testing Homogeneity of Effect Size

Combining estimates of effect size across studies is reasonable if the studies have a common population effect size o. In this case, the estimates of effect size differ only by unsystematic sampling error. However, if the studies do not share a common underlying effect size, it can be misleading to combine estimates of effect size across studies. For example, if half of the studies have a large positive population effect size and half of the studies have a negative population effect size of equal magnitude, then the average - zero - is not representative of the effect size in any of the studies. The obvious question is: How is it possible to determine whether population effect sizes are relatively constant across studies? That is, how do we test for treatment-by-study interactions? A test for homogeneity of effect size has been given by Hedges (1982a) and independently by Rosenthal and Rubin (1982b). The test involves computing k

HT =

[

Wj

(dj

-

d.l ,

(10)

i=l

where Wi = 11 Vi is the weight given in (7) and d. is the weighted mean given by (6). The H T statistic is simply the weighted sum of squares of the effect size estimates d" ••• , £Ix about the weighted mean d. . If all studies share a common effect size, 0, the statistic H T has approximately a chi-square distribution with (k - 1) degrees of freedom. Thus, the test for treatment-by-study interaction rejects homogeneity of effect size for large values of H T •

9.

An Analog to Analysis of Variance for Effect Sizes

When effect sizes are not homogeneous across studies - that is, when treatment-by-study interactions are present - the meta-analyst may want to relate variations in effect sizes to variations in coded characteristics of studies. One way of proceeding is to group studies that share characteristics that are expected to influence effect size. Thus, the meta-analyst would seek to create groupings in which the variability of effect sizes was small, and use the statistical methods to test the heterogeneity of effects both within and between groups of studies.

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A statistical procedure that permits this kind of analysis for effect sizes was introduced by Hedges (1982b). This analog to ANOYA for effect sizes permits the meta-analyst to test the significance of variations in effect sizes between groups of effect sizes. It also allows the investigator to test whether the remaining variation within groups of effect sizes is significant. Thus, it enables the meta-analyst to determine whether the explanatory grouping variable adequately explains the treatment-by-study interaction. The ANOYA for effect sizes involves a partitioning of the overall homogeneity statistic H r given in (10) into two independent homogeneity statistics: H B, reflecting between-group homogeneity, and H w, reflecting within-group homogeneity. These homogeneity statistics are related by the algebraic identity H r = H B + H w, which is analogous to the partitioning of sums of squares in ANOYA. The between-group homogeneity statistic H B is a weighted sum of squares of weighted group mean effect size estimates about the overall weighted mean effect size. It is analogous to the F statistic used for testing between-group differences in the conventional ANOYA. When there are p groups and there is no variation between group mean effect sizes, the statistic H B has approximately a chi-square distribution with (p - 1) degrees of freedom. Thus, the test for variation in effect sizes between groups rejects the null hypothesis of no variation between groups of studies when H B is large. The within-group homogeneity statistic is the sum of the homogeneity statistics (10) calculated for each of the p groups separately. That is,

Hw = HWI

+ ... +

H wp ,

(11)

where H WI' ••• , H Wp are the homogeneity statistics (10) calculated as if each group were an entire collection of studies. Whenever a group contains more than one study, its within-group homogeneity statistic can be used to test the homogeneity of effect sizes within that group. The total H w provides an overall test of homogeneity of effect size within the groups of studies. If a total of k studies is divided into p < k groups, then H w has a chi-square distribution with (k - p) degrees of freedom when the effect sizes are homogeneous within groups. The test for homogeneity of effect size within groups rejects the null hypothesis of no within-group variability when H w is large.

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Suppose that the meta-analyst "explains" the vanatlons in effect sizes by finding that effect sizes are reasonably homogeneous within groups but that they differ between groups. If there are only two groups of studies, then a significant H B statistic indicates that there is a significant difference between their population effect sizes. If there are more than two groups, then the metaanalyst may want to use comparisons or contrasts analogous to those in ANOYA to explore the differences among effect sizes for the different groups. Procedures for testing comparisons among the effect sizes of different groups have been discussed by Hedges (1982b) and Hedges and Olkin (1985).

10. An Analog to Multiple Regression Analysis for Effect Sizes Another alternative analysis when effect sizes exhibit heterogeneity is the use of a general linear model to investigate the relationships between one or more quantitative explanatory variables and the effect sizes. An analog to multiple regression analysis for effect sizes was developed by Hedges (1982c). It uses a weighted regression procedure with weights given by (7) to estimate and test the relationship between several predictor variables and effect size. It also provides a way of testing whether the regression model is adequately specified, that is, whether significant systematic variation in effect sizes remains unexplained by the data analysis model. Suppose that we have k independent effect size estimates dl , ... , dk and p predictor variables XI' ... , X p that we believe to be related to effect sizes. Under the data-analysis model described here, the systematic part of the effect sizes (the population effect sizes) OJ, ••• , Ok is determined as a linear function of the values of the predictor variables XI' ... , X p • That is,

where 130' 131, ..., I3p are unknown regression coefficients, and xij is the value of the predictor variable for the JUt study. One object of the statistical analysis is to use the observed estimates of effect size 01' ••• , Ok and the values of the predictor variables to estimate the relationship between XI' ... , Xp and the effect sizes - that is, to estimate the unknown regression coefficients. Another object of this analysis is to test whether the regression model is correctly specified, that is, whether significant systematic variation remains unexplained by the regression model.

f'

373

Methodological Aspects

Packaged computed programs can be used to perform the weighted regression analysis, which yields estimates /30' ... , /3p of the regression coefficients and tests of their statistical significance (Hedges, 1982c; Hedges and Olkin, 1985). If the number k of studies exceeds (p + 1), the number of predictors plus the intercept, then a test for model specification is possible. The test uses the weighted sum of squares HE about the regression line. This statistic is sometimes called the residual or error sum of squares. When the population effect sizes are completely determined by the predictor variables - that is, when the regression model is correctly specified - then the statistic HE has a chisquare distribution with (k - P - 1) degrees of freedom. Model specification is rejected if HE exceeds the critical value. Thus, the test for model specification is a test for greater than expected residual variation.

11.

Model Statistical Analysis

Methods

for

Random

Effects

Meta-

The random effects model arises from a conception that the underlying treatment effects themselves exhibit random fluctuation. In this model, the underlying effect sizes (0 values) vary randomly from study to study as if they were sampled from a universe of possible treatment effects (see Hedges, 1983). This conception is consistent with Cronbach's (1980) model of treatment variation in evaluation studies. In this model, each treatment implementation actually observed in a study or site may be thought of as sampled from a universe of possible treatment implementations. If treatment effect varies with treatment implementation, Cronbach's model implies that treatment effect sizes are sampled from a universe of treatment effect sizes and hence are random effects. In the random effects model, the object of the data analysis may be either to describe the distribution of random effects (by estimating its mean and variance) or to demonstrate that between-study explanatory variables are related to effect size. Use the notation 01' .•. , Ok for the population effect sizes from k independent studies, d l , ••• , dk for the unbiased sample effect size estimates, and VI' ••• , Vk for the variances of the dj about the OJ. This notation is the same as that used in describing fixed effect analyses. Now, however, 01' •.. , Ok are not fixed constants but are sampled from a distribution. Let ..:1 and be the mean and variance of the distribution form which 01' .•. , Ok are sampled (which need not be a normal distribution).

ul

374

Larry V. Hedges

An estimate of

al of (T/, the between-studies variance component, is given by k

~ = S(d) -

E

k ,

Vj /

(12)

i=l

where ~(d) is the usual sample estimate of the variance of the dj , namely: k

S(d)

= [

(dj

-

(if /

(k - 1)

i=l

and d is the UDweighted mean of d1, ••• , dt . The test of the hypothesis that the is zero is identical to the test of homogeneity of effect variance component sizes in the fixed effects model. Thus (10) provides a chi-square statistic for 2 testing that = O.

(T/

(Ti

0/

The variance component estimate is used to compute an estimate ~ of the mean ~ of the random effects. The estimate is a weighted mean like d. given is the reciprocal of the total in (6), but the weight for dj used to compute variance of dj • In the fixed effects model, the OJ are fIXed so the variance of dj consists only of the variance Vj of d j about OJ' In the random effects model, however, the OJ are not fIXed but contribute their own component of variance to the variance of dj • Hence, the total or unconditional variance of dj in the random effects model is (Vj + Thus the estimate of ~ is given by

(T/

-a

(T/).

s=

k

r

k

w*jdj /

i= 1

where

-a

w; = 1I(

Vj

+

r

w*j,

(13)

i= 1

(Th. The approximate sampling variance of -a is

ai =

[E WO,]

-1

(14)

1=1

and if the random effects are normally distributed, then -:&- will be approximate2 • ly normally distributed about ~ with variance

(Ta

375

Methodological Aspects

Thus an approximate 100 (1 - a) percent confidence interval for .:1 is given by (15) where Za/2 is 100 (1 - 0'/2) percentile point of the standard nonnal distribution. An approximate test of the hypothesis that .:1 = 0 at the 100 a percent level of significance can be carried out using the confidence interval or the statistic T

= I tJq~1 .

If the confidence interval (15) does not contain zero, or equivalently, if T > Z all' the hypothesis that .:1 = 0 is rejected.

It is important to recognize that although d. and ~ both can be loosely described as "average effect sizes", they are not conceptually identical. The mean d. is an estimate of the average of the fixed numbers Ot, ..., OJ: that are the underlying effect sizes in the k experiments observed. The mean ~ is an estimate of the mean of a distribution of effects including (perhaps an inftnite number of) effects that are not observed. Similarly, although the fonn of the sampling variance v. of d. given in (8) is similar to the sampling variance of ~ given in (14), they recognize different contributions to the uncertainty of the two means. In the fixed effects model, only uncertainty due to the sampling of subjects within experiments contributes to v.• In the random effects model, both uncertainty due to sampling of subjects within experiments and uncertainty due to between-experiment Thus the uncertainty of ~ is usually larger variation in effects contribute to (and often is much larger) than that of d.. Thus confidence intervals for .:1 computed via (15) are wider than confidence intervals for 6. computed via (9). It is therefore quite possible for fIXed effects analyses to fmd an average effect size (d.) that is significantly different from zero, while a random effects analysis of the same data fmds that the average of the distribution of effects (.:1) is not significantly different from zero.

ul

qJ.

Both modeling strategies have their advocates. Those who advocate fixed effects modeling argue that inferences should be conditional on the studies that have already been perfonned. The question of inference, they argue, should be "What would happen if studies like those we observed were perfonned again?"

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Larry V. Hedges

Advocates of the random effects approach argue that the question should be, "What would happen if new studies were conducted that were as heterogeneous as were the studies already observed?" Which question (and hence which modeling strategy) is appropriate depends on the intended application of the synthesis. If the problem is to determine what would happen if treatments were implemented at new sites, the random effects approach seems more relevant. If, on the other hand, the problem is to determine whether a reliable treatment effect exists in the studies that have been conducted, then a fixed effects approach may be appropriate. The problem of choice between fixed and random effect models reflects a fundamental question that has arisen in many forms in applied statistics. For example, the debate about the appropriate strategy to test for interactions in 2 x 2 tables has the same critical elements (see, e.g., Yates, 1984). Fisher advocated his exact test involving conditioning on the marginal frequencies that were observed because he believed that configurations of marginal frequencies that were not observed should not influence the inference about interaction in observed data. This is analogous to a fixed effects approach, because he argued that the observed marginal frequencies should not be treated as a sample from a distribution. Pearson argued that the chi-square test approach was appropriate precisely because it did not condition on the observed marginal frequencies. This perspective suggests that observed marginal frequencies must be treated as a sample from a distribution. The debate among these two schools of thought about testing in contingency tables has persisted for 60 years without resolution precisely because it involves a choice about the object of inference. The two perspectives on inference in research synthesis are likely to persist for the same reason.

Example Two recent meta-analyses of community based interventions provide an example of how different choices of modeling strategy can lead to different conclusions when examining the same corpus of research studies. Gottschalk et al. (1987) reported a meta-analysis of the research literature on community based interventions with juvenile offenders. He used a random effects modeling approach to derive a point estimate and a 95% confidence interval for the effects of these interventions on recidivism (and several other outcomes). Although Gottschalk's analysis was based on 61 studies and in spite of an average effect size of .22, he found that the average effect was not significantly different from zero.

377

Methodological Aspects

Lipsey (1989) has also conducted an extensive meta-analyses of the research literature on community based interventions for juvenile offenders. Lipsey's sample included 120 studies that measured the delinquency outcome via rearrests or police contact, which is quite similar to Gottschalk's measure of recidivism. Using a fixed effects analysis, Lipsey found a somewhat smaller average effect size of .13, but the average effect was significantly different from zero at the .05 level of significance. Thus two analyses on comparable data sets found quite different results. To illustrate how the results of fixed and random effects analyses can yield different results (even when applied to exactly the same data set), I now use a portion of the effect size data collected by Lipsey. The data are effect sizes from a sample of 75 studies that were originally selected for another purpose. The fixed effects analysis of these data yields a weighted mean effect size using (6) of d. = .14 with a fixed effect sampling variance using (8) of v. = .00030. Thus a 95 percent confidence interval using (9) would be .10 :5 0 :5 .18.

Since this confidence interval does not include zero, the average effect size is different from zero at the .05 level of statistical significance. The random effects analysis gives some quite different results. The weighted average effect size using random effects weights given in (13) is it= .14 identical (to two decimal places) to that computed in the fixed effects analysis. The sampling variance of the random effects estimate = .00136 computed from (14) is much larger than the sampling variance of the fixed effects estimate. A 95 percent confidence interval for the average .::1 of the population effect sizes using (15) is

ai

-.09

:5 .::1 5

.37 .

Since this confidence interval includes zero, we conclude that the average .::1 of the population effects is not significantly different from zero. The reason that these two analyses yield such different conclusions about the reliability of the average effect becomes clear upon examination of the between-studies variance component. Using (12) to estimate the variance

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component yields 062 = .080. A test of homogeneity of effects across studies using (10) reveals that this between-study variation in effects is highly statistically significant. The average within-study variance of d; about 0; (the average V; value) is only .022. Thus the estimated between-study variation in effects is almost four times as large as the within-study variation in effects. It is not surprising therefore that the fixed effects estimate of the mean has much smaller variance. The random effects standard error is inflated by the substantial between-study variation in effects. Between-study variation does not contribute to the fixed effects standard error, so it must be smaller. The choice between the two analyses is not entirely arbitrary. It depends on the nature of assumptions that are made about studies and on the generalizations that are of interest. This example illustrates, however, that the assumptions made and the style of analysis that flows from them may profoundly influence the results obtained.

References Box, G.E.P. (1954). Some theorems on quadratic forms applied in the study of analysis of variance problems: n. Effects of inequality of variance and of correlation of errors in the two-way classification. Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 25, 484-498. Cohen, J. (1977). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd Ed.). New York: Academic Press. Cooper, H.M. (1984). The integrative research review: A systematic approach. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Cronbach, L.J. (1980). Toward reform of program evaluation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. DerSimonian, R., and Laird, N. (1983). Evaluating the effectiveness of coaching for SAT exams: A meta-analysis. Harvard Educational Review, 53, 1-15. Fricke, R., and Treinies, G. (1985). Einfiihrung in die Metaanalyse. Bern: Hans Huber. Glass, G.V. (1976a). Primary, secondary, and meta-analysis of research. Educational Researcher,S, 3-8. Glass, G.V. (1978). Integrating findings: The meta-analysis of research. In L.S. Schulman (Ed.), Review of research in education, Vol. 5. Itasca, IL: Peacock. Glass, G.V., McGaw, B., and Smith, J.L. (1981). Meta-analysis in social research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Glass, G.V., Peckham, P.O., and Sanders, J.R. (19n). Consequences of failure to meet assumptions underlying fixed effects analysis of variance and covariance. Review of Educational Research, 42, 237 - 288.

Methodological Aspects

379

Gottschalk, R., Davidson, W.S., Gensheimer, L.K., and Mayer, J.P. (1987). Communitybased interventions. In H.C. Quay (Ed.), Handbook of Juvenile Delinquency. New York: John Wiley. Hedges, L.V. (1981). Distribution theory for Glass's estimator of effect size and related estimators. Journal of Educational Statistics, 6, 107 -128. Hedges, L.V. (1982a). Estimation of effect size from a series of independent experiments. Psychological Bulletin, 92, 490-499. Hedges, L.V. (I 982b). Fitting categorical models to effect sizes from a series of experiments. Journal of Educational Statistics, 7, 119-137. Hedges, L.V. (1982c). Fitting continuous models to effect size data. Journal of Educational Statistics, 7, 245 - 270. Hedges, L.V. (I 983a). A random effects model for effect sizes. Psychological Bulletin, 93, 388-395. Hedges, L.V. (I 984a). Advances in statistical methods for meta-analysis. In W.H.Yeaton and P.M. Wortman (Eds.), New directions for program evaluation: Issues in data synthesis (No. 24). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hedges, L.V., and Olkin, I. (1980). Vote counting methods in research synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 88, 359-369. Hedges, L.V., and Olkin, I. (1985). Statistical methods for meta-analysis. New York: Academic Press. Humphreys, L.G. (1980). The statistics of failure to replicate: A comment on Buriel's (1978) conclusions. Journal of Educational Psychology, 72, 71-75. Hunter, J.E., Schmidt, F.L., and Jackson, G.B. (1982). Meta-analysis: Cumulating flDdings across research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Hyde, J.S. (1981). How large are cognitive gender differences? American Psychologist, 36, 892-901. Kraemer, H.C. (1983). Theory of estimation and testing of effect sizes: Use in meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Statistics, 8, 93 -101. Light, R.J., and Pillemer, D.B. (1984). Summing up: The science of reviewing research. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Light, R.J., and Smith, P.V. (1971). Accumulating evidence: Procedures for resolving contradictions among different research studies. Harvard Educational Review, 41, 429 - 471. Lipsey, M.W. (1989). Juvenile delinquency treatment: A meta-analytic inquiry into the variability of effects. Unpublished manuscript. Madow, W.G. (1948). On a source of downward bias in the analysis of variance and covariance. Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 19, 351-359. Mahalanobis, P.C. (1936). On the generalized distance in statistics. Proceedings of the National Institute of Science of India, 12, 49-55. Morrison, D.F., (1967). Multivariate statistical methods. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Presby, S. (1978). Overly broad categories obscure important differences. American Psychologist, 33, 514-515. Rosenthal, R. (1984). Meta-analytic procedures for social research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Rosenthal, R., and Rubin, D.B. (1982a). A simple, general purpose display of magnitude of experimental effect. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74, 166-169. Rosenthal, R., and Rubin, D.B. (1982b). Comparing effect sizes of independent studies. Psychological Bulletin, 92, 500-504. Scheffe, H. (1959). The analysis of variance. New York: Wiley. Underwood, B.J. (1957). Interference and forgetting. Psychological Review, 64, 49-60. Yates, F. (1984). Tests of significance for 2 x 2 tables (with discussion). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 147, 426-463.

Meta-Analysis and Brunswik Symmetry Werner W. Wittmann

1.

Introduction

What is the state of the art in social prevention programs? What are the results of program evaluations? Peter Rossi formulated the "iron law of social program evaluation," which means zero or low effects in the majority of studies in diverse areas including social prevention and intervention programs (Rossi, 1978, p. 574). The evaluation standards for success or failure are, for example, correlation coefficients as measures of effect size. All other kinds of effect size like t, F, or p values of significance tests can easily be transformed into correlation coefficients (Glass, McGaw, and Smith 1981).

Tea leaf-reading. Incompetence. Futility, Scientifically unprofitable change of paradigms

I.00

1-------11

.10 .20 .30 .40 .50 .60 .70 .80 .90 1.00

??? Social prevention programs

Fig. 1:

Charybdis:

Personality coefficients

Scylla:

t

Orwell manipulation. Power, Competence, Determinism

Intelligence and school achievement

Evaluation standards for the empirical success/failure in psychology and social science (correlation coefficients)

Figure 1 depicts the continuum between the two poles of extreme failure or success. Both are coined as Scylla and Charybdis reminding you of the dangers associated with both of them. The "Scylla" danger of zero effects compares psychology and social sciences with tea-leaf reading, incompetence, or, as the late physics nobel laureate Richard Feynman (1985, p. 340) coined it, as

382

W.W. Wittmann

cargo-cult science. The "Charybdis" danger of perfect correlation denotes a perfect deterministic world, which nobody believes to be true from an epistemological point of view, in all sciences dealing with living matter. Figure 1 also demonstrates that the biggest successes in psychology already have a long history. They are found in intelligence research. Personality research did not have these successes. Mischel's (1968) "meta-analysis," a classical literature review, came out with a mean correlation coefficient of .30 between personality scales and behavior. These coefficients were turned into ridicule as personality coefficients. There was heated debate about the truth of such a statement, but see our own results (Wittmann, 1987).

2.

The Four-Box Conceptualization

I have found it very convenient to depict the majority of our research design and measurement problems with four data boxes (Fig. 2). We see a predictor, a criterion, an experimental treatment, and a nonexperimental treatment box. All data boxes are conceptualized as Cattellian covariation charts (Cattell, 1966) with N people, n variables, and m measurement occasions. Relating these different data boxes leads to different types of meta-analysis. Glassian meta-analysis (Smith, Glass, and Miller 1980; Glass, McGaw, and Smith, 1981) is best illustrated by r ETR,CR or rETR,CR. PR , that is, the relationship between experimental treatment box and criterion box, eventually with predictor box partialled out from criterion box. Hunter and Schmidt's brand (Hunter, Schmidt, and Jackson 1982) concentrates on our rpR,CR' Validity generalizations are interested in the relationship between predictors and criteria. The meta-analysis reported by Friedrich LOsel (LOsel, this volume) is also of this type. Meta-analysis synthesizing rNTR,CR coefficients is probably most typical for social prevention and intervention programs. Most often in this area no randomization of groups to treatment is possible because of ethical or political arguments. The rETR,NTR coefficient symbolizes the decline of many randomized experiments into quasi-experiments or the liabilities of nonrandomized designs from the start. This is the location of the "threat to validity of scientific conclusions" approach of Campbell and Stanley (1963) and Cook and Campbell (1979). Concentration on rpR,ETR is a theme mainly handled by Bob Boruch in the last

383

Meta-Analysis and Brunswik Symmetry

years (e.g., Boruch and Wothke, 1985). How successful was the randomization procedure and how can we facilitate the implementation of true randomized experiments, that is, how can we succeed in keeping the coefficients rpR.ETR equal to zero? The coefficient TpR.NTR, if different from zero, denotes systematic selection effects. All meta-analysis using NTR-CR relations is always in danger of bias as regards the interpretation of effects. Partialling PR-box variance from CR-box variance may be very misleading, unless we know exact amount and direction of this bias (Campbell and Erlebacher, 1983). Modeling selection effects in order to approximate true causal conclusions is mainly handled in economics where true randomized experiments are also rarely done. Heckman, Hotz, and Dabos (1987) and LaLonde and Maynard (1987) are discussing this issue controversially. / / /

"

ETR-box

/

/ /

"

/

" '-

/

/

"

"

""

PR-box

/

,ny "

/

/ /

/

"

/

/

/

rCR,ETR

"

" '-

"

" '/ / / / / / /

/ / / /

/ /

NTR-box

/

Fig. 2: The [our- 0) can ever be accepted in a study design like the one operationalized in Study II! Corresponding conditions in design and analysis are present in Studies 2, 3, 6, and 12 at least (see the Ii values in Table 3 that are based on even higher multiple correlation coefficients). Not only the relation between sample size and the number of variables that is so important for the design of a study but also the probability of being able to statistically confirm a practically meaningful result has obviously been neglected. When we additionally include the trend toward alpha-error inflation through overlapping subject and variable samples confirmed for the entire program in section 2 as well as the statistical multiple testing of hypotheses in a provisional appraisal, then the design of the entire program can only be described as inadequate. Treiber and Weinert have evidendy succumbed to the temptation of answering their far-reaching questions with the help of a completely insufficient data base.

5.

Summary Evaluation

One major problem for the critical reader is that important statistical values that have resulted from the data assessed, and must have been necessary prerequisites for the authors' further statistical analyses, are systematically concealed in the presentation of the results. Because of this, a follow-up testing or even a replication of the research findings reported by Treiber and Weinert is not possible.

In my opinion, a central deficit in the work of Treiber and Weinert is that with 8 or 13 core classes, the available data material is measured in a way that is far too restricted to permit answers to such broad questions as those posed by the authors. In order to still preserve the appearance of a testing for their 34 hypotheses with such a "thin blanket of data," they obviously felt that they were obliged to work almost completely with students instead of classes as study units and, in selecting variables, to drop down to the level of the individual questionnaire items and observation categories. However, even this

450

Klaus Treumann

failed to provide a sufficient data base for testing hypotheses, so that the authors had to work with strongly overlapping groups of subjects and variables. However, this resulted in the number of students often approaching the number of variables or even being below this, which, in turn, required the use of a range of multivariate procedures (e.g., stepwise regression analyses) for the selection and summarizing of variables before statistical analyses were again applied - and that repeatedly - to the remaining data in order to test hypotheses in the majority of studies. The selection and combination of the items and observation categories included in the individual studies additionally was performed in contrast to the expressed intention not guided by theory, and, particularly in the case of the selection of the independent variables, was left to the formal-statistical criterion of the increase in variance - and that was not even performed without faults in testing for the involvement of chance. The hypertrophy of the study design and the data analysis described above lead to:

1. incorrect model specifications; 2. distorted estimations of the population parameters because of nonrandom drawing of samples;

3. multicoJ1inearities between study variables; 4. instabilities in the regression coefficients; and S. above all, a massive inflation of the alpha error not least because of overlapped samples of subjects and variables and the repeated use of statistical procedures on the same data sets; 6. as well as a strong reduction in power. The combined effects of the UDcontroJJable amalgation of the alpha and beta error makes it impossible to estimate the validity of the reported study findings from a methodological-statistical perspective. The design and implementation of the study often move toward a systematic hunt for chance. Treiber and

Weinert have lost almost everything that they could have gained in knowledge from the entire program if they had used a more realistic research strategy. The following conclusion can be drawn from the reanalysis carried out above: The analysis of data performed by the authors reveals serious deficits so that Treiber and Weinert's findings are of doubtful value and the conclusions for educational policy derived from the "Heidelberg Study" are questionable.

Evaluation Research Data in Educational Science

6.

451

Some Consequences for Research Strategy

I shall conclude my reanalysis with some propositions for research strategy that result directly from the work of Treiber and Weinert: 1. Empirical research in education should limit itself to the statistical testing of only a few study hypotheses. 2. Additionally obtained findings should unmistakably be labeled exploratory and not be granted the dignity of a hypothesis testing. 3. Proposed is a reductionist strategy that has a theoretically guided concentration of variables on relatively few indices as its goal, that should be obtained in the study at hand. A "shotgun" procedure on the level of individual items and categories is inappropriate. 4. Hypotheses that cannot be rejected in an empirical study should only be raised to the status of provisionally accepted statements when they have at least been confirmed in a cross-validation. 5. The findings obtained from one data set can be tested either in a new study or by separating an available - sufficiently large - sample of subjects into two or more groups. In multiple regression analyses, the coefficients calculated from one group can be used to test their contribution to the explanation of variance in the other part of the sample. The greater the number of variables assessed in an empirical study, the more hypotheses are usually tested explicitly or implicitly. First, an increase in the number of hypotheses tested with statistical procedures (e.g., multiple regression analyses) is accompanied by increases in the probability of the occurrence of apparently significant findings, that is, a study-dependent increase in the alpha error is to be anticipated. An additional consequence is that certain subsamples of variables or subjects together with their findings never rise to the surface of research reports. Second, larger numbers of variables lead to an increase in the beta error and the power is drastically reduced, as I have shown for the example of multiple regression analyses. Thus, if many individual items and categories are included in hypothesis-testing studies instead of fewer, equally powerful or variancestrong variables, then there is an increased risk not only that one finds results that do not relate to the object of study but also that it is impossible to prove the results that are obtained. A study-dependent alpha error does not just depend on the size of the sample n but also on the number of hypotheses, that is, in the case of the multiple regression analysis, a potentially high power due to a large n is counteracted by a large number of variables k.

452

Klaus Treumann

I have selected this reanalysis of Treiber and Weinert's study as an example and discussed it in detail because it permits a demonstration of the typical methodological and statistical problems that are so notorious in social research. The authors help themselves to an elaborate statistical arsenal and analyze their data with an impressive persistence. Nonetheless, their work proves to be in need of criticism, like a great number of other very sophisticated studies. Not only the arsenal of instruments of statistical analysis but also the continuously increasing differentiation of theoretical knowledge leads to a great temptation to reappraise (process) the data obtained in a way that produces findings corresponding to the autor's own expectations, hopes, or desires, despite their statistical inadequacy. It is certain that intentional attempts to produce false interpretations only playa very subordinate role. The real cause would seem to be that although the modem, more powerful analytical procedures open up new and more effective possibilities of analysis, they require the fulfillment of completely specific statistical parameters that are often not met. This is accompanied by the situation that the application of complete batteries of analytical procedures in program packets and the combination of data sets becomes increasingly more tempting, faster, and apparently easier. All these temptations repeatedly lead to methodological errors that become particularly critical when we are no longer dealing with pure science but with evaluation research. Evaluation research frequently has very immediate practical consequences while simultaneously being directed toward clients who generally are ill-equipped to grasp the complex statistical operations involved. For these reasons, it is particularly important to exercise restraint in the treatment of data and be more modest in setting the objectives of research. The statistical arguments in the previous section that are formulated with reference to Cohen and Cohen (1983), present a methodological-statistical quintessence of the problems involved in Treiber and Weinert's study. For: "Insofar as variables and hence hypotheses are concerned, an important general principle in research inference is succinctly stated: 'less is more' - more statistical test validity, more power, and more clarity in the meaning of results" (Cohen and Cohen, 1983, p. 171).

Notes A synopsis of the entire program, summarizing the most important cornerstones of the 12 studies (hypotheses, theoretical background, variables measured, samples, and measurement timepoints, as well as major findings), can be found in Beck et aI., 1988, pp. 95-98.

Evaluation Research Data in Educational Science

453

2

The reviews from Briistle (1986) and Ingenkamp (1987) can be named as examples here. Ingenkamp summarizes his review as follows: "The research report provides an excellent review of the literature and a fine combination of the formulation and testing of models with polished methods. Reading this book is a gain for the empirical scientist" (p. 178, translated).

3

"The effectiveness of instruction for the divergence or equalization of the variance in achievement in school classes is mediated by the students' perception of its quality" (p. 208, translated).

4

"The active learning time will nonetheless also be effective across interactions and certainly when combined with the initial achievement of students. Effect-relevant are student differences in the active learning time, particularly in lower student achievers" (p. 166, translated).

5

"Variables of active learning time (particularly for this group of students) mediate the quality of the instruction offered in the lesson: Their effects on education are essentially indirect and depend on the use of the instruction offered" (p. 166, translated).

6

"Differences between teachers on these dimensions [their subjective theories on academic achievement, students, and instruction) are suitable for the prediction of their own interaction behavior in class" (p. 322, translated).

References Beck, M., Bromrne, R., Heymann, H.W., Mannhaupt, G., Skowronek, H., and Treumann, K. (1988). Gefangen im Daten-Labyrinth. Kritische Sichtung eines Forschungsberichts zum schulischen Chancenausgleich. Zeitschrift fUr Plidagogische Psychologie, 2, 91-111. Blair, R.C., et aI. (1983). An investigation of the robustness ot the t test to unit of analysis violations. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 43, 69-80. Bortz, I. (1985). Lehrbuch der Statistik fUr Sozialwissenschaftler (2nd ed.). Berlin: Springer. Bortz, I. (1984). Lehrbuch der empirischen Forschung fUr Sozialwissenschaftler. Berlin:

Springer. Briistle, G. (1986). Rezension der Arbeit von Treiber & Weinert (1985). Unterrichtswissen·· schaft, 4, 434-438. Carter, D.S. (1979). Comparison of different shrinkage formulas in estimating population multiple correlation coefficients. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 39, 261-266. Cohen, I. (1977). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (rev. ed.). New York: Academic Press. Cohen, I., and Cohen, P. (1983). Applied multiple regression! correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Cronbach, L.I., and Snow, R.E. (1977). Aptitudes and instrumental methods. New York: Irvington.

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Fend, H. (1974). Gesellschaftliche Bedingungen schulischer Sozialisation. WeiDheim: Beltz. Gordon, L.V. (1973). One-way analysis of variance using means and standard deviations. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 33, 815-816. Gutjahr, W. (1972). Die Messung psychischer Eigenschaften (2nd ed.). Berlin: VEB I>tsch. Verlag der Wissenschaften. Hager, W., and Westermann, R. (1983). Entscheidung iiber statistische und wissenschaftliche Hypothesen: Probleme bei mehrfachen Signifikanztests zur Pnifung einer wissenschaftlichen Hypothese. Zeitschrift fUr Sozialpsychologie, 14, 106-117. Harris, RJ. (1975). A primer of multivariate statistics. New York: Academic Press. Huberty, C.J., and Mourad, S.A. (1980). Estimation in multiple correlation/prediction. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 40, 101-112. Ingenkamp, K. (1987). Rezension der Arbeit von Treiber & Weinert (1985). In R. Horn, K. Ingenkamp, and R.S. Jager, Tests und Trends. 6. Jahrbuch der plidagogischen Diagnostik (pp. 176-178). MiiDchenlWeinheim: Psychologische Verlagsunion. Krapp, A. (1977). Zur Dimensionalitlit des Begriffs Chancengleichheit. In KJ. Klauer, and H.J. Konradt (Eds.), Jahrbuch fUr empirische Erziehungswissenschaften. DUsseldorf: Schwan. Krauth, J. (1983). Methodische Probleme in der plidagogischen Evaluationsforschung. Zeitschrift fUr Empirische Piidagogik, 7, 1-21. Morrison, D.F. (1976). Multivariate statistical methods. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw Hill. Olkin, J., and Pratt, J.W. (1958). Unbiased estimation of certain correlation coefficients. Annals of mathematical statistics, 29, 201- 211. Pedhazur, E.J. (1982). Multiple regression in behavioral research. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Pope, P.T., and Webster, J.T. (1972). The use of an F statistic in stepwise regression procedures. Technometrics, 14, 326-340. Stelzl, I. (1982). Fehler und Fallen der Statistik fUr Psychologen, Plidagogen und Sozialwissenschaftler. Bern: Huber. Treiber, B., and Weinert, F.E. (1985). Gute Schulleistungen fUr aile? Psychologische Studien zu einer plidagogischen Hoffnung. MiiDster: Aschendorf. Wilkinson, L. (1979). Test of significance in stepwise regression. Psychological Bulletin 86, 168-174.

Strategies and Problems in Research on the Implementation of the West German Abortion Law Reform Monika Hiiuf31er-Sczepan

1.

Overall Structure of the Research Program

A great number of factors influence the implementation of a policy program. Their interaction finally depends on whether the program attains its goal or whether there are decisive deviations between the original goal of the program and the way in which it is realized (see Windhoff-Heritier, 1980, p. 1). The network of conditions forming this so-called implementation structure is determined by: 1. the political framework within which a program originates; 2. the design of the implementation; 3. the behavior of the implementation;

organizations entrusted with

carrying

out the

4. the reaction of the social groups or individuals addressed. Any study dealing with the implementation of the West German abortion law reform (§218 of penal law) therefore has to take into account various levels of analysis and different target groups if it is to cope with the complexity of the implementation structure. The comprehensive study on the implementation of the reformed §218 at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Law at Freiburg is therefore split into various subprograms dealing with different aspects as well as the different groups and institutions concerned.

A subprogram dealing with criminal law is making a cross-cultural comparison of legal regulations on abortion and their framing conditions as well as producing relevant basic empirical data (see Eser and Koch, 1988). Empirical studies are also being performed with the financial support of the German Research Association. These are: a survey of women involved; a

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survey of physicians; a survey of judges and public prosecutors; and an analysis of offenses (see Figure 1).

Section on criminal law: An international comparison of abortion practices - legal controls, social framing conditions, empirical data

Attitude and decision patterns of women involved

Criminological section: Abortion - An empirical study on the implementation of the reformed German law on abortion

Attitudes and behavior of physicians

,..

The application of norms in the prosecution process

Fig. 1: Program on abortion

The findings from the various subprograms will serve as a basis for a final evaluation and an evaluation with respect to legal policy. In the following, I will first develop the central research issues in the entire study followed by a consideration of their practical implementation - from both a theoretical and a methodological perspective - using the examples of the empirical subprograms surveying women and physicians.! The survey of women was carried out by a qualified psychologist, Brigitte Holzhauer; the survey of physicians was my part of the subprogram.

2.

Focuses of the Study

The basic issue guiding research in a study on the implementation of a policy program concerns whether the goals of the program are achieved and what effects or repercussions result from the implementation of the program. Legal regulations generally have the advantage compared to other policy programs that their goals are completely clear, so that the classical problem of implementation research - the unequivocal or unclearly stated definition of goals - generally does not result (see Mayntz, 1980, p. 4). Nevertheless, the reformed §218 is a law possessing the particular property that the goal of the state cannot be determined completely unequivocally. The new regulation is a compromise between the two legal concerns of the "protection of the unborn" and "women's rights to self-determination" (Koschorke, 1987). Existing

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contradictions in society and the multitude of value orientations concerning these are reflected in the formulation of the law. As a consequence, this "politicallegal" compromise has led to a loosening of the norm of criminal law and a shift in decision-making to counseling and indication (Zundel, Laimer, and Schonhals, 1982, p. 191). The procedures linked to the legal reform thus gain a central significance in the implementation of the law. The legal discrimination does not disguise the fact that the interests and value orientations that have become effective in the norm-setting process also remain effective after the passing of the reformed paragraphs and the implementation phase (Albrecht, 1984). Alongside the interests and the value orientations of the persons who are directly concerned with or affected by the implementation of the law, the concrete scope of interpretation and application of the law gain particular importance in the process of implementing norms (Haferkamp, Lautmann, and Brusten, 1978). A central focus of study was therefore the differentiated assessment of the legal process for an unpenalized abortion from the perspective of those direcdy involved. These are, in particular, the woman with an unwanted pregnancy and the physician who indicates or performs an abortion. The implementation of sanction norms is aimed at the recognition and enforcement in target groups, and, vice versa, it is influenced by their acceptance or value orientations. A second, major focus of research was therefore the ascertainment of the acceptance of the law by those direcdy concerned and the investigation of their value concepts regarding an abortion.

3.

Operationalization of Goals

The reform of §218 was linked to the goal of enabling a legal solution of the unreasonable conflict states raised by abortion; at the same time, the procedure of social counseling and diagnosis by physicians should lead to the avoidance and reduction of abortions. In addition, the realization of more justice through more equality within the framework of the legal protection of early life belonged to the most important goals of reform (see Eser, 1985, p. 1333). It is already impossible to answer the question whether and to what extent the legal process will avoid or reduce abortions from the perspective of the social sciences, as there are no reliable data from the period before reform that could 2 be used for a comparison. Reports on nonlegal abortion are only estimations. However, even the present state of affairs cannot be determined exactly, as abortion remains an area with strong taboos that is not easily accessed by

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comprehensive social-scientific assessments as, for example, the survey of the women concerned reveals. We shall return to this point later. Therefore, the issue of the impact of the law was treated within the framework of the assessment of factors that have an effect on the decision for or against an abortion. As far as the claims of reform to achieve more justice through more equality are concerned, testing this aspect was taken into account by the selection of study regions. The surveys of women and physicians involved were carried out in the West German states of Hessen and Baden-Wiirttemberg, which differ regarding the guidelines and implementation modalities of abortion (see, e.g., Kelting and von Praag, 1985, pp. 70-80). The operationalization of the goals linked to the reform of §218 thus resulted in the following central research issues that each had to be studied differently in physicians and pregnant women: 1. What does the implementation of §218 look like from the perspective of those involved, and what relevance does the legal regulation gain in the decision-making process? 2. How well is the law accepted, and how far does it correspond to the value concepts and needs of pregnant women and physicians? 3. Which psychological and social factors cause action to tend toward abortion? As the samples of physicians and pregnant women differ greatly with regard to the type of involvement and their position in the event of an abortion, different research designs were developed to answer these research issues in the samples of physicians and pregnant women.

4.

Construction of Differential Models

For the woman concerned, the decision either to abort or to bring to term an unwanted pregnancy is generally linked to a multitude of psychological and social conflicts. If we look at the conflict areas, data from the West German Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1986, p. 384) already show that an abortion is mostly justified on the indication of serious difficulties. According to previous research (e.g., Oeter and Nohke, 1982; Wimmer-Puchinger, 1983, p. 59; von Troschke, Hendel-Kramer, and Werner, 1982), there is generally a predominance of financial problems, occupational problems, problems in vocational training, and incomplete partnerships. Mostly, several negative constellations occur at the same time. Worries about not being able to cope and the future with the child are frequently corresponding psychological factors. As

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the occurrence of an unwanted pregnancy can already have a function (e.g., within the framework of a relationship; Goebel, 1984; Jiirgensen, 1983), the decision for or against an abortion often represents a confusing interlocking of different aspects. The subjective, existential meaning of an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion is one of the most stressful life events for the women concerned according to life-event research and is comparable with, for example, a divorce or the death of a parent (see Binder, Bischotberger, and Thomaier, 1984). In contrast, physicians mostly act within the framework of their professional role in an abortion. A central value of the professional identity of a physician is the maintenance and reestablishment of "health" as well as simply the maintenance and protection of life (Riischemeyer, 1972; Lau, 1983). With the Hippocratic oath, the basic professional values are anchored deeply within the traditional self-image of physicians (see Christoph, 1975). For this reason, many physicians experience conflict in the topic of abortion. This is reinforced, as both the ending of hwnan life by the physician and refusing to help a woman in difficulties clash with the professional ethics of physicians. In each diagnosis, and each abortion, this norm conflict experiences a "unique sharpening" (Poettgen, 1981, p. 227, translated) that places a particular demand on the physician's conscience.

While the woman with an unwanted pregnancy is confronted with conflicts that she cannot avoid and that generally have lasting importance for the rest of her life, the problems of the physician predominantly occur on the professional level on which it is left to each individual to face this task. It can be considered as empirically ascertained that attitude and behavior in the case of an abortion are always also shaped by general value orientations and sociodemographic variables, such as age, religion, family status, and social and regional origins (see Zundel et al., 1982; for a summary, see Bericht der Kommission, 1980). The different ways in which physicians and pregnant women are involved in an abortion requires differences in methodological design. In particular, which psychological and social factors cause action to tend toward abortion must be approached in a different way in the women involved than in the professional group of physicians.

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Research Problems

Survey of Women

In the women's survey program, a control group design was used to study the central question on the determinants of the decision to undergo an abortion. Women who had had an abortion were surveyed, as well as women who carried their pregnancy to full term despite decision-making conflicts and women who carried their pregnancy to full term without conflicts. The first methodological problem proved to be access to the sample. As both counselors and physicians are not allowed to pass on information about their clients, it was not possible to approach the women directly and draw a simple random sample. We had to find another approach. Locations where women with pregnancy problems can be found are, above all, recognized §218 counseling centers, physicians, abortion centers, and care centers for pregnant women. In the case of access through counseling centers, a quota procedure was used to cover equally all organizations that finance them. Among the physicians, a random selection was made of all gynecologists in private 3 practice. As responses extended over a 6-month period (April 1985 to December 1985), we tried to gain further respondents through advertisements in high-eirculation women's journals. In all, access to women was gained through the cooperation of counseling centers and physicians in 80% of cases. Results were obtained for a sample of 400 interviews that could be assigned to the subsamples "women with abortions" (41.5%), "pregnant women with conflicts" (12.75%; these were women who continued their pregnancy to term despite initial doubts), and "pregnant women without decision conflict" (who did not desire an abortion, 45.75%). The women who had had abortions had generally had them less than 6 months previously, the other respondents were mostly still pregnant. The respondents were surveyed with a semistandardized interview that was carried out by a trained female interviewer. Female interviewers were selected to allow the respondents to be as open as possible when discussing this taboo area. As the women could only be surveyed on a voluntary basis, we cannot exclude distortions. Compared to the data from the West German Government Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1986, pp. 73 -75, 386) and other available

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4

data sources on base rates, there were significant deviations in the women's survey. These particularly concerned the respondents' level of education, age, family status, and number of children. The women surveyed in all subsamples were more frequently unmarried, were more educated, were more frequently unattached to an organized religion, and were more frequently West German citizens than the base-rate data would suggest. This is not surprising when we consider the well-known problem in the social sciences that the active and voluntary participation in a study demands a particular verbal and social competence. Therefore, the data from the women's survey are not representative. Nonetheless, in this context it should be noted that within the framework of the strongly taboo area that abortion still represents, it would be impossible to obtain a sample of involved women who would satisfy the traditional methodological criteria of representativeness. This could only be achieved when the topic was not the subject of any taboos, and this either cannot be anticipated in the long term or it would be another topic. The responses in the women's survey can therefore, considering the problems involved in the topic, certainly be judged to be relevant, and, taking into account the bias mentioned above, they permit an analysis of the decision structure of taking pregnancy to term versus abortion.

Survey of Physicians Problems of access within the physicians' survey were present as we were dependent on the cooperation of the Landesiirztekammern (regional registers of physicians) in Hessen and Baden-Wiirttemberg to provide us with addresses. It was intended to survey only trained gynecologists, as in daily practice, these s are the main communication partners of pregnant women. Therefore, all working gynecologists in Hessen and Baden-Wiirttemberg, that is, clinicians and gynecologists in private practice, were defined as the base population. We required the cooperation of the Landesarztekammern to obtain their addresses. While the Landesarztekammer in Hessen sent us the address lists after ascertaining that they would be handled with strict anonymity and would then be destroyed immediately, Baden-Wiirttemberg considered that problems in the protection of individual data were involved. Mter some negotiations, a procedure was agreed upon by which the Landesarztekammer in Baden-Wiirttemberg took over the distribution of our letters. Thus all working gynecologists in Hessen and Baden-Wiirttemberg were

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contacted and asked to participate. Participation in the survey was based, as in the women's survey, on the individual willingness of the physician, so that once again we had a self-selected sample. A total of 406 physicians were interviewed verbally. This represents a sample 6 of 20% of all working gynecologists in Hessen and Baden-Wiirttemberg. Statistical tests showed that the gynecologists' survey could be assumed to be representative. With regard to the fact that the respondents in the physicians' survey were all academics, the classical "middle-class effect of social science surveys" (Friedrichs, 1980, p. 209, translated) could not arise, as only members of a higher class were included from the beginning. Nevertheless, even in the pretest, there were already problems of verbal communication between legal language and medical language, as certain aspects of abortions are labeled differently in these two professional groups. The guidelines for questions had to be revised according to the experiences with the pretest regarding their comprehensibility for the respondents. As in the women's survey, a semistandardized, verbal interview was chosen. This method allowed the combination of quantitative and qualitative survey methods, so that different dimensions of the complex topic could be assessed.

In the gynecologists' survey, the interviews were carried out by specially trained male interviewers. It seemed advisable to only use men as interviewers, as the survey situation should recall as little as possible the interaction between the pregnant woman and the physician performing the diagnosis or the 7 abortion.

Methodological Requirements of a Research Design to Study the Implementation of §218

In summary, the description and analysis of the implementation structure of such a complex topic as the implementation of §218 requires the inclusion of different levels of analysis as well as the consideration of different target groups and the use of different methods. The design of the entire program permits comparisons on different levels between different target groups and between different kinds of data: 1. between legal regulation and basic empirical data in different European and non-European countries;

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2. between attitude and behavior in the different target groups involved, namely, gynecologists, pregnant women, judges, and public prosecutors; 3. between the West German states of Hessen and Baden-Wiirttemberg that differ in their guidelines for abortion and in their political orientation. The comparison of the various subfmdings cannot, however, be performed in the sense of a classical comparative design with the retention of quasiexperimental standards. Such methodological claims cannot be met. While on the level of the subprograms, the data collection can meet methodological standards on the specific properties of target groups, research topic, and question, the compilation of the various subfindings must be made within a meaningful reconstruction of the relations between activities that in no way can fulfill the classical criteria of a comparative design. In discerning the implementation structure, it is much more the case that doing without the classical validity criteria of comparability tends to increase rather than decrease the internal validity of the total findings. I should like to use a metaphor to illustrate these problems. The attempt to reconstruct the implementation structure of a political program using subfmdings from various levels of research and fields of data is not so much like a mosaic as a multidimensional picture. Our problem as researchers is that we have all only learned to reconstruct pictures, yet, with the implementation of political programs, we are dealing with a moving sculpture.

Notes 1 Initial flDdings on the surveys of women and physicians are reported in HauSler and Holzhauer (1988). 2

For data on nonlegal abortions before the reform of §218, compare Siebel et al. (1971). According to the West German Statistical Office, a total of 84,274 abortions were carried out in 1986. However, when referring to data from the Statistical Office, a registration deficit has to be assumed so that the total number of abortions still depends on estimations. Current estimations range between 140,000 and 212,000 abortions per year in West Germany (see von Baross, 1986; Erhard, 1985).

3

A total of S9 counseling centers and 100 gynecologists participated in the survey.

4

Further data used in the comparison came from a perinatal assessment in BadenWiirttemberg; information assessed in counseling centers and from physicians on the social status of their clients; reports from the Statistiscbes Bundesamt (1986) on the female population; and the clarkfield study by Liebl (1986).

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5 According to a personal communication from the Landesarztekammer Sudbaden, a gynecologist takes over the medical care in about 90% of pregnancies. 6 These were 1,981 persons according to the statistics of the Bundesarztekammer (national register of physicians) on December 31st 1986 (the year of the survey). 7 The secondary analysis of two public opinion polls on law and deviant behavior carried out in Vienna in 1971 and 1974 found that it was necessary to assume a strong impact of the gender of the interviewer, especially in connection with questions on the legal regulation of abortion (see Steinert, 1984).

References Albrecht, H.-J. (1984, April). Empirische Untersuchungen zur Implementation der strafrechtlichen Regulierung des Schwangerschaftsabbruchs. Paper presented at the meeting of the Deutsch-Polnischem Symposium. Freiburg. Baross, J.v. (1986). Schwangerschaftsabbriiche an Frauen aus der Bundesrepublik. Pro Familia Magazin, 14, 27-30. Bericht der Kommission zur Auswertung der Erfahrungen mit dem reformierten §218 des Strafgesetzbuchs (1980). Bonn: Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 8/3630 (dated 31.12.1980). Binder, J., Bischofberger, A., and Thomaier, K. (1984). Normierung einer Skala zur Messung lebensveriindernder Ereignisse. Social Psychiatry, 19, 173-180. Christoph, K. (1975). Medizin und Empfiingnisverhiitung. Ein Beitrag zur Analyse des Selbstverstiindnisses westdeutscher Arzte. Stuttgart: Enke. Erhard, B. (1985). Verdunkelung, wo KIarheit erforderlich ist. Jedes 3. Kind wird vor der Geburt gerotet. In P. Hoffacker, B. Steinschulte, and P.J. Fietz (Eds.), Auf Leben und Too. Abtreibung in der Diskussion (pp. 159-170). Bergisch-Gladbach: Bastei-Lubbe. Eser, A. (1985). In A. Schonke and H. SchrOder (Eds.), Strafgesetzbuch Kommentar (p. 1333, 2nd ed.). Munchen: Beck. Eser, A., and Koch, H.-G. (Eds.)(1988). Schwangerschaftsabbruch im internationalen Vergleich. Rechtliche Regelungen - Soziale Rahmenbedingungen - Empirische Grunddaten. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Friedrichs, J. (1980). MethOOen der empirischen Sozialforschung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Goebel, P. (1984). Abbruch der ungewoIIten Schwangerschaft. Ein Koniliktlosungsversuch. Berlin: Springer. Haferkamp, H., Lautmann, R., and Brusten, M. (1978). Empirische Erforschung der Normgenese. Monatsschrift fiir Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, 6, 351-352. HiiuBler, M., and Holzhauer, B. (1988). Die Implementation der reformierten §§ 218 f. StGB. Empirische Untersuchungen zu Einstellung und Verhalten von Arzten und schwangeren Frauen. Zeitschrift fiir die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft, 4, 58-78.

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JUrgensen, O. (1983). Schwangerschaftskonfliktberatung. Abtreibung als wiederholter Trennungsversuch. Sexualmedizin 12, 15-18, 26-30. Ketting, E., and Praag, P.v. (1985). Schwangerschaftsabbruch. Gesetz und Praxis im internationalen Vergleich (pp. 70-80). Tiibingen: Deutsche Gesellschaft fUr Verhaltenstherapie. Koschorke, M. (1987). Beratung in Widerspriichen. Bedingungen und Probleme der Schwangerschaftskonfliktberatung. In M. Koschorke and J. Sandberger (Eds.) , Schwangerschaftskonfliktberatung. Ein Handbuch (pp. 13-45). GOttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Lau, H. (1983). Die gesellschaftspolitische Relevanz des § 218 StGB in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Sexualmedizin, 6, 253-254. Liebl, K.-H., (1986). In Tatigkeitsbericht des Max-Planck-Instituts fUr auslandisches und internationales Strafrecht (pp. 10-11). Freiburg: Max-Planck-Institut fUr auslandisches und internationales Strafrecht. Mayntz, R. (1980). Zur Entwicklung des analytischen Paradigmas in der Implementationsforschung. In R. Mayntz (Ed.), Implementation politischer Programme. Empirische Forschungsherichte (pp. 1-19). Konigstein/Taunus: Verlagsgruppe Athenaeum, Hain, Scriptor, Hanstein. Oeter, K., and Nohke, A. (1982). Der Schwangerschaftsabbruch - Griinde - Legitimationen - Alternativen. Schriftenreihe des Bundesministers fUr Jugend, Familie und Gesundheit: Vol. 123. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Poettgen, H. (1981). Praktische Erfahrungen mit der Abgrenzung der gesetzlich definierten Indikationen in der Arzteschaft. Schriftenreihe des Bundesministers fUr Jugend, Familie und Gesundheit, Vol. 92/1 (p. 227). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Riischemeyer, D. (1972). Arzte und Anwilte: Bemerkungen zur Theorie der Professionen. In Th. Ludemann and W.-M. Sprondel (Eds.), Berufssoziologie (pp. 168-169). KOln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Siebel, W., Martin, N., Stumpf, K., Waldmann, P., and Werth, M. (1971). Soziologie der Abtreibung. Stuttgart: Enke. Statistisches Bundesamt (1986). Statistisches Jahrbuch. Stuttgart: Kohlharnmer. Steinert, H. (1984). Das Interview als soziale Interaktion. In H. Meulemann and K.-H. Reuband (Eds.), Soziale Realitiit im Interview. Empirische Analysen methodischer Probleme (pp. 24-25). Frankfurt: Campus. Troschke, J.v., Hendel-Kramer, A., and Werner, E. (1982). Erfahrungen von Frauen mit dem Abbruch einer Schwangerschaft. Schriftenreihe des Bundesministers fUr Jugend, Familie und Gesundheit, Vol. 92/3 (pp. 46-48), Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Wimmer-Puchinger, B. (1983). Empirische Untersuchung der Motive zum Schwangerschaftsabbruch. Wien: Bundesministerium fUr Wissenschaft und Forschung, Bundesministerium fUr Finanzen. Windhoff-Heritier, A. (1980). Politikimplementation. Ziel und Wirklichkeit politischer Entscheidungen. Konigstein/Taunus: Hain. Zundel, E., Laimer, M., and Scoonhals, M. (1982). Wertorientierung und Schwangerschaftsabbruch. Bevolkerungsbefragung. Schriftenreihe des Bundesministers fUr Jugend, Familie und Gesundheit, Vol. 92/3. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Evaluating the Impact of Criminal Law: The Case of Environmental Criminal Statutes Hans-Jorg Albrecht

1.

Introduction: The Emergence of Environmental Criminal Law

In 1980, criminal environmental law was revised in West Germany in order to strengthen the repressive approach to environmental protection (Hermann, 1979; Sack, 1980; Tiedemann, 1980). The purpose of these amendments has been 1. to underline the criminal nature of behavior endangering or harming the natural environment in terms of air, soil, and water; 2. to identify and describe the most serious and most dangerous types of behavior affecting the environment; 3. to mobilize public sentiments against polluting activities; and, in general, 4. to put into effect general preventive and deterrent mechanisms. Furthermore, legislative activities were aimed at facilitating law enforcement through the wide use of crime definitions emphasizing abstract or concrete dangers inherent to certain kinds of behavior rather than requiring some kind of harm or damage actually following pollution as a legal condition for invoking criminal law, as well as through enlarging the scope of criminal behavior by inhibiting negligent behavior as well as mere attempts to commit certain environmental crimes. Finally, legal penalties provided in environmental statutes have been increased in order to demonstrate that at least certain polluting behavior is regarded to be as serious as are traditional crimes. So, the purposes assigned to environmental criminal statutes are rather complex, and thorough research aimed at identifying the effects of criminal law in terms of specific contributions to environmental protection had to account for this complex and multifaceted goal. It goes without saying that Rossi's iron law on evaluation research would be in effect in this field, too (Rossi and Wright, 1987, p. 48). This means that the best a priori estimate of the program effect actually to be expected should be regarded as zero. But as we will see with

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respect to research on environmental criminal law, the focus is first of all on the process of implementation of environmental criminal law. Such an approach means above all simplifying evaluation research through neglecting the rather complex aims such as general prevention, contributing to environmental protection, or ameliorating the present state of natural environments. So, we might be seduced into drawing an analogy to the rather well-known story of the drunk who lost his keys in a dark alley and looks for them in the light of the lamp post at the street corner because he believes that it is easier to find them there. But nonetheless, research on implementation of environmental criminal law raises rather interesting perspectives for evaluation by putting the focus on the potential of criminal law in highly organized and complex environments. Furthermore, the recognition of the importance of implementation obviously has been one of the consequences derived from the moral assessment of evaluation research outcomes said do be rather disappointing.

2.

The Nature of Environmental Criminal Law

The legislative technique used in framing environmental criminal law led to crime definitions that represent rather open concepts with "incomplete" criminal statutes serving as elastic frameworks for the implementation of various criminal and noncriminal policies with respect to the protection of the natural environment. Discretionary power to complete criminal environmental law by issuing permits, setting general or specific limits to the discharge and disposal of air- or water-polluting substances, and so forth usually is vested within administrative agencies that are (functionally and organizationally) independent from the criminal justice system (Albrecht, 1987). The interrelationship between criminal law and administrative powers may be demonstrated in the case of the most important environmental offenses. § 324 German Criminal Code. § 324 German Criminal Code serves the protection of water against pollution or other negative impacts on the water as far as polluting activities occur without permission of administrative authorities. It suffices that the physical, chemical, or biological status quo of a river, lake, or so forth is modified thereby causing the mere chance of disadvantages to the water.

§325 German Criminal Code. § 325 German Criminal Code aims at air pollution and noise. Behavior that should fall under this provision concerns modifica-

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tions of the natural composition of the air bringing upon the abstract danger that human health, flora and fauna, or highly valued items might be harmed on the one hand or causing noise that brings upon the abstract danger that human health may be harmed on the other hand. But air pollution and noise are illegal and a criminal offense only if occurring within the context of an industrial, commercial, or other plant and if administrative obligations (aimed explicitly at reducing noise or air pollution) are grossly violated. Furthermore, § 325 does not cover noise stemming from air or land traffic, thus creating important restrictions. § 326 German Criminal Code. § 326 German Criminal Code makes certain ways of waste disposal a crime. A person who (without permit) disposes dangerous waste outside a plant officially designed to handle dangerous waste, or a person disposing of dangerous waste if deviating from a prescribed procedure regulating waste disposal commits a criminal offense. § 327 German Criminal Code. Running an industrial, commercial, or other plant without a permit from competent authorities is an offense according to § 327 German Criminal Code under the condition that the plant may create dangers to the environment. As has been pointed out earlier, crime definitions are dependent on activities and decision-making outside the criminal justice system. Requiring that polluting behavior must have violated administrative rules or decisions or must have occurred without administrative permission means that, in any case, simple pollution is not sufficient to invoke criminal law. It seems obvious that certain conflicts with respect to what should be regarded to represent a criminal environmental act have not been solved at the legislative level but - in order to broaden the base of support and to achieve a wider consensus in the legislative process - have been transferred to the implementation process where, in the case of pollution, waste disposal, or other behavior endangering the natural environment, the crucial question does not concern so much "who did it?" but rather "did a crime actually occur?" (Katz, 1979; Albrecht et al., 1984). Although the overall goal, that is, the protection of the natural environment, obviously is the same for criminal justice agencies enforcing criminal environmental laws on the one hand and for those administrative bodies enforcing administrative environmental laws on the other hand, the means that have been elaborated to achieve these objectives are basically different and are evaluated controversially. It is evident that the conflict perspective in terms of processing environmental offenders through the justice system and attempting to achieve

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compliance with legal proVIsions by means of criminal punishment is not present as far as offenders from highly organized fields of behavior are concerned. Administrative control models rely heavily on cooperation and bargaining, which in tum triggers selective implementation of criminal laws in the environmental field. Criminal justice agencies restrict investigation and prosecution to nonorganized behavior not covered by environmental administration where conflicts about adequate control models and reactions to pollution among state agencies are not present. Research results demonstrate that such misplacement of criminal prosecution has occurred to a large extent (Hiimbs-Krusche and Krusche, 1983). The bulk of environmental crimes and offenders found guilty and sentenced on the basis of environmental criminal law are small-scale polluters. Obviously this is a characteristic of virtually all justice systems dealing with environmental crimes (Albrecht, 1987a). Deficits in implementing environmental criminal law may be explained also by the fact that environmental crimes in the context of industrial or commercial systems represent rather complex phenomena requiring in turn a corresponding answer by criminal justice systems that can respond effectively to complexity on the part of offenders and offenses as well as on the part of environmental administrative bodies only through specialization and differentiation in this field of basic criminal law, investigative and criminal procedures, as well as organization of justice agencies. Obviously, there exist serious limitations to specializing and differentiating the criminal law response, at least with respect to the environment and the industrial system that seem to reinforce the trend to concentrate criminal environmental law enforcement on small-scale offenders while large-scale pollution cases are quite readily dismissed and not prosecuted (Heine and Meinberg, 1988).

3.

Evaluating the Implementation of Environmental Criminal Law:

Basic Demands Leaving aside the basic conditions that may have influenced the development of environmental criminal law (Ruther, 1982), two characteristics may be identified that basically determine the kind of crime definitions used in environmental criminal law as well as their implementation. These two characteristics concern first of all specific circumstances of the subject of environmental criminal law. Environmental criminal law interferes in a complex

Impact of Criminal Law

471

environment, that is, the economic, industrial, or commercial system that is deeply interrelated with other important societal sectors, such as politics and administration. Invoking criminal law in this context has to consider from the very beginning that important functions of the economic and commercial system may be affected, and that side-effects may occur with respect to other sectors that are intertwined with the economic system. Similar problems are known from general endeavors to regulate economic behavior by means of criminal law. These attempts reflect first of all the problem of partialJing out parts of behavior, which in general is welcome and fulfills important functions with respect to society at large. Secondly we should consider the potential of conflict that is inherent to environmental criminal law because of severe conflicts between organized interests. In general, when discussing the question whether certain types of behavior affecting the natural environment should be regarded as being in need of supervision and criminal law control, it is not disinterested resentment as observable with respect to most types of traditional crimes but vivid interest that is present. The extent of conflict and its efficiency may be explained by the capability of organizing interests on both sides, ecology as well as economy. Highly organized and conflicting interests on the one hand, application of criminal law in a complex system that is interrelated with other important sectors of society on the other hand must have a differential impact compared to application of criminal law in the field of individual and unorganized behavior. These differences are reflected in the technique of legislation, in interpretation of criminal statutes, as well as implementation of environmental criminal law. As a consequence of these differences, evaluation research in the field of environmental criminal law has to deal with other problems and demands than can be observed in the process of evaluating traditional criminal law and its impact on so-called ordinary crime. These demands toward evaluation of environmental criminal law concern the need: 1. To move away from the etiological approach to crime and deviance and to shift the focus to the process of evolution of criminal statutes and their implementation. 2. To focus on institutionalized competition between different models of control derived from criminal law, public law, and civil law. 3. To bring back the general conditions of the application of criminal law into the analysis of crime. 4. To refer to different levels of administration and politics.

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Hans-Jorg Albrecht

S. To use multimethod research (e.g.• analysis of files. interviews. questionnaires. etc.). 6. To overcome special problems of access to relevant data that result from difficulties of operationalizing environmental crimes in a way that could make visible something like a dark field of environmental crime and to overcome the limits of survey research in sensitive areas. in large corporations or with respect to high ranking officials. and so forth; problems that do not become efficient that much in the study of juvenile delinquency or ordinary adult crime.

4.

Why Does Environmental Criminal Law Serve as a Last Resort?

The point of departure for evaluation research in the field of environmental criminal law is the specific crime concept making the offense dependent on administrative decisions. As has been shown earlier. administrative authorities may allow polluting activities and behavior. thus invalidating an offense characteristic. Partially. environmental statutes require specific administrative orders prohibiting certain types of pollution. In general. this type of interrelationship between criminal law and administrative law means that only those polluting activities that do not fall under the jurisdiction of environmental administrative law and environmental administrative authorities are subject completely and without exception to the criminal law approach. Intertwining administrative and criminal law would not cause that many problems if administrative decisions were not characterized by discretion. There would be no problem if administrative activities and administrative decision making were strictly derived from administrative statutes in terms of determining consequences of administrative laws by ordinary ways of interpreting statutes (e.g.. determining the relevant circumstances of a case, determining the relevant statute. and determining consequences fixed in the statute). But when permitting or prohibiting polluting activities. environmental authorities are entitled to use discretion. Discretionary power should be framed. according to the relevant environmental administrative laws. by the overall rationale of an adequate economic use of environmental resources. Thus. administrative decision making is characterized by the pursuit of two differing and competing rules: protection and preservation of the natural environment on the one hand. and economic and commercial use of the environment on the other.

Impact of Criminal Law

473

Intertwining criminal law and criminal justice on the one hand, administrative law and administrative decision making on the other hand creates dependencies. With respect to evaluation research in the area of implementing environmental criminal law, the most important questions therefore should be: 1. What characterizes this type of dependency? 2. Which consequences are likely to result from this type of dependency? Taking the position of the criminal justice system and the case of environmental criminal law, interdependency between criminal law and administrative law is followed by two kinds of conditions: Normative conditions and conditions in terms of organization and practicability. Normative conditions influence the response to asking which fields may be subject to criminal law control and investigation. As far as the organization and practicability of criminal law are concerned, we have to acknowledge that from the very beginning environmental administration and the commercial system that makes use of natural resources represent specialized and differentiated systems, while the police, public prosecutor, and criminal courts responsible for responding to behavior affecting the natural environment are nonspecialized, and organizations are not differentiated along the needs of supervising and controlling different sectors of the natural environment as well as the different types of activities that may affect the environment. Efficiency of control and efficiency of implementing criminal law from the perspective of criminal justice agencies therefore may be seen as a function of the capability of criminal justice agencies to differentiate and to specialize themselves on the one hand or to make use of the specialized knowledge and the organizational devices of administrative environmental agencies on the other. With respect to the normative conditions that are setting the limits of environmental criminal law in terms of what types of behavior may be evaluated on the basis of criminal law, we may observe that the administrative approach to environmental protection serves as the frame of reference. First of all, the public prosecutor's office is obviously very reluctant in investigating whether environmental administrative decisions allowing pollution or administrative toleration of polluting activities themselves constitute environmental crimes. Criminal justice agencies are arguing that they are not authorized to control administrative discretionary decisions and to investigate whether the discretionary power has been abused. But then, the potential of criminal law control is reduced significantly (Albrecht et al., 1984). The problem may be divided into two parts, the first of which addresses the question when omission of administrative action vis - it - vis polluting behavior should be regarded to be a

474

Hans-Jorg Albrecht

criminal offense. The second question addresses the evaluation of informal toleration of polluting behavior or formal permits to discharge substances into water or into the air and so forth. Here, the problem arises whether criteria to separate legal from illegal permits should be derived from administrative environmental law and administrative thinking or from criminal environmental law and criminal law theories. Current practices and decision making on the part of criminal justice agencies demonstrate that the administrative approach is outweighing the criminal justice approach. Thus, we may observe the characteristics of traditional administrative criminal law that is predominantly dependent on administrative authorities. The interrelationship between criminal law and administrative law in the area of environmental control therefore means that there are different levels of taking interests into account. Commercial and industrial use of natural resources is permanently eligible for administrative procedures and permissions and is therefore subjected to methods of control markedly different from those that emerge in the field of individual, private, and noncommercial activities affecting the natural environment that are beyond the reach of environmental administration. A second precondition for implementing environmental criminal law may be derived from the availability of information on polluting activities of a possibly criminal nature. While administrative bodies usually have wide powers in terms of control, investigation, access to premises, and so forth, the police is restricted by criminal procedural statutes, normally requiring a certain degree of suspicion that a criminal act has been committed, before they may engage in search procedures and information sampling. The basis of powers vested in administrative environmental authorities is formed in specific administrative statutes and these are annexed to self-control obligations and information sharing duties on the part of commercial enterprises, companies, and so forth. These administrative powers and the corresponding duties of monitored and controlled companies and enterprises are usually combined with obligations on the part of administrative authorities to keep the information gathered for administrative purposes within the boundaries of the administration. But, while in other areas, special secrecy laws, for example, with respect to the tax system, have been adopted, not permitting routine disclosure of information that might be relevant for the prosecution of tax evasion offenses, cooperation and information sharing between administrative authorities responsible for the implementation of administrative environmental law on the one hand and criminal justice agencies on the other hand are not regulated by law in West Germany. Thus, the question when information suggesting that an environmental crime has been committed that stems from routine monitoring and controlling of industry and commerce should be passed from administrative agencies to

Impact of Criminal Law

475

criminal justice agencies is left open and is left to the disposition of the administrative agencies. But even if legal requirements to report to the public prosecution office exist, as is the case in Austria, the output in terms of quality and quantity of criminal cases brought to trial and adjudicated does not seem to be any different (Wegscheider, 1985). With respect to decision making of administrative bodies in the field of information sharing, we observe that obviously the administrative approach to environmental protection differs considerably from the criminal justice approach, which in turn is creating serious limitations to information processing and information sharing. Research indicates that environmental administrative bodies have adopted bargaining strategies stressing that compliance-achieving mechanisms with regard to enforcement of environmental laws are rather to be based on voluntary action and persuasion or positive incentives but not on invoking criminal law and coercion (Mayntz, 1978). From the perspective of environmental administrative agencies, the process of invoking criminal law is rather seen to destroy the indespensable positive relationships between the administration and its industrial or commercial clients. Short-term benefits in terms of successful criminal prosecution of environmental crimes from this perspective would be exchanged for long-term benefits in terms of achieving the goal of a compliance with environmental, administrative law objectives. Therefore, from the viewpoint of environmental administrative agencies, the use of criminal law evidently would result in a zero-sum game likely to increase the problem of noncompliance with administrative law and administrative orders as well as the problem of legal conflicts between industry and commerce on the one hand and administrative authorities on the other.

5.

Implementation of Environmental Criminal Law: Evidence From Evaluation Studies

Although the overall goal, namely the protection of the natural environment, obviously is the same for criminal justice agencies in the attempt to enforce criminal environmental laws and for special administrative bodies enforcing administrative environmental laws, the means that have been elaborated to achieve these objectives are basically different. It is evident that the conflict perspective in terms of processing environmental offenders through the justice system and attempting to achieve compliance with legal provisions by means of criminal penalties is not part of the efficiency calculation of environmental administration, at least as far as highly organized fields of behavior in the area

476

Hans-JOrg Albrecht

of industry and commerce are concerned. Aggressive or militant prosecution therefore is rejected, and, as sometimes can be heard, criminal prosecution of environmental offences is even assessed to be counterproductive (Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1976). This way of using discretion in the process of environmental administration does not meet the demands put forward by criminal justice agencies and criminal procedure itself with respect to the implementation of environmental criminal law. Evidence from research covering the process of implementation supports this view. On the one hand it can be observed that most environmental crimes coming to the attention of the criminal justice system are the result of police investigation, while approximately 20% are reported by citizens, and another 10% by administrative authorities (Hfunbs-Krusche and Krusche, 1983). On the other hand, we may observe that reporting cases to the police or public prosecutor is a rather rare event, taking into account all those cases in which administrative authorities themselves have information on irregular pollution. In the state of Hamburg, 666 pollution cases came to the attention of administrative environmental authorities in the year 1984. Out of these, approximately 4% have been reported to the police. Furthermore, we know from research on administrative decision making that administrative agencies are even reluctant to use administrative coercive measures as well as administrative fines in controlling their clients' behavior, and that nonreporting is the regular outcome of pollution cases within environmental administration (Mayntz, 1978). The consequence of this type of implementation of environmental criminal law is concentration of criminal law on small-scale polluters or what may be labelled "everyday polluting behavior" of individual persons and beings of a more or less private nature. This can be shown also by research on sentencing patterns. Court statistics provide further evidence that most offenses are assessed to be petty offenses only. Nine out of 10 environmental offenders are sentenced to a fine up to 90-day fines; sentencing patterns that are similar to those observed in the case of traffic offenses or smaller property crimes. Although the number of environmental crimes coming to the attention of the police has increased substantially in the last years, the output in terms of convicted and sentenced offenders is comparatively low and rather stable (Albrecht, 1983; Heine and Meinberg, 1988). Rates of dismissal by the public prosecutor are remarkably high, partially also as a consequence of difficulties of investigation in terms of establishing causal links between damages or dangers to the environment and individual or corporate behavior as well as the proof of individual guilt. Furthermore, specific difficulties of law enforcement may arise out of the administrative policy of referring cases to criminal prosecution only

Impact of Criminal Law

477

after lengthy internal proceedings. Time delays thus are likely to lead to increased problem levels regarding proof and evidence. Official accounts of environmental crimes and environmental offenders can be interpreted as reflecting the differential chances to escape labeling, criminal prosecution, and conviction. Escape rates in terms of conviction are highest among the group of industrial or commercial suspects and are lowest in case of individuals (e.g., farmers, private households) who do not fall under the authority of administrative law (Hiimbs-Krusche and Krusche, 1983; Heine and Meinberg, 1988).

6.

Concluding Remarks

Characterizing the current state of implementation of environmental criminal law in the field of industry and commerce, we may best use the label of "soft responsibility." This means that the traditional categories used in establishing criminal responsibility are rather inefficient in highly organized and complex fields of behavior. Furthermore, competition between administrative and criminal models of control restricts the scope of environmental criminal law. But insofar, attempts to implement criminal law with the aim of environmental protection also offer the possibility to adopt different perspectives with respect to the study of crime and deviance in other areas. Obviously we can conclude from research on implementation of environmental criminal law that criminal law may be restricted efficiently if certain conditions are present. In general, preventive strategies by means of criminal law are characterized by the tendency to include other institutions or organizations in criminal law concepts, which in turn leads to the predominance of functions and goals of criminal justice agencies. So, school and family, from the viewpoint of prevention of juvenile delinquency, deteriorate to institutions exclusively responsible for preventing deviant behavior in children and adolescents. But the perspective that family, school, or other social institutions may have legitimate functions to prevent implementation of the criminal law and to limit the reach of criminal law is rarely adopted in research on youth crime. Theoretical perspectives that accept the family, neighborhood, school, or other environments as offering competing models of control and limits to criminal law are not yet sufficiently incorporated into crime theories. Insofar, research on implementation of environmental criminal law may serve as a successful example of integration of different perspectives on criminal behavior and criminal law.

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Hans-Jorg Albrecht

References Albrecht, H.-J. (1981). Probleme der Implementierung des Umweltstrafrecbts. Monatssehrift fUr Kriminologie und Strafrechtsrefonn, 66, 278-294. Albrecht, H.-J. (1987). Particular difficulties in enforcing the law arising out of basic conflicts between the different agencies regarding the best-suited reactions upon highly sensitive kinds of crime. In Council of Europe (Ed.), Interactions within the criminal justice system (pp. 45-90). Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Albrecht, H.-J. (1987a). Umweltstrafrecht und Verwaltungsakzessoritiit - Probleme und Foigen einer Verkniipfung verwaltungs- und strafrechtlicher Konzepte. Kriminalsoziologische Bibliographie, 14, 1-22. Albrecht, H.-J., Heine, G., and Meinberg, V. (1984). Umweltsehutz durch Strafrecht? Zeitschrift fUr die gesamte Strafrecbtswissenschaft, 96, 943-998. Heine, G., and Meinberg, V. (1988). Empfehlen sich Anderungen im strafrechtlichen Umweltschutz, insbesondere in Verbindung mit dem Verwaltungsrecht? Gutachten D zum 57. Deutschen Juristentag. MOOchen: C.H.Beck. Hermann, J. (1979). Die Rolle des Strafrechts im Umweltschutz. Zeitsehrift fUr die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft, 91, 281- 308. Hiimbs-Krusche, M., and Krusche, M. (1983). Die strafrechtliche Erfassung von Umweltbelastungen - Strafrecht als ultima ratio der Umweltpolitik? Stuttgart: Kohlhanuner. Katz, J. (1979). Legality and equality: Plea-bargaining in the prosecution of white-colour and common crimes. Law and Society Review, 13, 431-466. Mayntz, R. (1978). Vollzugsprobleme der Umweltpolitik. Empirische Untersuchung zur Implementation von Gesetzen im Bereich der Luftreinhaltung und des Gewasserschutzes. Wiesbaden: Kohlhammer. Rossi, P.H., and Wright, J.D. (1987). Evaluation research: An assessment. In D.S. Cordray and M.W. Lipsey (Eds.), Evaluation Studies Review Annual (pp. 48-69). Newbury Park, Beverly Hills, London, New Deh1i: Sage. Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (1976). 5th Report. Air Pollution Control: An Integrated Approach. London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office. RUther, W. (1982). Empirische Nonngeneseforschung. Theorie, Methode und erste Ergebnisse eines Projekts zur Umweltstrafrechtsetzung. Kriminologisches Journal, 15, 177-193. Sack, H.-J. (1980). Das Gesetz zur Beklimpfung der Umweltkriminalitiit. Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, 31,1422-1430. Tiedemann, K. (1980). Die Neuordnung des Umweltstrafrechts. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Wegscheider, H. (1985). Die Praxis des Umweltstrafrechts. Osterreichische Juristenzeitung, 40, 481-487.

Therapy and Sentencing of Drug Addicts Rudolf Egg

1.

IntrcxJuction

In West Germany, drug-dependent criminals have different opportunities of undergoing therapy. such as the following:

1. Therapy on condition of probation. The suspended sentence must be less than 2 years. and a positive social prognosis must be given. 2. Therapy on condition of parole after the partial completion of a prison sentence (and suspension of the remaining sentence). Requirements are the completion of one-half to two-thirds of the term of imprisonment and a favorable prognosis. 3. Therapy in connection with incarceration in correctional institutions. The duration of this measure is 2 to 4 years. but rarely practiced due to the small number of correctional institutions available; also this form of forced therapy is generally considered as a last resort. The amendment of the West-German narcotic drug laws (Betiiubungsmittelgesetz - BtMG) in 1982 (Eberth. 1982; Korner. 1985) introduced two more possibilities for offenders to undergo a drug therapy. One way is the suspension of prosecution when a therapy has already been started. This measure can only be applied under special circumstances and is practiced only in a few single. very positive cases. The other possibility. the deferment of execution of sentence. occurs quite frequently and is becoming increasingly common. This measure is also the main theme of our research program. The above law empowers the public prosecutor's office to decree the deferment of execution of sentence for drug-dependent criminals or juvenile delinquents sentenced to a maximum of 2 years imprisonment. The same can be decreed for the final 2 years in prison of offenders receiving longer sentences. The requirement here is not necessarily a favorable prognosis for successful therapy - otherwise this measure would not be applicable - but the desire of the criminal to undergo a therapy. Naturally the start of the therapy must be guaranteed. that means, a course of therapy must be available for the criminal.

480

Rudolf Egg

Therapy is here defined as a long-term, mainly inpatient program with the objective of leading a drug-free life. These therapies do not take place in government institutions but in medical centers founded by religious and other charitable institutions. In West Germany there are about 130 such therapy 1 centers at present. If therapy is broken off after commencement, the authorities revoke the deferment of execution of sentence; the criminal must go or return to prison. It is important to note that the time spent in therapy is credited to the total prison term. If a new therapy is commenced, a further deferment of execution of sentence can be granted.

Of course, this law has not been unopposed. 2 Some criticism is directed at details in provisions, such as the compulsory registration by therapy institutions when a therapy is abandoned. Enforced imprisonment is frequently judged to be the wrong way to motivate addicts to undergo therapy. Despite numerous arguments and statements, a precise scientific analysis of these regulations and 3 their effects has not yet been performed.

2.

The Present Study Design

The Kriminologische Zentralstelle, a criminological research and documentation center founded by the central government and the federal states,4 is presently conducting an investigation that should contribute to the practice and confirm the effectiveness of these new therapy regulations for drug-dependent criminals. The focus of the investigation is the analysis of records of a large random sample of all persons convicted in one year. In order to analyze aspects of development, we selected 1984 instead of the present year. Sentence, imprisonment, therapy, and probation are investigated retrospectively. To make further data collection more distinct, we first stated personal characteristics as well as the former and present way of life of the cri~inal. The focus is on the number and kind of former offenses and sentences. The next step is to analyze the actual sentence and the corresponding offense. Then the actual deferment follows. Here we want to know, for example, how much time it takes to process such an application, which documents and proofs are demanded by the authorities, and which conditions the criminal has to accept. Other fields of analysis are the completed therapy and the kind of therapy institution. For the rather frequent cases of interruption of treatment or change

Sentencing of Drug Addicts

481

of treatment, we record the reason, frequency, and time as well as the subsequent reactions of the authorities. Finally, we are interested in the termination of the treatment and the further development of the client. Will there be a new sentence? How successful is the transition from therapy to an independent way of life? Since the data collection of the main part of the study only started recently, no definite results are yet available. Instead a preliminary study will serve as model showing the breadth of the measures investigated as well as the general procedure. Afterward, a few crucial methodological and technical problems in our evaluation project will be indicated. As mentioned before, the group we are investigating is a random sample of those convicted in 1984 whose execution of sentence was deferred. We analyzed the data available from crime records for the entire population. In spite of the fact that the data stored there are restricted to only a very few aspects, we can still determine what people and offenses are particularly involved, and how the transfer to therapy works in principle. This is an important basis for further proceedings.

Description of the Population A total of 862 convicted criminals had execution of sentence deferred in 1984; 721 (83.6%) were male and 141 (16.4%) were female. The quota of women in this population was slightly higher than the quota in the population of all persons convicted in 1984 for drug offenses (14 %). The age distribution ranges from 15 to 46 years (see Fig. 1). The mean is 26.6 years, and the standard deviation is 3.98 years. The highest accumulation is found in the group of 24 - 26-year-olds. If sex is considered in this distribution, two features can be noticed:

1. The range of the distribution for women is smaller than for men: 18 to 38 years compared to 15 to 46 years. The same trend can be recognized in the somewhat smaller standard deviation (5 = 3.46 compared to 5 = 4.4). 2. The average age of the women is slightly below that of the men: 25.4 compared to 26.8 years. In spite of these differences, a general comparison of these two groups is still possible. The small portion of juveniles and adolescents in the respective populations is striking.

482

Rudolf Egg

4O%-r-------------------------,

Years

= nl)

Fig. 1: Age distribution in the total sample (N = 862) seperated by sex Percentage of the age groups for the respective sex. Males were aged from 15 18 to 38 (m = 25.4, sd =3.46); both combined: m = 26.6. sd = 3.89.

(m = 26.8. sd =4.04); females from

to 46

sexes

Offenses and Sentences The offenses leading to conviction were divided into three groups according to the combination of offenses found. 1. "Pure" drug offenses. This group contains persons whose sentence exclusively mentioned violations of the drug laws.

2. Drug offenses and others. In this mixed group, the entries refer to facts applying to the first group as well as to offenses outside the drug laws concerning general criminal law. These were particularly theft and embezzlement as well as forgery of documents and other offenses invol-

Sentencing of Drug Addicts

483

ving property. Robbery and blackmail, traffic violations, and other offenses played a less important role.

3. Exclusively other offenses. The criminal records contained no drug offenses for these offenders but exclusively facts which - according to the abovementioned specifications - are considered to be crimes committed to financially support drug use and crimes related to maintaining the life style of a drug addict. The fact that a deferment of sentence is practiced even in convictions for such offenses corresponds to the legislative intention not to limit this provision only to drug offenses. The only requirement is that the offense was committed because of drug addiction, regardless of the nature of the offense committed.

l00'JD------------------------.,

80%

60%

40%

20%

n=I09; 80$

n=461: 66$

Offenses due to drug use/ trafficking

~ Male

(n

n=18: 13$

Offenses due to drug use/trafficking and other offenses

Only other

offenses

= 699)

~ Female (n

= 136)

Fig. 2: Types of offenses according to court judgements separate by sex Percentage of types of offences for the respective sex.

484

Rudolf Egg

As expected, in the 1984 population, Group 1 (drug offense) was most highly represented (n = 570, corresponding to 68%). The mixed Groups 2 and 3 were each represented with 17% (n = 189) and 15% (n = 126) respectively. If convicted criminals are differentiated by sex, it can be stated that women definitely commit more pure drug offenses than men (see Fig. 2). While Group 1 contains 80% of the cases, Group 3 is reduced to about 7%. A main reason for this phenomenon is that drug-dependent women are able to obtain money through prostitution. Therefore offenses committed to financially support drug use such as offenses involving property are less often committed than by men of the same population. The analysis of the sentences reveals a broad dispersion of the length of sentences. Besides rather short sentences (less than 6 months), long sentences (above 24 months) are also deferred to a large extent. These severer sentences comprise about 20% of the total population. It should be noticed that in these cases only the remaining sentence is deferred, since the maximum time period for these measures amounts to 2 years according to law. The average number and dispersion of prison sentences for female criminals is also smaller than for men, that means, the sentences are somewhat less severe and more homogeneous. In almost 19% of the registered cases, sentence was suspended on probation. Sentence could only be carried out after these probations were revoked, and only then could deferment be applied. This particularly applied to juvenile delinquents and women. It becomes clear that in practice this provision is really applied to a rather large extent for drug addicts, who could not, or could only partially undergo a therapy within the probation period because the suspension of sentence on probation was revoked - for whatever reason. This new regulation reasonably completes the previous possibilities of therapy.

3.

Evaluation and Discussion

What are the results of these measures? Or, how do drug-dependent persons in this population behave? We can only give some preliminary answers to this referring to the settlement of the corresponding sentences. We also have to consider that 1984 to 1987/88 is a very limited time period for observation. Referring to our population, we can state that in 41.7% of the cases (n

= 348)

Fig.

Fint ",r,nnen! N

=

=

~ 835

3: Deferment according to section 3S of the West German drug law

=

Revocation n 60

n

= 7·

~

No parole

No revocation n = 487

Suspension on parole n 413

No revocation n 353

,...,

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1

r I

~

~

a

e:~

E

g,

J:'

w

486

Rudolf Egg

the first deferment of execution of sentence was revoked provisionally (see Fig. 3). From a positive point of view, this means that in almost 60% of the cases, the therapy started has not been interrupted up to now, and the offenders have not had to go back to prison. For the majority of this "successful" group about 85% of the cases (n = 413) - the remaining sentence was suspended on parole after the time spent in therapy was credited. Up to now, this deferment has not been revoked in about 86% (n = 353) of the cases. These "positive" cases can be supplemented by those who succeeded in the described way after a second deferment; another 29 persons. The result is that for 382 persons (353 + 29), that is almost 46% of a whole cohort, the option to undergo therapy instead of serving a term of imprisonment has proved to be reasonable and successful. Naturally it cannot be concluded now that all these people will continue to live without drugs and further convictions in the future. Critics may state that even then more than 50% of the cases were temporarily unsuccessful. But whoever is familiar with the difficult field of drug therapy knows that progress here is generally lengthy and complex. Easy success is rare; interruptions and new starts are the rule. Therefore a high degree of patience, endurance, and motivation is necessary for a lasting positive end result. The legal regulation of deferment (of execution of sentence) in favor of a therapy described here could be one way to a better mastery of this field of problems. The data we have collected so far encourage us to continue in this direction. We also expect further explanations from the above-mentioned analysis of about one third of the population. But we are already having to face problems: The legal authorities of the respective federal states are responsible for the permission to inspect the records. In principle, the authorities welcome the content of our program; but they also are concerned whether our viewing the records infringes individual 5 rights under the data protection laws. In those cases where there are only a few restrictions on the storage and processing of the data, we have very few problems. It becomes much more complicated when permission to inspect specially drawn-up records or parts of records, such as psychological reports, is withheld. Some states only hand over to us those records that the criminal has agreed to let us see. This places a very difficult demand on the criminals since they do not know these records themselves and probably have little

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487

interest in granting our request. Some states still have not given us any reply. We are therefore afraid that only a part of the records we have asked for can be included in the analysis. The records themselves constitute a further problem. This very collection of docwnents was created to serve only a practical purpose and was not intended to enable research at a later date. Therefore the records contain a lot of information that we do not need. while on the other hand important details are missing. since they have very rarely or never been registered. For these reasons. we are also faced with missing~ta problems. The third problem concerns the fact that we cannot directly compare the group we are examining with another group. far less to do this under experimental conditions. A main reason for this is - as mentioned before - that (the measure of) deferment can be applied to a great nwnber of people. This total population cannot be taken from crime records or any other statistics. The only disadvantage resulting from this concerns the estimation of the effectiveness of deferment. for example. on the recidivism of the criminals. In this case. there are indeed no possible comparisons with other random samples - except internal comparisons. such as terminated or interrupted therapies. However. the focus of our evaluation is the analysis of the process of deferment. that is. the kind of interaction. reaction. and operation pattern applied by different authorities. According to the definition. this can only be examined within our random sample.

4.

Conclusion

It would be too simple to conclude at this point that a study with limited explanatory power is better than no study. Instead. I would like to emphasize how difficult it is to perform evaluation research in the social field that should meet methodological standards as well as practical needs - especially if only one source of information is available. Of course we intend to enrich our findings with additional data. for example. from interviews with experts in the fields of justice. social work. and drug therapy. We also hope it will be possible to perform a meta-analysis or at least several comparable studies in this new field of activity. since our project can only be a first step in answering the question. whether the measure examined here - drug therapy as an alternative to forced imprisonment - will

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be an effective means of treating drug addicts in a reasonable and appropriate way.

Notes For a comprehensive description of these institutions see Egg and Kurze (1989) 2 See, for example, Kreuzer and Wille (1988, pp. 109-111) 3

For a topical discussion of these and related subjects and for an extensive bibliography see Egg (1988)

4 See Jehle and Egg (1986) 5

For details on West German data protection laws and research in criminology see Jehle (1987)

References Eberth, A. (1982). Betaubungsmittelrecht: Kommentar und Anleitung fUr die Praxis. Munchen: Eckhard Milller. Egg, R. (Ed.)(1988). Orogentherapie und Strafe: Kriminologie und Praxis: Vol. 3. Wiesbaden: Schriftenreihe der Kriminologischen Zentralstelle e.V. (KrimZ). Egg, R., and Kurze, M. (1989). Orogentherapie in staatlich anerkannten Einrichtungen. Ergebnisse einer Umfrage. Wiesbaden: Kriminologische Zentralstelle. (Berichte, Materialien, Arbeitspapiere; Heft 3). Jehle, J.-M. (Ed.) (1987). Datenzugang und Datenschutz in der kriminologischen Forschung: Kriminologie und Praxis: Vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Schriftenreihe der Kriminologischen Zentralstelle e.V. (KrimZ). Jehle, J.-M., and Egg, R. (Eds.) (1986). Anwendungsbezogene Kriminologie zwischen Grundlagenforschung und Praxis: Kriminologie und Praxis: Vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Schriftenreihe der Kriminologischen Zentralstelle e.V. (KrimZ). Korner, H.H. (1985). Betaubungsmittelgesetz: deutsches und internationales Betaubungsmittelrecht. MOOchen: Beck. Kreuzer, A., and Wille, R. (1987). Orogen - Kriminologie und Therapie. Heidelberg: C.F. Milller.

Conception of Process Evaluation of CommunityBased Cardiovascular Prevention Programs A. Mager, K. Hetzel, M. Vogt, K. Roleff, and K.-D. Hiillemann

1.

Introduction

Within the framework of the German Cardiovascular Prevention Study (GCP), MODELL BERGEN is conducting a community-based preventive program in the rural county of Traunstein. The overall objective of the GCP is to reduce cardiovascular mortality rates by 8 %. The intervention design of the GCP is on the one hand risk-factororiented, concerning the definition of the target variables and the substantial direction of the measures, while, on the other hand, the design is community1 based in regard to the intervention strategy and the effects on health policy. Correspondingly, the evaluation design has two crucial points: outcome evaluation and process evaluation (see Friedman, 1974).

Outcome evaluation. A cross-sectional survey including questionnaires and medical checks measures risk-factor prevalence, health behavior, and health knowledge, access to the health system, and sociodemographic data at the beginning (1984), the middle (1988), and at the end of the study (1991). The target population was 25- to 69-year-old men and women in the study areas and the reference population was the unseleeted population of West Germany. Process evaluation. The evaluation design of the GCP requires the tracing of a plausible connection between interventive measures and the expected changes in the target variables. Outcome evaluation had to be complemented by process evaluation. The classical quasi-experimental design of epidemiological field studies was broadened, so that the black box should become clearer (see Kelly, 1968; Vincent, 1983).

Regional analysis. The points of interest were to understand the structures of communities, organizations, and· supply and to measure changes in these regional prerequisites of health behavior (see Spiegel et al., 1987).

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Measure tracking process evaluation. Focal points were the documentation of intervention, monitoring of measures, documentation of participants, analysis of effects on participants, and content analysis of the newspapers. In the practice of community-oriented work and from the viewpoint of the acting protagonists, "to intervene" has to be taken literally. To intervene means first "to interfere, to go between," as well as "to meddle in," "to disturb," or simply "to become part of a process." The field of the intervention is characterized by the following attributes: The county of Traunstein has a surface of 1,500 square kilometers and more than 140.000 inhabitants. The population density is low. About 32 % of the inhabitants are residents of three small towns, the rest are spread over 32 administrative communities, each one being composed of numerous villages with specific local identity. A handful of scientists is implementing the GCP measures here. Do they succeed in intervening, in becoming part of the social process? In an action-logical concept, the subject of evaluation is this process itself (see Bewyl, 1987). The different preventive measures and events are to be seen as action results,

as consequences of bargaining processes, in which the plan of intervention is one decisive element among others. Process evaluation is in this concept a formative instrument and a strategy of interventive planning. Crucial questions aim at the degree of realization, diffusion, and implementation of the targets set.

2.

Contact Analysis

The evaluative concept of the GCP plans, among others, the use of a sheet to document all intervention-relevant contacts. Continuously utilized, this record documents the introduction, adaptation, and implementation of preventive targets in the study region. It complements all measure-tracking surveys and provides data for outcome evaluation, linking interventive activities and effects measured. The semi-standardized instrument concentrates upon the single units of the interactive processes. Any interaction will be recorded whoever communicates whenever, with whom, how, and what. Meanwhile more than 4,000 interaction records are on hand. The evaluation covers 3,663 data sets with 3,845 communicators from the years 1985 to 1987. The field of action of the intervention, that is, measures, events, and programs,

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is excluded from the analysis. We describe the "basis" of intervention, the respective contacts, discussions, and agreements from which successful measures derive (see Fig. 1). The following hypotheses are the basis for process analyses: Independent from respective topics and events, the trends mentioned below are to be anticipated for a successful community-based prevention: 1. Shifting the initiatives from the study center to cooperating partners out of the study area; 2. Integrating new suppliers of preventive offers; 3. Shifting the contents of contacts to substantial exchange; 4. Expanding the intervention over the entire study region. Number of Contacts 4000 Campaign priority: blood presure

3600

Campaign priority: smoking

3200

2800 2400

Campaign priority: physical activity

2000 1600

Campaign priority: nutrition

1200

800 400

2 3 1985

Fig. 1:

4

2 3 1986

4

1

2 3 1987

4 Quarter of the year

Development of single contacts 1985 - 1987 in the course of campaign priorities

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Andrea Mager et al.

The mean percentage of the contacts, initiated by contact partners is 52 %. Shifting can be traced best in telephone contacts. Face-to-face contacts (18%) play a minor role in the study centers. In 1985 the percentage of telephone contacts initiated by the contact partners was 36% (N = 623) and increased to 53% (N = 569) in 1986 and to 60,5% (N = 630) in 1987 (see Fig. 2). 1985

1986

1987

1182

926

1062

%

%

%

political

31.1

21.2

14.4

educational

24.9

21.1

17.1

citizens / voluntary associations - self-help groups

6.2 (1.1)

23.1 (15.4)

20.0 (12.8)

17.2 (10.6) (2.5)

11.2 (5.3) (7.1)

14.2 (6.5) (2.7)

economical

8.5

11.0

19.5

media

6.2

5.2

7.3

welfare / churches

5.8

7.1

3.8

contacts with organizations, total type of organization

medical and health - physicians - health insurance

Fig. 2:

Single contJIcts with organizations from 1985-1987: Types of contacting/contacted organizations

For the phase of opening up the field, the study concentrated on the political system, the education system, and the health system. In the following 2 years, the economic system and individual citizens are increasingly involved. While the topics of coordination and organization decrease, topics centering on practical agreements increase. The concrete exchange of resources and relevant means constitutes 26% in 1985, 34% in 1986, and 52% of all contacts in 1987. Especially increasing is the exchange in the fields of programs and products and the disposition of rooms for courses and classes (see Fig. 3). In 1985, the interventive contacts were concentrated on few communities; in the following years, they were spread more and more over the entire county and surrounding regions. This trend is revealed for contacts with persons and organizations (see Fig. 4).

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90%

80% 70% 60%

50%

40% 30% 20% 10%

1985

~ ~

1987

1986

information, cooperation in general organization

~ ~

coordination, participation provision

Fig. 3: Content analysis of single contacts 1985 - 1987: Types of subjects of contacts Orgauizatioos residence

1985

1986

1987

county: towns and villages (towns)

88 % (51 %)

84% (42 %)

76 % (23 %)

surroundings

5 %

7%

14 %

total of organizations

1309

1178

1359

IodividuaJs

Fig. 4:

residence

1985

1986

1987

county: towns and villages (towns)

75 % (29 %)

84% (32 %)

73 % (30 %)

surroundings

10 %

10 %

21 %

total of individuals

126

253

297

Residence of partners of contact: Single contacts with organizations and individuals from 1985 - 1987

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Contact documentation allows statements concerning the interventive process. Diffusion and implementation change the characteristics of interventive work. Preliminary analyses give hints that the preventive initiative increasingly shifts to the field, new cooperation partners are integrated, real cooperation gains in importance, and fmally prevention affects also the margins of the county.

3.

Participant Analysis

Measures of community-oriented prevention are usually aimed at the unselected population and cannot be limited to the evaluation population. The spatial diffusion and dispersion also do not stop at the administrative boundaries of the study region. Especially in small towns and rural regions, the preventive measures do not diffuse even over the study region. Range and diffusion are linked to the given traffic and communication routes. Even if the two populations may be considerably identical in terms of social stratification, they are presumably different concerning gender and age and thus in their cardiovascular risk status (see Hoffmeister et al., 1988). Therefore, a follow-up study seems to be necessary to obtain impact measures. Who is reached by intervention? What is the range of interventive events? A first approach to these questions can be obtained from the participant documentation. For the evaluation, there are 1,731 actual data sets out of 60 available surveys.3 The participant surveys represent a small section out of the field of interventive acting. They cannot be executed at any event and they do not register every participant of a given event. Participant documentation is not suitable to quantify the range of intervention but provides hints about the target groups. First analyses of target groups are based on two presumptions: 1. Community-based prevention aims at the unselected entire population and is not restricted to the evaluation population. 2. The utilization of preventive supply is age-, gender-, and stratumspecific. The intervention's diffusion into the population cannot be assessed only by the total of participants, but above all by the number of those individuals who are, in general, distant to preventive supply. The unselected population as target group and the objective of diffusion of the community-oriented prevention are conflicting with the regulations and

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assessment standards of outcome evaluation, concentrating on the 25- to 69year-old inhabitants of the region. Vis-A-vis the outcome evaluation, the leakages of community-oriented prevention sum up to 40% concerning age and about 50% concerning the residential communities of the interviewed persons (n = 1,731). These proportions modify only gradually during the period of observation (see Fig. 5). age group

female

male

60-69

50-59

40-49

30-39

25-29

% oftbe sample ~

o

10

sample: survey (N

10

= 1955)

[IT] sample: participant documentation sodium information / booth (N ~

sample: participant documentation all (N

= 1731)

20

30

= ISO)

Fig. 5: Participant according to gender and age for different samples

To assess the access to preventive offers, structural data of the documentation of participants are related to the study population. The distribution of age in the participants showed that it was considerably more difficult to reach older individuals. To reach beyond the group of users of preventive offers (a high proportion of them can be found in courses and lectures, the classical information offers), older individuals, and above all men, we developed the measure "information booth." Information booths combine information and advice concerning risk factors with visual aids, tastes to test, and interventive screenings.

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Could the range of the offers relating to groups that are distant to prevention be improved in the course of the intervention by developing new kinds of measures? Are increasing proportions for these groups to be surveyed in the data? Since the beginning of the main study phase (1985), the proportion of men among the interviewed persons aged from 25 to 69 was considerably low compared with the distribution in the study population. The rate was 32% (N = 374) (priority: nutrition) in 1985, only 19% (N = 329) in 1986, and finally 33% (N = 343) in 1988. The proportion of men in the study population was 45,8%. 4

The proportion of people with elementary education increased in the study period from 23% (1985) to 48% (1988) among men and from 32% (1985) to 50% (1988) among women. The proportion in the study region was 74,6% for men and 72,8% for women. The trend for blue-collar workers among the interviewed persons is comparable. The proportion of male blue-collar workers among the interviewed men increased from 17,6% in 1985 to 33,3% in 1988 (proportion in the study population 43%). The proportion of female blue-collar workers increased from 3,1 % in 1985 to 13,8% in 1988 (proportion in the study population 34 %).

4.

Conclusion

Community-based intervention cannot be standardized. The processes of adaptation and diffusion overstrain the quasi-experimental design, because the objectives of community-based prevention cannot be defined in a merely normative way. Approximations to a catalogue of objectives in bargaining processes are more appropriate. Process evaluation follows this action logic by extracting its standards of assessment out of the acting process itself.

Notes Detailed information on the study design can be found in the "Studienhandbuch der DHP" (unpublished manuscript, Bonn 1984). 2 Detailed information can be found in the "Operationshandbuch der DHP" (unpublished manuscript, Bonn 1985).

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3 The study center has conducted 306 interviews at courses, classes, and lectures; 1,425 interviews at open events like information booths, big health events, and so forth. In the past years, there was a particular increase in the open measures. which increased the range of intervention. The increasing number of cases in the participant surveys can be attributed to a better integration of the surveys into the interventive strategy. 4 Since the beginning of the main study phase. each participant survey asked for age. gender. profession or professional position, and residence. The imponant variable "educational level" met with opposition from the intervenors and could only be introduced gradually: in only half the surveys in 1984 and fmally in all the surveys in 1988.

References Bewyl. W. (1987). Evaluation, die wirk.lich niitzt. Jahrbuch der Zeitschrift fUr Humanistische Psychologie. Forschung n. 35-50. Friedman. G.D. (1974). Primer of epidemiology. New York: McGraw Hill. Hoffmeister, H., Stolzenberg, H.• SchOn. D.• Thefeld. W.• Hoeltz. J.• and SchrOder, E. (1988). Nationaler Untersuchungssurvey und regionale Untersuchungs-Surveys der DHP. DHP Forum. Kelly, J.G. (1968). Toward an ecological conception of preventive interventions. In J.W. Carter (Ed.). Research contributions from psychology to community mental health. New York: Behavioral Publications. Spiegel. I., Poth. E., and Hilliemann. K.-D. (1987). Der priiventive Markt im Landkreis Traunstein - Durchfiihrung und erste Ergebnisse der ro-Erhebung der Angebotsanalyse. DHP-Forum. 122 -135. Vincent, T.A.. and Trickett E.J. (1983). Preventive interventions and the human context: Ecological approaches to environmental assessment and change. In R.D. Feiner, L.A. Jason, and S.S. Farber (Eds.). Preventive psychology. Theory. research. and practice. New York, Oxford. Toronto: Pergamon.

The Mass Media and Violent Imitative Behavior: A Review of Research R. John Kinkel Norma C. Josef

1.

Introduction

The idea that suggestion and imitation have an impact on human behavior waxes and wanes throughout history. When Goethe (1929) published a book about young Werther in 1774, a huge controversy arose about the volume. Some felt that the popular, best-selling story about the romantic conflicts of a young man who ultimately commits suicide was responsible for a wave of imitative suicides among the young. Hence, the authorities in several countries banned the book in the hope that the increase in suicides would subside. Interestingly, we have today the term "Werther effect," that is, suicidal behavior accounted for by the influence of suggestion and imitation. At the beginning of this century, the social theorist Gabriel Tarde (1903i argued that imitation played a crucial role in all human behavior, including suicide. About the same time, Durkheim (1951/1897) rejected the notion of imitation suicide and developed a social structural explanation of suicide based on social cohesion. Today, the debate between these two perspectives continues to draw scientists from a variety of fields to test the imitation hypothesis. Because of the powerful influence of today's media (print and electronic), new avenues of research have spawned intriguing approaches to an age-old question. The purpose of this paper is to explore recent research that uses data primarily from the mass media to test the imitation hypothesis. To date, there has been no review of the literature on this topic to assess the knowledge base accumulated up to now; therefore, this paper seeks to fill the current void. The end result should give us a much better idea about the wisdom of Tarde or the validity of Durkheim.

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The Imitation Hypothesis: Nonfiction Stories About Suicide

First Seminal Work One of the first major studies to examine the issue of imitation suicide was conducted by a sociologist, David Phillips, after he had completed his 1970 doctoral dissertation at Princeton entitled, "Dying as a Form of Social Behavior." Although other studies had been performed before 1974, Phillips's (1974) work is considered a benchmark in the field. His first study on imitative suicide focused on front-page newspaper stories about suicide in the United States and Great Britain. He wanted to determine if publicity of these fatalities was followed by an increase in completed suicides. He examined United States monthly mortality data2 from the years 1947 to 1968 and found that suicide levels were higher than expected (1) in the month in which the suicide occurred, and (2) in the following month. The excess suicides per each frontpage story were calculated and found to be 58.1. The technique Phillips used to study imitative suicide was unique for that time and involved the following: 1. Front-page stories of suicides in major U. S. and British newspapers (Le., N.Y. Times, N.Y. Daily News) were tabulated. The implication of this research tradition is that such stories have the power of suggestion for the population as a whole that is exposed to this media event. 2. Phillips then examined monthly mortality statistics to determine if there was any increase in suicides after the publication of the suicide story. He compared the time period after the suicide story with monthly suicide statistics for the previous year. The logic of this procedure is that any significant increase in suicides after the newspaper stories would support the imitation hypothesis, assuming no other factors were relevant. His analysis revealed that U.S. suicides increased sharply just after highly publicized suicide stories. He also found that the greater the publicity given to the suicide story, the greater the increase in suicides, and that the increase in suicides comes primarily in the geographic area in which the suicide story was publicized. After ruling out random, seasonal, and yearly fluctuations in the data, Phillips concluded that some people commit suicide by imitating publicized suicide stories.

Mass Media and Violent Imitative Behavior

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California Motor Vehicle Study

Phillips (1979) then extended the concepts of imitation, suggestion, and modeling to the frequency of motor vehicle fatalities. Working under the assumption that some motor vehicle accidents have a suicidal component, he tabulated the frequency of motor vehicle accidents after a publicized story. Daily California motor vehicle fatalities (1966 -1973) were examined. His analysis revealed that motor vehicle accident fatalities (MVF) increased markedly just after publicized suicide stories. The most striking finding was a 31 % increase in California MVF on the third day after a publicized suicide story. A number of additional generalizations emerged from this study: (a) The more publicity given to the suicide story, the greater the increase of motor vehicle fatalities. (b) Single-vehicle crashes, some of which are considered disguised suicides, increased more than other types of crashes just after suicide stories. (c) Suicide stories about young persons tend to be followed by singlevehicle crashes involving young drivers. On the other hand, suicide stories about older persons tend to be followed by single-vehicle crashes involving older drivers. (d) Murder-suicide stories publicized in the media tend to be followed by multiple-vehicle crashes involving passenger deaths, whereas stories about suicide alone tend to be followed by single-vehicle crashes involving driver deaths only. Phillips maintains, therefore, that these data demonstrate that there is an association between the type of suicide story publicized and the kind of motor vehicle fatality it triggers.

Detroit Motor Vehicle Study

Bollen and Phillips (1981) replicated the above California study using data from the Detroit Metropolitan Area (Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties). The replication determined the total number of front-page suicide stories appearing in the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press during the period 1973 to 1976. The authors used only those suicide stories that appeared on the front pages of both newspapers; stories during holiday periods were excluded. Using daily data for Detroit, Bollen and Phillips found a significant increase in these types of deaths in the third day after a suicide story was published. They showed that MVFs increased by 34.9% using a technique that compares excess number of deaths observed on the third day versus the number of expected deaths during the experimental period (15/43 = 34.9%). A regression procedure employed indicated MVFs increased by 40.3 %. These statistics compare well with the

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California data, which revealed that MVF increased by 31 % on the third day after a suicide story appeared on the front page of a local newspaper. The replication was even more significant in that it controlled for daily, monthly, and yearly effects. Bollen and Phillips demonstrated that publicized suicides may indeed stimulate imitative suicides, some of which are disguised as MVFs. It is important to realize that the authors emphasize that the suggestion-imitation perspective appears to be helpful in explaining short-term fluctuations in suicides. But the theory is meant to be complementary and not a competing theory to traditional explanations of suicidal acts. Study of Plane Crash Data In 1980 Phillips published a paper in which he outlined how media coverage of

suicides and murder-suicides may be related to the frequency of airline crashes in the United States. The study looked at noncommercial airplane (meaning an aircraft used for personal or private purposes where no fee is involved) fatalities in the United States after a murder-suicide story appeared on the front page of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, or was aired on the ABC, CBS, NBC network evening news. His study covered the period 1968 to 1973. There were such stories that met his definition of a murder-suicide story. He found that deaths due to multifatality, noncommercial plane crashes increased markedly after publicized murder-suicides. The methodology employed in the study examined the 14-day period surrounding the story. The third day after the story was broadcast proved to be the peak time for fatalities. Phillips also found that the more newspaper publicity (but not TV publicity) given to murder-suicide stories, the greater the number of multifatality crashes after the story (r = .64). Television publicity was not correlated with multifatality crashes but, because of the limited number of cases in this study, the conclusions he drew were only tentative. Phillips studied commercial air crash fatalities after media coverage of murder-suicide stories as well. He identified 39 murder-suicide stories that appeared on the front page of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times from 1950 to 1973. The analysis showed that the total number of commercial airplane crash fatalities after the publicized murder-suicide story was more than ten times the number of deaths before the story. Moreover, there were

Mass Media and Violent Imitative Behavior

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more fatal commercial airplane crashes (n = 12) just after the murder-suicide media account than before (n = 4). The study of commercial air fatalities revealed a positive correlation between the amount of newspaper publicity devoted to a murder-suicide story and the number of commercial air crash fatalities just after the story. Phillips reasoned that the only plausible explanation that seems to account for his findings is that newspaper and television accounts about suicides or murder-suicides triggered a significant number of subsequent imitative suicides and murder-suicides. He argued that certain individuals in the general population (those with low levels of self-esteem) may be more susceptible to suggestion and imitation. They are impressionistic, more susceptible to new ideas and suggestions because they are detached from the "old ideas" of society, and thus more willing to consider alternative viewpoints. Thus the suggestion-imitation views of Phillips have a twinge of anomic theory too.

Two Major Replications In 1982 and 1984 two replications of the original 1974 study by Phillips were published. Bollen and Phillips (1982) employed a sophisticated statistical procedure to reassess the original findings, whereas Wasserman (1987) extended and replicated the 1974 study. In the first replication Bollen, and Phillips sought to improve on the statistical techniques used in the original paper. Instead of using monthly mortality data, they were able to obtain daily U.S. mortality data for their analysis. Besides using the quasi-experimental technique, they applied a conventional regression analysis to the study (1972 - 1976). They selected suicide stories about individuals that were aired on the major network evening news (ABC, CBS, NBC). Like the original study, the replication employed an experimental and control period. The experimental period was defined as the entire week after the story was publicized. The investigators compared the number of observed suicides during the experimental period with suicides in the matched control period (usually the week prior to the experimental period). Seven suicide stories meeting the author's criteria were identified and included in the study. The number of excess suicides produced by the seven stories was calculated to be 244. The average number of suicides produced during the entire week after each story was 35 (24417), which turns out to be about a 7% increase in suicides after each story.

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Employing regression analysis, the following points became clear. First, suicides peaked on the day of the publicized story and the following day. Another peak was observed on the sixth and seventh days after the story. Secondly, while controlling for extraneous factors such as day of the week, holiday, month, and so forth, this analysis demonstrated an average increase of about 28 suicides per story (28 x 7 = 196). Thirdly, the measures employed to assess the effect of the suicide stories (story coefficients) were found to be larger than other well-known factors associated with fluctuations in suicide (day of week, month, holiday). This replication supports and indeed strengthens the original 1974 findings that publicized suicides trigger imitative selfdestructive behavior. In the second replication, Wasserman not only includes the data from Phillips' original study (1947-1967), but he adds more data (1968-1977). Using monthly suicide statistics as was the procedure in the original study, Wasserman tested the hypothesis that only front-page stories in the New York Times of national celebrities triggered an increase in suicides. He defmed a celebrity suicide as one in which the person was mentioned in the New York Times in 2 of the 5 years preceding the suicide. The analysis centered on the use of multivariate time-series analysis that allowed for a number of previously ignored controls. He checked for the effect of (a) war, (b) unemployment, (c) month of year and (d) seasonal effects. The results of this replication proved useful. (a) Wasserman found no significant linkage between front-page suicide stories in the New York Times and subsequent suicides. However, celebrity suicide stories did trigger subsequent suicides. (b) This rise in suicides may be related to the linkage of suicide with the business cycle, and the fact that more prominent suicides may occur in years when there is a downturn in the economy as measured by the average duration of unemployment. (c) Celebrity suicides were followed by a significant increase in suicides the month after the publicized story. He calculated that celebrity suicides on the front page of the New York Times raised the number of excess suicides by 116.

These findings do not refute the basic conclusion stated by Bollen and Phillips in their replication of the 1974 study. The trends Wasserman uncovered were based on an analysis of monthly data whereas the Bollen and Phillips' replication used daily mortality counts. If anything, these additional findings suggest the need for a contingency model in applying the imitation hypothesis. That is, the reality of imitation suicide emerges depending on or contingent upon any number of factors (e.g. celebrity status, economic cycles). Suicidal imitation by the public seems to be more selective than originally hypothesized.

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There are several plausible explanations as to why celebrity suicides have an impact on the general population. The public so identifies with celebrities that what happens to these famous individuals influences the public in ways more significant than deaths of average people. Secondly, it is plausible to asswne that because celebrity suicides are more likely to generate mass media publicity, it is this greater publicity that famous people receive that increases subsequent suicides. Thus far, the data seem to support both interpretations.

Mass Media Violence and U.S. Homicides In 1983, Phillips introduced a new dimension to the discussion about imitation theory, that is, the role of mass media violence on U.S. homicides. As a measure of mass media television violence, he selected heavyweight championship prize fights (n = 18) over a selected period of time: 1973 to 1978. There is no question that large nwnbers of people watch these bouts and the action portrayed on the TV screen definitely is violent. Do such prize fights elicit violent aggressive behavior from the population as a whole? To answer this question Phillips chose as his measure of violent imitative behavior the nwnber of homicides recorded in the 10-day period following each prize fight. If the imitation hypothesis is correct, homicides should increase significantly after the prize fights. Using a regression technique applied in the 1982 replication, Phillips explored the effect of prize fights on homicide rates. He found there was a third day peak or "spike" after a championship prize fight, and this increase was statistically significant. These findings appeared to be rather convincing since the technique he used was able to control for the effects of day, month, year, and holidays - factors that are known to affect homicide rates. The percentage increase in homicides on the third day after a championship heavyweight prize fight was 12.46%. Clearly, this is no trivial variation. Using his regression model findings, we calculated (not done by Phillips) the average nwnber of homicides accounted for by each prize fight. This study determined that, on average, 11.62 homicides occured after each prize fight. For the entire study, therefore, approximately 209 homicides (11.62 x 18 fights) were accounted for by this fonn of violence presented in the mass media. After considering and then ruling out a nwnber of rival explanations, Phillips concluded that the most possible explanation for this increase is the prize fight itself; heavyweight bouts evoke imitative aggressive behavior, some of which results in homicides. Studies like this demonstrate that in nonlaboratory, natural settings, aggression shown on TV may provoke violence in the general population. One should keep in mind that during the period of the study (1973-1978) there were, according to the F.B.I. statistics, 118,320

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murders committed in the United States. If the above study is correct, 209 of these murders were accounted for by the imitation effect operationalized by the prize fight study. It is clear, therefore, that imitation theory accounts for a very small proportion of homicides in our contemporary society.

Imitation Hypothesis Challenged - A ResJX>nse In 1985, Baron and Reiss published an impressive attack on the work of Phillips and Bollen and anyone else who would care to associate themselves with the imitation hypothesis. In essence, the Baron and Reiss paper states that the findings supporting the imitation hypothesis are nothing more than a statistical artifact of the data analyzed. Their argument can be summarized as follows:

1. Generally, the theory of media-inspired imitative violence is underdeveloped and offers no real guide to research. The theory makes no predictions that can be tested as falsifiable. 2. We should be able to tie in what we observe at the aggregated level with microlevel processes. This research tradition has never demonstrated that those who are involved in violent acts were ever exposed to the mass media violence in question. 3

3. Due to a number of statistical problems , we cannot infer that the null hypothesis has been rejected. There may indeed be no imitation effect whatsoever. 4. Media events in question tend to occur when mortality rates are high (weekends, holidays). Thus, the results which were proclaimed to support the imitation hypothesis may really be an artifact of timing. To illustrate their point, Baron and Reiss analyzed mortality rates a full year after the mass media violence (prize fight). This seems ludicrous and thus no significant effects would be expected. The approach has been labeled the Bogus story versus the real story test of the imitation hypothesis. Ironically, the Bogus story findings were surprisingly similar to the real story analysis conducted by Bollen and Phillips. The data in question were the 1982 imitation suicide study of Bollen and Phillips and the prize fight study. Baron and Reiss contend that the effect of weekends and holidays were not sufficiently controlled for. Thus the lagged violent effects 3 or 4 days after the media violence are really due to high levels of violence that tend to occur on weekends and holidays, and not the result of imitation - the spurious effect. Although the findings reported by

Mass Media and Violent Imitative Behavior

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Phillips have been replicated in different settings, the craocs argue that the same, above problems have been repeated across these studies. Baron and Reiss maintain that there is a serious problem of misspecification in this research tradition, that is, key explanatory variables and interaction terms are missing, casting doubt on the published findings. These problems are not corrected by employing data transformation techniques. Phillips and Bollen (1985) offer an extensive response to this critique. They add more data to their analysis of suicides and prize fights. They show that the 3-day peak in homicides after the broadcast of a title bout is real, not an artifact. The Bogus story analysis is quite different from the real story statistics in their reanalysis. Hence they contend that the artifact hypothesis is not credible. A key point made in this discussion is that publicity given to a prize fight continues to be associated with a rise in subsequent murders. This is true in the real story analysis but not in the Bogus story approach. The average increase in murders after a publicized prize fight, according to the Phillips and Bollen replication, is 11.17 per fight. The increase registered after Bogus fights was less than 2.00. They contend that these findings weaken the artifact hypothesis. Phillips and Bollen reanalyzed their data and added more years (1972 -1979) to the study. Because Baron and Reiss did find an increase in suicides on day "0" - the day of the story - they dismiss as spurious all rises in suicides after the real story (days 0, 6, 7). In their reanalysis, Phillips and Bollen included more data and found the largest peaks in the data on days 6 and 7 but found no Bogus story effects. Their findings in the reanalysis persisted even when stories near holidays were omitted. The conclusion is that the artifact view is not plausible.

Teen Suicide and Imitation Theory

Since teenage suicides had increased steadily in the 1970s and 198Os, it was not surprising to find investigators applying the imitation hypothesis to this subgroup in the population. Figure 1 illustrates the dramatic rise in suicides for 15- to 19-years of age over the past three decades. In 1985, teen suicide reached a tragic benchmark: For the first time in the history of the United States, teenage suicide rates were double digit - 10 per 100,000.

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Phillips and Carstensen (1986) reasoned that teens are more susceptible than adults to fads, fashions, and imitation. Thus, it seemed perfectly logical to explore whether teenagers are significantly affected by news stories about suicide. Their study examined teen suicide data from 1973 to 1979; a total of 12,585 teenage suicides (ages 10 -19) occurred during this period. To test the imitation hypothesis, the authors identified a total of 38 suicides stories, or pairs of stories so close to each other that the effects could not be disentangled. These stories were broadcast on ABC, CBS, or NBC television news programs between 1973 and 1979. The study selected only "pure" suicide stories for analysis and not murder-suicide stories or group suicides. The methodology called for an observation period of 8 days (0 to 7 days after the story; 0 = day of story). Using daily mortality data for 1973 to 1979, the study sought to determine if youth suicides (age groups 10-19) tend to increase after stories about suicide are broadcast on TV. Almost no suicides were reported for those younger than 13. Employing standard time-series regression analysis to correct for the effects of day of week, month, year, and holiday, the authors note the following: 1. When comparing the number of teenage suicides during the observation period with the number of suicides expected under the null hypothesis, these differences tended to be positive, indicating that the suicide stories triggered suicides among young viewers.

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2. On average, this study found that teen suicides rose by 2.91 per story during the 8-day observation period (p = 0.008). The authors estimated that the total number of suicides in this age group (10 -19) accounted for by the 38 stories was 111 (38 x 2.91 = 110.58). To put this finding in perspective, however, one should note that during the period 1973 to 1979 there were 12,585 teen suicides (ages 10 -19). It is evident, therefore, that only 0.88% (111/12,585) of teen suicides during this period could be attributed to the imitation effects of these 38 stories. This math exercise demonstrates that imitation theory as operationalized in this study does not explain a lot of the variation in the total number of teen suicides. Clearly, imitation theory accounts for only a small percentage of teen suicides. 3. Highly publicized stories tend to have a greater effect. After calculating the number of times TV news programs covered the story on "Day 0", the authors reveal there is a moderately strong association between publicity and the increase in suicides 0 to 7 days after the story (r = 0.523; p < .004). 4. Gender proved to be an important factor in this study. After TV suicide stories were broadcast, completed suicides by female teenagers increased on average by 13.46% whereas a much smaller increase was observed among males (5.18%). After considering and rejecting six alternative explanations, the authors conclude that the most plausible explanation of these findings is that television news stories about suicide triggered additional suicides by teenagers. Kessler et al., 1988 replicated and extended the work of Phillips and Carstensen and reported their findings in 1988. The scope of their study regarding TV and imitative teen suicide included data from 1973 to 1979 coupled with observations from 1980 to 1984 as well. This 12-year study covered a total of 4,383 days; the number of youth suicides (ages 10-19) occurring during this period was 22,184. We note that 9.5% of these suicides were by youths under 15 years of age. Kessler et al. were able to uncover an additional number of teen suicide stories that were overlooked by Phillips and Carstensen. The replication (years 1973 to 1979), therefore, used 48 stories or pairs of stories about suicide that were broadcast on the TV news. Moreover, an archival search uncovered a total of 39 suicide stories in the years 1980 to 1984. When we discuss the findings of the 12-year study, the total number of stories used will be 87 (48+39). The replication and extension improves on the measure used to assess the amount of publicity given to each suicide story. The original study simply noted the number of times the story was mentioned on TV news on the first day of the broadcast, whereas Kessler takes into account the fact that some stories were

John Kinkel and Norma Josef

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updated for several days and hence received by that very fact more publicity. Lastly, the replication examined the effect of a broad range of suicide stories (group, mixed, celebrity, noncelebrity and general). The results of the replication (1973 -1979) were somewhat supportive of the original study.

1. Kessler et al. found that teen suicides rose on average 2.35 per story (t = 2.55; P = 0.046) during the 8-

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The residuals in this figure refer to the average difference each year between the observed number of teen suicides and the number of expected suicides predicted by the regression model. In essence, the number of daily teenage suicides predicted by this model was subtracted from the observed number to create a yearly residual score. It is obvious from the above figure that the

511

Mass Media and Violent bnitative Behavior

residuals were above zero through 1980, demonstrating that suicide stories apparently triggered additional suicides in the population. Nevertheless, just the opposite effect occurred beginning with 1981; the association between TV news stories about suicide and subsequent teenage suicides decreased. It is not surprising to find that the findings for the 12-year study (1973-1984) proved to be nonsignificant (t = 1.42, P = 0.16). The interpretation of these findings is problematic, however. Are the most recent findings evidence of a pendulum swing? If so, what are the next 4 to 8 years going to look like? Another "spin" to these data could be in tenns of some alteration of TV broadcast procedures or an adjustment made by adolescents so they are less vulnerable to suicidal events in the population. More research is needed in this area to give answers to these questions. 3. Kessler et al. show that the type of suicide story (group suicide, celebrity, etc.) broadcast on TV news is important in predicting subsequent teen suicides. The 12-year analysis (1973 - 1984) revealed that celebrity suicide stories are the only type associated with an increase in teen suicides. As is evident in Figure 3. celebrity suicide stories were at their peak in 1977 to 1980. Other types of suicide stories actually increased through 1984 even though there was a decline in teen suicides after TV suicide stories - a trend which corresponds to the decline in celebrity suicide stories.

40-,--------------------, 30

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1981-84

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John Kinkel and Norma Josef

The decline of celebrity suicide stories could be why the imitation effect apparently disappeared in 1981 and thereafter. This complex issue of why there was a decline in the residuals after 1980 is not easily answered, but variation in celebrity suicides may have been a key factor. 4. Finally, this replication and extension did not find any support for the view that variation in teen exposure to suicide stories was followed by larger numbers of teenage suicides (the dose-response phenomen). Neither did they find that general information stories or stories about youth suicides increased subsequent youth suicides (see Kessler et al., 1989).

3.

The Imitation Hypothesis: Fictional Stories About Suicide

Soap Opera and Suicide

Undoubtedly, because of the growing consensus about the negative effects of television violence in the late 1970s, Phillips began to look for other applications of the suggestion-imitation theory. In 1982 he published a paper (Phillips, 1982) examining the hypothesis that television soap opera suicide stories (completed suicides or attempts) trigger a rise in imitative suicidal behavior. To test this hypothesis, he examined what were thought to be an exhaustive list of 13 soap opera suicide stories aired on television in 1977. Phillips employed a novel approach in devising an experimental and control period for the study: (1) The experimental period is the week in which the soap opera suicide occurred. However, because he was unable to determine the precise day in the week when the suicide story was aired, he divided the week into two parts: the "early experimental period" and the "late experimental period." Since the earliest possible day the suicide could be broadcast was Monday, the third-day peak for that day would be Thursday. Hence Monday through Wednesday was designated the "early experimental period", whereas the "late experimental period" was Thursday through Sunday. (2) The control period for this study ordinarily fell one week before the experimental period. The practice was modified when the effect of public holidays overlapped in the control period. In such a case, the control period was replaced with one prior to the holiday. Using 1977 U.S. fatality data for whites only, Phillips found that there was a significant increase in the number of suicides in the late experimental period

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(Thursday-Sunday) in contrast to the control period. Thus the number of adult, white suicides increased significantly after suicidal incidents appeared in soap operas. Moreover, he demonstrated that single-vehicle motor fatalities (SVMFs) - long thought to contain misclassified suicides - increased after soap opera suicides were aired. Finally, he reported that nonfatal motor vehicle accidents increased after soap opera suicides, suggesting suicide attempts are affected by such television plots. The public policy implications of these findings were outlined, namely, television networks may have to consider the possibility of reducing the amount of publicity they devote to suicide stories.

Soap Opera Study Reconsidered

Two years after Phillips' study on fictional TV stories was published, Kessler and Stipp (1984) reported that their replication of the "Soap Opera Study" revealed a serious mistake in the original work which invalidated the results. The fatal flaw arose when Phillips relied exclusively on the soap opera plot summaries written by J.M. Reed and syndicated in over 100 major newspapers throughout the country. His study was based on the assumption that the Saturday newspaper columns summarized episodes aired the previous Monday through Friday. In fact, the summaries, published on Saturday, covered programs shown Friday through Thursday of the previous week. Unfortunately for Phillips, only 5 of the 13 "soaps" were shown on the dates specified to be properly placed in his before-after design. Hence, his findings proved to be illusory. Kessler and Stipp corrected these errors and analyzed the data using Phillips methodology to determine if fictional TV stories trigger real-life violence. Mter finding three additional suicide stories that were overlooked by Phillips in his study of 1977 soap operas, they proceeded with the analysis. The subsequent analysis revealed no significant impact on real-life suicides due to soap opera suicide stories. Kessler and Stipp found 3.55 more suicides in the experimental period than in the control period - well within the realm of chance. Moreover, they found 7.8 fewer single-vehicle motor fatalities during the experimental period than during the control period. While employing the increased precision of a regression-based approach to test for evidence for a positive television effect, they found no significant results to support a television effect both either for real-life suicides or for SVMFs. When testing the imitation hypothesis on subgroups within the population (male-female/ruralurban), this replication found no support for a differential television effect.

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The findings presented by Kessler and Stipp were a devastating setback for those who felt that Phillips had demonstrated in 1982 that fictional TV violence triggered serious real-life violence. Nonetheless, one must keep in mind the limitations of this data set. There were only two stories of completed suicides in the soap opera programs; the rest were attempts at best. Secondly, these data represent television programs for one year only. We need data for a longer period of time to test the imitation hypothesis thoroughly. There could be, as Kessler and Stipp note, some fictional stories that may affect real-life suicides. Furthermore, there could be particular conditions under which television effects do occur. The following studies take up these issues.

Fictional TV Movies and Youth Suicide

The year 1986 catapulted the imitation suicide debate to the front pages of newspapers across the country. The New England Journal of Medicine published two studies related to suggestion-imitation that, if true, would have major implications for teen suicide research. The first study, by Gould and Shaffer (1986), studied four made-for-television fictional movies about youth suicide that were broadcast in the fall of 1984 and winter of 1985. The authors employed a before and after quasi~xperimental design to test the imitation hypothesis. The study examined the type of suicidal behavior that emerged after the showing of these four movies; this paper will focus only on the findings related to completed suicides. The analysis reported findings for (a) the 2week period after each movie and (b) results for the 25-week period in which all four movies were shown. First, the authors computed the number of completed suicides by those 19 years of age and under 2 weeks before and after the fictional movies about suicide. For methodological reasons, the authors decided to use only three of the movies in this part of the study. They found that the mean number of completed suicides (4.33) after the three movies was significantly higher than the mean number before each broadcast (1.00). The total number of completed suicides after the three TV movies was 13, whereas the number expected to occur during that time was calculated to be 7.44. Gould and Shaffer maintained that these data suggest that fictional TV stories about suicide may lead do imitative suicidal behavior among teens. The excess number of suicides for 10- to 19-year-olds in the greater New York area was 6 (13 - 7.44 = 5.56 or 6). The area, which includes parts of New York, Connecticut, and all of New Jersey, contained approximately 3 million 10- to 19-year olds. Projected

SIS

Mass Media and Violent Imitative Behavior

nationwide, this could mean, according to the authors, that 80 excess teen suicide deaths resulted from broadcasting these movies.

Phillips Replicates Gould

After considerable media debate about this study, Phillips and Paight (1987) reported that their replication of the Gould and Shaffer study proved negative. That is, they found no evidence of an increase in teenage suicides after the films were shown; the data they used were drawn from the states of California and Pennsylvania. The replication was a much larger study than the original New York area investigation that examined 31 suicides. Phillips and Paight examined 167 suicides - more than five times the original study. The first set of findings are illustrated in Figure 4. 14 12 10 Mean number of

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Whereas teen suicides went up significantly in the period after the movies were broadcast in the original study, the opposite was true for the California and Pennsylvania data; suicides actually went down. A similar trend emerged in the

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John Kinkel and Norma Josef

analysis of the 2S-week period when all movies that were broadcast came under scrutiny.

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Figure 5 shows that the expected nwnber of suicides during the combined observation periods following the movies is exceeded by the observed number of teen suicides only once: in the New York area. In California and Pennsylvania, the actual observed suicides decreased after the movies. These findings, although they contradict one another, could indicate that regional differences help to explain imitative effects. Thus, a contingency model is needed; it is necessary to explore the apparent interaction effect between the movies and some unknown local conditions.

Gould: A Second Application Gould et al. (1988) replicated the New York area study with data drawn from three metropolitan areas: Cleveland, Dallas, and Los Angeles. Like the original study, the data was limited to completed suicides by persons 19 years of age and younger. The trends in Figure 6 illustrate the variation in the findings.

Mass Media and Violent Imitative Behavior

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Fig. 6: Teen suicides by region studied

Completed suicides of those 19 years of age and younger increased significantly (p < 0.038) in the Cleveland area but not in Dallas or Los Angeles. Looking at these data from another angle, the investigators determined the expected number of teen suicides following the three broadcasts to be 3.4. However, the number of teen suicides that actually occurred during the three 2-week periods following the movies was 8 - significantly greater than expected (p < 0.01). This replication demonstrates that the effects of such broadcasts are less widespread than Gould and Shaffer had originally projected. There could be an interaction effect by location. The authors rightly point out that given the small number of completed suicides and the small number of stimuli (TV broadcasts), the statistical power to detect a significant effect, even if one exists, is quite low (see Cohen, 1977). The authors acknowledge that more research using larger samples is needed to explore the imitation effect under varying conditions.

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John Kinkel and Norma Josef

The Berman Replication

Berman (1988) added another chapter to the discussion and reported his replication of the Gould and Shaffer study in the American Journal of Psychiatry. He used two of the films incorporated in the original study plus a new film dealing with teen suicide that was broadcast in the fall of 1986. With these three films as the independent variable, he was able to obtain data on youth suicides from 19 state offices that certified suicides. The areas to be studied had to have a minimum of 100 suicides among the young (ages 1524). These 19 offices served approximately 20% of the U.S. population. The following general trends were reported in the study: 1. There were 702 suicides (all age groups) in the 2-week period before the three films were broadcast; after the broadcast, however, there were only 633 completed suicides recorded. This represents a 10% reduction in suicides. 2. For youths who were 24 and younger, there was a slight but nonsignificant decrease in suicides (127 before and 112 after). 3. For those age 19 and younger, Berman found that there were 46 completed suicides before the three movies; there were 43 after the films were aired. The largest replication to date, therefore, has found no support for the hypothesis that suicidal behavior of fictional TV characters leads to an increase in suicides by youthful viewers. Berman did find one important "modeling" effect in the data. After the ABC film "Surviving", broadcast on January 7, 1985, which depicts the method used by actors to commit suicide (carbon monoxide poisoning), there was a significant increase in suicides by this method. In the 4-week period before the movie there were four carbon monoxide suicides (among those aged 15 - 24), whereas in the period four weeks after the movie there were 12 suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning. Thus, the imitative effect of fictional presentations of suicides appears to be interactive. That is, characteristics of the persons, the stimulus, and/or the environment seem to interact to produce the observed effect. These findings again illustrate the need for a contingency model to explain the precise conditions under which imitative suicides occur. This finding was strikingly similar to one reported in West Germany by Schmidtke and Hafner (1986). They found a significant increase in railway suicides by young males shortly after the broadcast of a fictional movie about a young man who commits suicide by throwing himself in front of a high-speed train. Clearly, modeling behavior is suggested in these two studies. However, an important caveat is needed when reviewing these findings. The increase in carbon monoxide poisoning must be understood in the context of Berman's

Mass Media and Violent Imitative Behavior

519

basic finding: there was no increase in suicides for those aged 15 - 24. What apparently happened is that a method of committing suicide was imitated as opposed to selecting some other means of killing oneself. We know the general distribution of the methods used to commit suicide, and these tend to remain rather stable over time. It is important to note that the lethality of the method Gumping off a lO-story building vs. a drug overdose) portrayed in a fictional TV story could very well influence a significant number of suicidal people to select one method of killing oneself over another. The lethality of the method in 4 the story line could determine if there was an increase in completed suicides.

4.

Summary and Conclusion

Research on the mass media and the role it mayor may not play in subsequent violent behavior has developed a complex literature. In Table 1 we have summarized the results of the major studies dealing with fictional and nonfictional subject matter. This summary lets us review the research results of many fine studies. One obvious point is that fictional events on TV do not seem to have the effect that was originally projected. It is doubtful whether fictional broadcasts of violent behavior can be said to increase violence appreciably, given the research conducted so far. But those who write to defend the television industry can take little umbrage in these findings in order to cast doubt on the imitation hypothesis. A study of soap operas aired in 1977 and three or four made-for-television movies hardly constitute an extensive test of the hypothesis. What is clear from the work already done is that little evidence exists so far that fictional TV stories about suicide have a grave negative impact on the general population. Nonetheless, the interaction effects observed by Berman and others have to be examined further. Because most of the studies conducted on fictional effects have been replications, more research is needed in varied settings using diverse methodologies before we can draw any major conclusions. There is little doubt that nonfictional events reported by the media, that is, real violence, must be viewed differently. There is considerable evidence that such events can trigger an increase in violence in the general population. As Kessler points out, some of these effects could fluctuate, and so predicting their outcome is problematic. Generally, imitation theory does not explain much

520 Tab. 1:

John Kinkel and Norma Josef Studies Testing the Imitation Hypothesis, Methods, Results. Method")

Imitation effect?

Suicide MVF MVF (repl)b) Airlines Suicide (repl) Suicide (repl) Homicide SuicidelHomicide (repl) SuicidelHomicide Suicide Suicide (repl)

1 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes/No

Suicide Suicide Suicide Suicide Suicide Suicide

2 2 1 2 1 2

Noe ) No Yes No Yes/No No

Study

Topic

A. Nonfiction Studies:

Phillips, 1974 Phillips, 1979 Bollen and Phillips, 1981 Phillips, 1980 Bollen and Phillips, 1982 Wasserman, 1984 Phillips, 1983 BarOD and Reiss, 1985 Bollen and Phillips, 1985 Phillips and Carstensen, 1986 Kessler et at., 1988 B. Fiction:

Phillips, 1982 Kessler, et at., 1984 Gould and Shaffer, 1986 Phillips and Paight, 1987 Gould et al., 1988 Berman, 1988

(repl) (repl) (repl) (repl)

Notes: a) b) c)

Method of study was judged with a 2 = superior if the research design. sample size. and statistical analysis was high level; a moderately sophisticaled methodology received I. The abbreviation ~repl~ indicates a replication. Study reporled positive resullS but. later on. findings proved to be invalid.

variation when we compare study effects with the sum total of violence during the period of inquiry. Suggestion-imitation seems to be a legitimate perspective, but the theory does not exhibit great power to explain social reality. Bollen noted above that the theory should be seen as complementary and not competing with other theories. The extent to which imitation theory complements seems to be fairly modest, indeed. Martindale (1981) says as much when he points out that the suggestion-imitation school's central formulas are "too facile", and when subjected to intensive analysis, the theory tends to "fall apart". Despite the dim prospects awaiting those who would look to imitation theory in order to partly resolve the problem of teen suicide, two comments are in order. Those who seek to reformulate public policy related to the television industry in

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hopes that such intervention will have an impact on the rising tide of teen suicide ought to note the small proportion of teen suicides that can be explained by imitation theory. Given the finite amount of resources available to make social interventions, this area does not appear to hold much promise for social change advocates. On the other hand, nonfictional events on television and in the print media have had quantifiable impacts - over 100 excess deaths in some cases. In the case of completed suicides, many more attempted suicides must have been generated by the media's portrayal of real violence. It is really the task of society to determine if sufficient harm is done to the public to justify restricting the industry's activities for the public good. For instance, the tobacco industry has had its broad freedom to advertise its products curtailed because sufficient consensus developed that smoking is harmful to members of society. It remains to be seen how much harm must be associated with TV violence and what test will be required by legislators and the courts to demonstrate that TV has sufficiently demonstrable negative effects.

Notes 1 LeBon also held similar views. 2

These data were obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics, Vital statistics of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

3 Baron and Reiss (1985) point out that residuals and the variance of the dependent variables are heteroscedastic, and thus the reponed significance levels may be incorrect. Also, the presence of autocorrelation among the residuals clouds the interpretation of the findings. 4

These ideas are not completely original and come from several private conversations with a variety of scholars, particularly Ronald Kessler.

References Baron, J.N., and Reiss, P.C. (1985). Mass media and violent behavior. American Sociological Review, SO (3),347-363. Berman, A.L. (1988). Fictional depiction of suicide in television films and imitation effects. American Journal of Psychiatry, 145 (8), 982-986. Bollen, K.A., and Phillips, D.P. (1981). Suicidal motor vehicle fatalities in Detroit: A replication. American Journal of Sociology, 87 (2), 404-412. Bollen, K.A., and Phillips, D.P. (1982). Imitative suicides: A national study of the effects of television news stories. American Sociological Review, 47 (6), 802-809.

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Cohen. J. (1977). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. New York: Academic Press. Durkheim. E. (1951). Suicide. 0. A. Spaulding and G. Simpson, Trans.). Glencoe: The Free Press of Glencoe (Original work published 1897). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Goethe. J.W.• von (1929). The sorrows of young Wenher. (W. Rose. Trans.). London:

Scholastic Press. (Original work published 1774). Gould, M.S., and Shaffer, D. (1986). The impact of suicide in television movies. New England Journal of Medicine. 315 (II), 690-694. Gould. M., Shaffer. D.• and Kleinman. M. (1988). The impact of suicide in television movies: Replication and Commentary. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. 18 (1), 90-99. Kessler, R.C., Downey, L., Milavsky, J.R., and Stipp, H. (1988). Clustering of teenage suicides after television news stories about suicides. American Journal of Psychiatry, 145 (11). 1379-1383. Kessler. R.C.• et al. (1989). Network televsion new stories about suicide and shon term changes in total U.S. suicides. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 117 (9).551555. Kessler. R.C.• and Stipp, H. (1984). The impact of fictional television suicide stories on U.S. fatalities: A replication. American Journal of Sociology. 90 (1),151-167. Manindale. D. (1981). The nature and types of sociological theory (2nd ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Phillips. D.P. (1974). The influence of suggestion on suicide. American Sociological Review. 39. 340-354. Phillips, D.P. (1979). Suicide. motor vehicle fatalities and the mass media: Evidence toward a theory of suggestion. American Journal of Sociology. 84 (5).1150-1174. Phillips. D.P. (1980). Airplane accidents. murder, and the mass media: Towards a theory of imitation and suggestion. Social Forces. 58 (4). 1001-1024. Phillips. D.P. (1982). The impact of fictional television stories on U.S. adult fatalities. American Journal of Sociology. 87 (6). 1340-1359. Phillips, D.P. (1983). The impact of mass media violence on U.S. homicides. American Sociological Review. 48. 560-568. Phillips, D.P.• and Bollen. K.A. (1985). Selective data dredging for negative findings. American Sociological Review. 50 (3), 364-371. Phillips, D.P.• and Carstensen. L. (1986). Clustering of teenage suicides after television news stories about suicide. New England Journal of Medicine. 315 (11). 685-689. Phillips. D.P.• and Paight, D.J. (1987). The impact of television movies about suicide. New England Journal of Medicine. 317 (13), 809-811. Schmidtke. A., and Hafner. H. (1986). Die Vermittlung von Selbstmordmotivation und Selbstmordhandlung durch fiktive Modelle. Nervenarzt. 57. 502-510. Tarde, G. (1903). The laws of imitation. New York: Holt. Wasserman, I.M. (1984). Imitation and suicide: A reexamination of the Wenher effect. American Sociological Review, 49 (3).427-436.

Section ill Longitudinal Studies as Basis of Progress: Chances and Risks for Evaluation Research

Three Facts and Their Implications for Research on Crime Michael Gottfredson Travis Hirschi

1.

Introduction

Beyond standard methodological and financial concerns, the current state of knowledge in a field is an essential consideration in designing research and analyzing data. While we are not likely to overlook feasibility or cost and internal or external validity, we are prone to forget that there is an intimate relation between the appropriateness of particular research designs and established facts and theories about the phenomena we wish to study. For example, some theories of delinquency seem to demand longitudinal designs, while others find the unique infonnation provided by longitudinal design irrelevant for their assertion. In the latter case, the added financial and methodological costs of longitudinal research cannot be justified. In this paper we argue that the substantive knowledge now available about delinquency argues in favor of some designs and against others to such an extent that a set of testable hypotheses can be constructed to assess the relative merits of cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Indicators of crime and deviance have three significant properties: (1) They are consistently positively correlated among themselves. It is therefore possible to construct highly reliable general measures of crime. (2) These composite measures are highly stable over time. People high on criminality at Time 1 will also tend to be high on criminality later in life. (3) Composite measures of crime follow a predictable path over the life course, rising to a peak in late adolescence and declining sharply thereafter throughout life. So, we have a dependent variable that is reliable, stable, and predictable over time. From these facts, much follows. We have argued that these facts must be taken into account in designing research on crime (Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1983; Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1987). For example, by the age at which crime can be reliably measured, most

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longitudinal studies are not yet underway. As a result, they cannot measure their independent variables prior to manifestation of their dependent variable, nor can they examine an environment that has not itself been influenced by individual differences in criminality. For example, during the period of life addressed by most longitudinal studies, the school experiences and friendship patterns are inextricably linked to individual differences in delinquency. Given this state of affairs, it is obvious that longitudinal designs are not a priori superior to (or even different from) cheaper and more efficient crosssectional designs. Keeping in mind that all of the interesting variability in crime (Le., variability that cannot be explained by nonmanipulable variables such as age, sex, and ethnicity) appears at relatively young ages, it is going to be very difficult to ascribe such variation to institutional experiences occurring later in life. For purposes of discussion, we can label these facts, (1) the age distribution of offending and analogous behaviors; (2) the stability of individual differences in crime and delinquency over the life course; and (3) the versatility of offending and related behaviors. Although we now believe that sufficient evidence exists to consider stability, versatility, and age decline as "facts ", we are under no illusion that everyone working in the field regards them in the same light. What we assert is that acceptance of these facts leads to predictions about what is likely to befall research designs in the field and to a set of requirements for ongoing longitudinal research projects. That is, these facts do set a research agenda of sorts; one that can, in principle, lead to refutation of our point of view. As a way to clarify an argument that finds both sides merely repeating themselves, we offer these predictions in the form of a set of hypotheses. Since the purpose of this paper is foremost to offer hypotheses for future work, we will not be as much concerned about the empirical basis of our facts as about their implications.

2.

The Age Effect

The general form of the age distribution of crime has been studied extensively for the last 75 years in criminology (Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1983). This empirical work yields the conclusion that the age distribution of crime, whatever the form of crime and whatever the characteristics of the person, peaks in late adolescence or early adulthood (around age 17 - 22) and declines sharply and continuously from this peak. Such distributions are found for all techniques

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of measurement, for every group in society, and for every society for which reliable data exist. The ubiquity of the age effect has led us to conclude that age has a direct effect on crime. Although the search for a subgroup of the offending population that deviates from this direct effect hypothesis continues, no one has reliably discovered more than trivial variation in mode or the commonly observed, but minor, crime type differences. An ubiquitous age-crime relation has profound implications for the design of criminological research. It suggests that the causes of crime at anyone age are the same as the causes at any other age, thus obviating the need for an examination of these effects at different points in the life course. It suggests also that institutional experiences late in the life course (postadolescence) are unlikely to be important causes of criminal behavior. It suggests that theories of crime causation cannot be tested by their ability or inability to explain the age effect; that the degree to which a given theory "sounds plausible" as an explanation of reductions in crime over the life course should not be taken as support for its validity. Another way of saying all of this is that researchers can feel comfortable testing etiological ideas in a properly designed cross-sectional study and need not fear that their conclusions are age-specific. The general facts about age invariance are now so well documented that the burden of proof has shifted to those undertaking longitudinal research to provide evidence that age does matter in an important way to the understanding of the causes of criminal and delinquent behavior.

3.

Stability

According to virtually all reviews of developmental research on antisocial and delinquent behavior (e.g., Loeber and Dishion, 1983; McCord, 1979; West and Farrington, 1973), differences in antisocial behavior remain reasonably stable from the time they are first identified. Early antisocial behavior predicts antisocial behavior in adulthood. For example, in psychological research, individual differences in aggressiveness are highly stable over time (Olweus, 1979; Huesmann et al., 1984). In fact, in studying the stability of aggression over the life course, researchers often use standard crime counts (e.g., "criminal justice convictions", "seriousness of criminal acts", "driving while intoxicated") as measures of aggression during the later or adult years (Huesmann et al., 1984, p.1124; Farrington, cited in

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Olweus. 1979). From a review of 24 longitudinal studies of aggression. Olweus (1979) concludes that "for an interval of five years. the estimated disattenuated stability correlation is 0.69 and for an interval of ten years it is 0.60" (1979. p.866). Elliott et al. (1985) report correlations of .58 and .71 between prior delinquency and delinquency between years in their National Youth Survey. All of this raises the question of the value of repeated measures for research. What is the purpose of repeatedly measuring something that can be expected to change less than the reliability of the measurement? How can short-tenn change be the principal focus of study when little change is in fact occurring? How can repeated measurement solve the problems of causal order as some argue when the dependent variable does not change for subjects from year to year?

4.

Versatility

The versatility "fact" has three parts: (1) There is enonnous variability in the types of crime and delinquency committed by those who engage in crime and delinquency. Specialization is extremely rare. trivial. and easily explained on opportunity grounds. (2) This versatility extends into analogous behavioral manifestations of low self-control such as truancy. dropping out of school. employment instability. alcohol abuse. drug abuse. child and spouse abuse, motor vehicle accidents, and unwanted pregnancy. (3) The nature of these events and the fact of their covariation suggests why they might go together that a concept can be derived from these reliable indicators. In our conceptualization. each represents immediate, uncomplicated satisfaction of universal human desires without regard to long-range consequences. Conceptualized in this way, it is hard to see these acts as causes of each other (as, for example, in the commom assertion that drug use causes crime). Rather the suggestion is that they are all consequences of a single underlying tendency of the individual (which we have labeled low self-control). Empirical research supports these predictions in the strongest possible way. There is, in fact, in spite of years of tireless research motivated by a belief in specialization, no credible evidence to the contrary. The evidence of offender versatility is overwhelming (Hindelang. Hirschi, and Weist 1981; Rojek and Erickson. 1982; Wolfgang. Figlio. and Sellin. 1972; Klein. 1984; Hindelang. 1971; Hirschi, 1969; Petersilia, 1980). By versatility we mean that offenders

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commit a wide variety of criminal acts with no strong inclination to pursue a specific criminal act or one pattern of criminal acts to the exclusion of others. The evidence that offenders are likely to engage in noncriminal acts psychologically or theoretically equivalent to crime is, because of the relatively high rates of these "noncriminal" acts, even easier to document. "Thieves" are likely to smoke, drink, and skip school at considerably higher rates than nonthieves. Offenders are considerably more likely than nonoffenders to be involved in most types of accidents, including household fires, auto crashes, and unwanted pregnancies. They are also considerably more likely to die at an early age (see, e.g., Robins, 1966; Gottfredson, 1982; Eysenck, 1977). Versatility has implications for all research designs, especially those interested in careers, sequencing, development, or progression from one act to another. Since it suggests that the scope of conduct indicated by any particular form of antisocial behavior is in fact very broad, it also suggests that efforts to discover meaningful patterns in sets of antisocial acts are doomed to failure. Delinquency and crime researchers acknowledge but then ignore the versatility fact. Research projects are undertaken for the study of drug use, or vandalism, or teen pregnancy (as though every study of delinquency were not a study of drug use and vandalism and teenage sexual behavior). And entire schools of criminology emerge to pursue patterning, sequencing, progression, escalation, onset, persistence, and desistance in the career of offenses or offenders. These efforts survive largely because their proponents fail to consider or acknowledge the clear evidence that relations among these behaviors are validity indicators. Treatment of them as independent constructs could not survive ordinary tests of convergent and discriminant validation. Such tests are, incidently, easier to perform by and large on cross-sectional data sets that have larger numbers of cases and more thorough measurement of the dependent variable.

5.

Directions for Research

If our facts are correct, the strength of the preference in criminology for longitudinal designs and the magnitude of the resources devoted to them are unjustified. We propose an empirical assessment of the merits of the longitudinal design as it applies to these facts. In that spirit, we offer seven hypotheses consistent with a "critical test" perspective on methodological issues, a

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perspective often applied to theories but rarely to research designs. With the exception of our last hypothesis, we believe each can be fully evaluated using readily available data. Our hypotheses take advantage of the fact that every longitudinal research design is also a cross-sectional design and that most cross-sectional studies contain sufficient information about the past conduct of the subjects to be construed as retrospective longitudinal designs. Thus, each of our hypotheses is amenable to test on available data by making one or more of the following comparisons: (1) prospective longitudinal studies treated as cross-sectional designs compared with the same studies treated as prospective longitudinal designs; (2) prospective longitudinal studies compared with standard crosssectional studies; (3) cross-sectional studies using a short (Le., "last six month..) reference period compared with themselves using a long (i.e., indefinite) reference period for the measure of crime; and (4) cross-sectional studies treated as retrospective longitudinal designs compared with longitudinal studies treated as prospective designs.

Causal order. Taken together, our three facts predict that longitudinal research as currently conceived will fail to solve the problem of causal order. If "criminality" (a stable tendency to engage in crime and related acts) is present at the time longitudinal research gets underway, no correlational study of its manifestations in such longitudinal data can shed light on its causal priority vis-a-vis other phenomena. To date, longitudinal researchers seem to believe that causal order is a question of when phenomena are measured, not a question of when they occur. (Hence their tendency to take an early measured manifestation of criminality as a potential cause of one measured later.) As a matter of fact, it is perfectly acceptable to measure causes and effects at the same time, or even to measure causes after measuring their effects. If the phenomena exhibit clear start and freeze dates (Davis, 1985), ambiguity does not arise whatever the research method. Otherwise, questions about when phenomena occur can usually be answered only with the help of theory and auxiliary data. Given stability of a trait, it is no longer a possible dependent variable, and no measure of causal variables that comes subsequent to their attainment of this state will have methodological advantage. Given that criminality appears to become stable early in life, the superiority of longitudinal research over crosssectional research for the causal order question is problematic indeed. Versatility suggests that many variables thought by longitudinal researchers to be causal variables (dropping out of school, drug or alcohol use) are in reality

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alternative manifestations of the same individual characteristic. Our first hypothesis thus challenges researchers on antisocial behavior to pose explicit causal order questions (e.g., does gang membership precede or follow antisocial tendencies?) and compare the ability of cross-sectional and longitudinal data to resolve them. If we are correct, any apparent ordering of antisocial acts will be governed by opportunity factors alone and will be devoid of causal significance. As a corollary, competent research designs, whether longitudinal or otherwise, should discover significant correlations for subjects across these behaviors. Institutional experiences. The stability of a phenomenon defines the limits of the ability of environmental circumstances or experiences to cause variation in it. The fact is that criminality is stable over extended periods of time, and is stable over periods of great variety of institutional experiences. Of course it is not perfectly or wholy stable. Some variation occurs. Our second hypothesis deals with change in criminal behavior: Whatever changes are observed, they cannot be accounted for by institutional experiences. This hypothesis is easily tested. The effects of dropping out of school, a job, a girlfriend, or marriage can be studied in many cross-sectional and longitudinal data sets. Systematic comparison of their results would tell us how, if at all, they differ, and, if they differ, which of them seems closer to the truth as determined by further analysis and examination of data produced by other research methods. The longitudinal study is often justified on the basis of theories that see the causes of crime changing as a result of the stages or institutions that people move into and out of, as a consequence of development processes. Other theories see antisocial behavior as a consequence of relatively stable characteristics of people and the predictable situations and opportunities they experience. These theories do not presume that major changes in antisocial activity are associated with entry into or exit from roles, institutions, or organizations. To the contrary, these theories predict that the institutions and relationships people enter are produced by the same factors that produce their delinquent and criminal behavior. Such theories are therefore adequately tested at any point in the life course, the particular point being selected by reference to expected distributions of the important variables. Age-related causes of crime. The stability of criminality suggests a state of equilibrium such that factors working against its continuation are balanced by factors working in the other direction. Put positively, our third hypothesis is that the causes of crime at one age are the same as the causes of crime at other ages. This hypothesis is easily tested, once it is understood that it requires

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sufficient conceptualization to recognize common elements in disparate phenomena. Thus, for example, running away from home, being truant from school, missing work, and being absent without leave from the military may be conceptually equivalent events, although each can occur only at particular ages. Lack of theoretical imagination should not be used as evidence in favor of one research design over another. This hypothesis may be seen as asserting that the causal system involving antisocial behavior has reached a state of equilibrium before the typical longitudinal study begins, and that it does not evolve to a new state of equilibrium by the time these studies come to an end. Put another way, the hypothesis predicts considerable stability in measures of antisocial behavior from wave to wave in the longitudinal study, and considerable similarity in the correlates of antisocial behavior from age to age in the cross-sectional study. If the correlates of antisocial behavior at age 13 are the same as the correlates at age 18, the assumption that this causal complex evolves or changes in fundamental ways can survive only with the help of very strong assumptions about differential mortality in the samples. This hypothesis is subject to direct test in both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies (the age range in the latter tends to be from 12-13 to 18-19). If differences in propensity to antisocial behavior are reasonably stable over time, they need not be continually reassessed. Given basic stability in the causal system, the particular slice of it one examines should be determined by considerations of (1) sampling efficiency (Le., it makes sense to concentrate research at the point in life at which the rate of antisocial behavior is maximally variable); (2) measurement adequacy (e.g., some subjects are more suitable than others for questionnaire surveys, record searches, or experimental interventions); (3) policy relevance (e.g., understanding antisocial behavior among the elderly is of limited practical significance); (4) sampling costs (e.g., young people are preferred because they are easier to find and induce to cooperate).

Conclusions of research. Our facts predict that the correlates of antisocial behavior identified by a properly analyzed prospective longitudinal design will be the same as those identified by an equally properly analyzed cross-sectional design. A test of the hypothesis that the conclusions of cross-sectional research will not differ from those of longitudinal research requires concentration on a specific, limited set of causal variables. Because comprehensive surveys of the

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field indicate that the same set of variables have been of interest to criminologists over the years (e.g., Rutter and Gilner, 1983; Nettler, 1985), researchers should quickly converge on the important items.

Correlates of antisocial behavior. Similarly, our facts predict that the correlates of antisocial behavior identified by a properly analyzed, prospective longitudinal design will not differ from those identified by an equally properly analyzed retrospective design. Although few studies explicitly employ a retrospective longitudinal design, many cross-sectional studies look back to various points in the lives of respondents and ask when certain events occurred. For example, the Richmond Youth Survey (Hirschi, 1969) asks when respondents began to smoke and drink, and it records the date of first police contact. At the same time, school records on this junior and senior high school sample go back into the elementary grades. As a result, it is often possible to make straightforward comparisons of the findings of prospective and retrospective designs with respect to such things as the impact of school performance variables on antisocial behavior.

Incidence and prevalence. The decline in crime with age and the versatility fact predict that distinct causal structures are not required to account for the incidence as opposed to the prevalence of antisocial behavior. Contemporary criminological interest in prevalence and incidence stems from the idea that these measures may have distinct causes. "The factors that distinguish participants from nonparticipants could well be different from the factors that distinguish among participants, in terms of their offending frequency", (Blumstein et al., 1986, p.54). Put in ordinary causal language, some longitudinal researchers assume that the causes of the second antisocial act may differ from the causes of the first and third; that those who commit five antisocial acts may differ from those who commit two or twelve; that, in other words, differences among those committing antisocial acts are as significant as differences between those committing and not committing such acts (see Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1988). This does not exhaust the complexities introduced by interest in differences among offenders over time. The offender who moves from petty theft to rape to vandalism may differ in causal terms from the offender who starts with aggravated assault and moves from there to bicycle theft and shoplifting. Since such sequences are presumably significant and by definition take place over time, they help justify longitudinal research.

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The three facts on which this discussion is based may be expressed in terms of reliability and validity. Put in validity terms, the distinction between prevalence and incidence suggests that one concept can be divided into two, each of which will be shown to possess the quality of discriminant validity. Besides being questionable on its face, this hypothesis is strictly contrary to the fact of versatility and to the general trait that underlies versatility. Our hypothesis is easily tested. It can in fact be tested with available data using ordinary convergent and discriminant validation techniques. Almost all available data sets are capable of producing incidence and prevalence measures of antisocial behavior. They therefore allow straightforward comparison of their correlates.

Future criminal behavior. Stability suggests that cross-sectional studies asking questions about future criminal behavior should work as well as prospective longitudinal designs. It is a general rule of social science that all claims should be subject to falsification by research. This is as much the case for methodological as for substantive claims. Every longitudinal project should carry the seeds of its own destruction by allowing for critical tests of its value vis - avis less expensive and more efficient cross-sectional designs. The proof of the pudding for longitudinal researchers is the extent to which knowledge not available at one point in time is useful in predicting or understanding behavior at a later point in time. Existing research (Murray and Erickson, 1987) suggests that simply asking respondents what they will do in the future (e.g., next year) may yield the same conclusions as waiting and asking them. We believe that such a strategy could apply to both independent and dependent variables.

Conclusion. Taken together, our hypotheses provide the basis for an empirical test of the claim that longitudinal research is required for the proper study of crime. Interestingly enough, these hypotheses do not require collection of additional data. Given the cost of prospective longitudinal research and the concentration of intellectual energy it presupposes, it seems to us that prudence suggests an empirical demonstration that such research is required.

References Blumstein, A., Cohen, 1., Roth, 1., and Visher, C. (1986). Criminal careers and "career criminals". Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Davis, 1. (1985). The logic of causal order. Beverly Hills: Sage.

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Elliott, D., Huizinga, D., and Ageton, S. (1985). Explaining delinquency and drug use. Beverly HiUs: Sage. Eysenck, H. (1977). Crime and personality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Gottfredson, M. (1982). Victims of crime. London: HMSO. Gottfredson, M., and Hirschi, T. (1987): The methodological adequacy of longitudinal research on crime. Criminology, 25, 581-614. Gottfredson, M., and Hirschi, T. (1988). Science, policy, and the career paradigm. Criminology, 26, 37-55. Hindelang, M. (1971). Age, sex and the versatility of delinquent involvements. Social Problems, 18, 522-535. Hindelang, M., Hirschi, T., and Weis, J. (1981). Measuring delinquency. Beverly Hills: Sage. Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hirschi, T., and Gottfredson, M. (1983). Age and the explanation of crime. American Journal of Sociology, 89, 552-584. Huesmann, L., Eron, L., Lefkowitz, M., and Walder, L., (1984). Stability of aggression over time and generations. Developmental Psychology, 20, 1120-1134. Klein, M. (1984). Offense specialization and versatility among juveniles. British Journal of Criminology, 24, 185 -194. Loeber, R., and Dishion, T. (1983). Early predictors of male delinquency. Psychological Bulletin, 94, 68-99. McCord, J. (1979). Some child-rearing antecedents of criminal behavior in adult men. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1477- 1486. Murray, G., and Erickson, P. (1987). Cross-sectional versus longitudinal research: An empirical comparison of projected and subsequent criminality. Social Science Research,

16,107-118. Nettler, G. (1985). Explaining crime. New York: McGraw-Hill. Olweus, D. (1979). Stability of aggressive reaction patterns in males. Psychological Bulletin,

86, 852-875. Petersilia, J. (1980). Career criminal research. Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, 2, 321-379. Robins, L. (1966). Deviant children grown up. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. Rojek, D., and Erickson, M. (1982). Delinquent careers. Criminology, 20,5-28. Rutter, M., and Gilner, H. (1984). Juvenile delinquency. New York: Guilford Press. West, D., and Farrington, D. (1973). Who becomes delinquent? London: Heinemann. Wolfgang, M., Figlio, R., and Sellin, T. (1972). Delinquency in a birth cohort. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Incarceration and Recidivism Dieter Hermann

1.

Introduction

An essential result of cohort analysis has been that only a small number of

delinquents commit the majority of recorded crimes. 1 Early detection of these chronical recidivists and specific treatment or incarceration seems to be - at a first glance - a successful method of reducing criminality. The results of this project are the basis for the present collective incapacitation and selective incapacitation discussions in the USA.

In a first step, these positions will be presented with their underlying theory. In a second step, this theory will be tested with the help of an empirical survey. The criminal policy deduced from this theory will be criticized on the basis of this empirical survey.

2.

Collective Incapacitation and Selective Incapacitation

Both incapacitation concepts aim to reduce the growing overcrowding of jails and prisons and the increase of criminality. It is typical of both concepts, that the goal of imprisonment is to protect the general public (Bettmer et al. , 1988). Collective incapacItatIOn means the prolongation of imprisonment for all prisoners. By the physical isolation of the delinquents from society new offenses and new punishments should be prevented. This concept is only logical as long as we assume that a great number of the offenses are caused by recidivists. Avi-Itzhak and Shinnar (1973) and Shinnar and Shinnar (1974/75) developed a mathematical model of collective incapacitation. However, collective incapacitation was never put into practice, because this policy would have meant a drastic increase of prisoner population. Petersilia and Greenwood (1978) reported that a 5-year-incarceration of violent offenders in Denver

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reduced the rate of violent crimes by about one-third, but at the same time the number of prisoners would have risen by 450%. The fundamental idea of the selective incapacitation concept is simple: With the prognosis of future individual criminal careers, delinquents with a high probability of recidivism or violent criminals should be detected at an early stage. These delinquents should be prevented from committing new offenses by a prolongation of imprisonment. An increased penalty should be used only for a selected group. This idea was made popular by Greenwood's publication (1982; see also Busch, 1988). He used a mathematical model relating criminal policy and its success to the faetual situation of criminality. 2 He based his model on the earlier publications of Avi-Itzhak and Shinnar (1973) and Shinnar and Shinnar (1974/75). The model is shown in Figure 1.3 Crime situation Number of criminals (N) Crime rate per year per criminal (>.) Mathematical incapacitation modela)

Results of crime policy Number of criminal acts of all criminals per year (C) Number of prisoners (R)

Crime policy Probability of being convicted after having committed a crime (q) Probability of being committed to jail after having been convicted of a crime (1) Length of sentence (S) 8)

R

N*>.*q*I*S = ---,.-=----~ 1+>.*q*I*S

C=

N*>' 1+>.*q*I*S

(see Hermann & Janssen 1989)

Fig. 1:

The relation of crime situation, crime policy, and the result of crime policy in the incapacitation model

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On this basis combined with additional studies, Greenwood (1982) came to the conclusion that selective incapacitation can reduce robbery by up to 20% while the prisoner population stays the same.

In both positions it is assumed that the reasons for recidivism can largely be found in the delinquent himself. If, however, the punishment increases the probability of recidivism or prolongs the criminal career, a realization of the two above-mentioned concepts of incapacitation could have the opposite effect. Therefore, for the assessment of the incapacitation concepts, it is very important to find out which factors cause recidivism.

3.

Theories of Recidivism

The theories explaining recidivism and criminal careers can be summed up in two groups. The first group focuses on the criminal act and recidivism based on factors lying in the early personal past of the delinquents. In this group, theories focus on the delinquent himself, regardless of whether they are based on the biological tradition (Lombroso, 1887), the psychiatric or psychoanalytical tradition (Aschaffenburg, 1923; Alexander and Staub, 1929), or, lastly, on the multiple-factor approach (Glueck and Glueck, 1957). The multiple-factor approach is often named eclectic (Le., using many theories); though the criminologically relevant variables are generally sought in the early past, for example, in cases of brain dammage in early childhood, in educational deficiencies, or in broken homes. In the second theory group, recidivism is seen as a direct or indirect result of the punishment of deviant behavior. Particular members of this group are labeling theory (Becker, 1973; specifically for recidivism research: Cremer-Schafer, 1975), subculture theories, socialization theories, and the behavioral approach, as far as they include the subculture of the prison or the socialization caused by punishment in their analysis (see von Trotha, 1983). Particular mention should be given to Andreas Diekmann's (1980, pp. 70-109) presentation of a dynamic interpretation of the anomy theory of Opp (1974, 1979). The criminal career approach by Stephan Quensel (1979) and Henner Hess (1978) is also part of this theory group. Quensel understands the criminal career as an abortive interaction between delinquent and punitive justice. Henner Hess emphasizes the motivation underlying the delinquent acts in which the delinquent gains satisfaction from criminal behavior; this satisfaction leads to a change of identity and to a stabilization of the criminal career.

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Hans Haferkamp's (1975, 1985) action theory also belongs to this group, although the focus of this approach is on the explanation of the criminal act itself and not on the explanation of recidivism. These two theory groups explaining recidivism can be described in two models, which can be regarded as ideal types. In the first model, it is assumed that the reasons for the first criminal act are the same as for further criminal acts. In the second model, recidivism is postulated to have its own dynamic. This dynamic, however, is explained differently in the various theories as being due to: a change in the offender's self-esteem, an adaptation into the criminal subculture, learning patterns of criminal behavior, a change in the value-orientation patterns or action competences, a restriction of the possibilities of actions, or a deterioration of the socioeconomic situation. Both models are shown in Figure 2. Static model

l_t========c._d_l

Criminal acts

Recidivism.

Recidivism2

Recidivism;

Dynamic model

-Q-- ... ~

Criminal ~ Recidivism. ~ Recidivism2 acts

Recidivism;

Fig. 2: Theoretical explanation of recidivism

Hence, in some ways the theories make strongly contradictory claims (Albrecht, 1983). Empirical research in this field has not yet led to clear or satisfying answers to these questions (Kerner, 1985), although considerable efforts have been made. Friedheim Berckhauer and Burkhard Hasenpusch found more than 140 empirical publications on recidivism published before 1982 - and this was only in West Germany (1982, p. 284). This paper concentrates on a comparison of the efficiency of the two models shown in Figure 2. It presents a criticism of the criminal policy that has

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resulted from these theories. Consequently, the pretension to be made is limited. The test of the manifold possible causes of being convicted of a crime is limited to the analysis of (primary and secondary) socialization deficits and psychological deficits. But these two variables are in accordance with those that 4 are usually used in the empirical research on recidivism. So the concrete questions are: Are socialization and psychological deficits major causes for the recorded criminality and does this model also provide a correct explanation of recidivism? Or is it better to explain recidivism by its own dynamics? Does a static model focusing on delinquency or a dynamic model focusing on the judicial institution provide a better explanation of recidivism? Models focusing on delinquency can also be developed with a dynamic orientation by considering the change in the delinquent's behavior pattern. Such a concept is used by Hans Goppinger (1983). However, the present data do not allow to test such a complex model.

4.

Data and Variables

The investigations is a longitudinal study covering a period of 20 years. The sample contains 500 male juvenile prisoners who were released from the prisons Herford and Staumiihle (Northrhine-Westphalia) between January 1st and October 17th 1960. Most of the sample had been sentenced by the Regional Supreme Court at Hamm. The data are not a random sample and not representative for all fonner convicted juvenile delinquents in West Gennany. So only statements on the tested juveniles can be given and generalizations are only possible on a plausibility level. Nevertheless, the probability is very low that the validity of a causal model on recidivism is dependent on the localization of the tested Regional Supreme Court. A great part of original data were collected by Dieter Hobbel (1968a, 1968b, 1981). His study was primarily oriented toward prognosis and covered two waves with a period of 10 years (first wave: 6 years, second wave: 4 - 5 years).6 The data in the third wave covering 10 years were collected by the 7 Institute of Criminology at Heidelberg University. The data on recidivism are based on information from penal registers (Strafregisterauszug). The biographical data, especially concerning the infonnation about socialization and psychological development, stem from legal records kept by the prisons at Herford and Staumiihle.

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The measurement of the variable "socialization deficits" was based on various indicators: structural and functional deficits in the family, economic situation, living conditions, and achievements at school and at work. The percentage of individual deficits was calculated for each person. This percentage was related to the maximum number of deficits one person could possibly accumulate. In the same way, the indicators intelligence, aggressive behavior, organic brain damage, alcoholism, trend to lie, psychopathy, neurotic symptoms, loafing around, and avoidance of conflicts build the variable "psychological deficits".8 By integrating personality and behavior characteristics, this variable covered a broad range of themes. Two indicators were used to measure recidivism: The average number of penalties and the average number of imprisonments per year were investigated for each investigation period. If the period before imprisonment at Herford or Staumiihle was taken into account, it was possible to analyze four investigation periods, that is, a period of more than 20 years altogether (for the definition of these variables, see Hobbel 1968, pp. 83, 92). This kind of measurement of recidivism implies that not only the behavior of the investigated persons but also the reactions of the judicial institutions is noted. An act was only noted for the measurement of recidivism if it led to a registration in the federal convictions register (Bundeszentralregister). Independently from this, arguments against this method of measurement are possible because the measurement of recidivism or its density may lead to distortions as the times of imprisonment are not taken into account. Although this criticism is logically correct, it can be empirically falsified. If the periods of imprisonment are to be considered for the measurement of the annual rate of imprisonments and penalties, this is only possible in the latest investigation period. When the annual rate of imprisonment and penalties not considering the periods of imprisonment is correlated with the rate considering the periods of imprisonment, the correlation coefficient is greater than 0.99. Therefore, there is no need to take the periods of imprisonment into account when measuring the recidivism rate.

5.

A Comparison of Models: Static Versus Dynamic

Can recidivism be explained by individual characteristics, especially by socialization or psychological deficits for each period of the criminal career (static model)? Or is it more the case that the newly occurring recidivism in

Incarceration and Recidivism

543

each case is mainly influenced by the preceding convictions (dynamic model)? It is possible to compare both models with path analysis. In the static model, the effect of the recidivism rate in one period on the recidivism rate in the following periods must be small, if the socialization and psychological deficits are taken into account in the path model. On the other hand, the effects of these deficits on the recidivism rate are relatively high. In the dynamic model, this pattern is reversed: The effects of the individual deficits on recidivism are small, while the effects of one recidivism rate on the following ones are high. The path analysis is shown in Figure 3.

.

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.06

.15

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Rate of recidivism Period 2

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: Psychological deficiencies at t, : deficiencies in socialization at t, 0, I, 2, 3) : average of imprisolU11ent per year 0, I, 2, 3): average of penalties per year

Fig. 3: The explanation of recidivism standardized pathcoefficients

linear structural relationships (LISREL) with

The results showed the validity of the dynamic model. The effects of the individual deficits on the recidivism rates are small and could be neglected in comparison with the effects of one recidivism rate on the following one. Furthermore, there was a trend showing that these effects became smaller over the course of the criminal career. Even the total causal effects of the socialization and psychological deficits were relatively small; the largest was only 0.15.

S44

Dieter Hermann

In LISREL models it is possible to fix coefficients at zero. So it is possible to

modify the above-mentioned structural equation model, so that, on the one hand, it is in accordance with the static model (all coefficients between the recidivism rates including the preconvictions are fixed at zero), and on the other hand with the dynamic model (all coefficients between individual deficits and recidivism rates respectively the preconvictions are fixed at zero). The goodness of fit in these two models is very different. The chi-square value for the static model was 381 and for the dynamic model 112. In both models the degrees of freedom were equal. Thus, the dynamic model fitted the data much better than the static one. It is remarkable that the direct effects between the recidivism rate increased from period to period. Thus the dynamic led to a growing inevitability of recidivism. This process did not cause, however, a permanent increase of general recidivism as the number of "chronic" recidivists decreased more and more, so that the average recidivism rate also becomes smaller: from 0.35 penalties per year at the beginning to 0.15 penalties per year at the end of the investigation period. The growing inevitability of recidivism was counteracted by a process of selection. Thus the development of recidivism can be compared with a compensating feedback process. A direct comparison of the results with other empirical studies is difficult because of the considerable differences in the methods of measurement and the designs used. In summary, it can be stated that differences between recidivists and prime offenders or nonoffenders were discovered. The following researchers detected different factors that discriminate between the two abovementioned groups. Dillig (1983): class and socialization; Dolde (1978): functional disorders in the family; Frietsch (1982): socialization and psychological deficits, socioeconomic status, and hereditary characteristics; Lamnek (1982): broken home; Ludwig (1982): social declassification; and Nolte (1978). socialization deficits. But all these factors do not suffice to determine recidivism (Berckhauer and Hasenpusch, 1982; Dunkel, 1980; Traulsen, 1976; for a summary, see Albrecht, 1983). In many studies the consideration of preconvictions leads to a substantial increase of the coefficient of determination (Blumstein, Farrington, and Moitra, 1985; Dunkel, 1980; Frietsch, 1982; Klapdor, 1967; Ludwig, 1982; Meyer-Wentrup, 1966). Although the results of the above-mentioned empirical studies are at least not contradictory to this study, there is one fundamental conceptional difference: In the classical studies the preconvictions are seen as a fixed value at the time of measurement, while the change of preconvictions is not considered, but the present study focused on the growth of convictions.

Incarceration and Recidivism

6.

545

Conclusions

This study has shown that the dynamic of recidivism explains the process of recidivism. This does not mean that the recidivist act itself increases the probability of further recidivism, but that this is caused by the consequences of the recidivist act - especially by the sanctioning of the act. Thus a prolongation of terms of imprisonment will lead to an increase of the inevitability of recidivism. In case of incapacitation, the criminal career will be carried on later but probably in a more intensified way. The dynamic of recidivism counteracts the aims of collective and selective incapacitation concepts. The result of the study allows the conclusion that the theories of recidivism underlying both incapacitation concepts are untenable. Also the studies mentioned below support the thesis that incarceration increases the probability of recidivism: 1. The willingness to commit new crimes increases from imprisonment to imprisonment (Eitzmann, 1988; Clemmer, 1958). 2. The recidivism rate following probation or parole is lower than the one following term of imprisonment - even when social characteristics are analyzed (Diinkel, 1981; Albrecht, Diinkel, and SpieB, 1981). How can the problem of increasing crime be solved, when every punishment leads to an increase in the probability of recidivism? A solution may be found in Franz von Liszt's suggestion: In his essay "Der Zweckgedanke im Strafrecht" (The Idea of Purpose in Criminal Law) he adopts an idea similar to the concept of selective incapacitation: "Chronic offenders" should be incarcerated for an unlimited time. Such an intensification of the punishment should be applied from the third conviction onward (von Liszt, 1905a). Such an extreme increase of the measure of punishment is necessary, because every punishment increases the probability of recidivism (von Liszt, 1905b): "The harder the aggravation of punishment is, the sooner recidivism occurs.... If a juvenile or adult is delinquent and we don't punish him, so the probability of recidivism is smaller than in the case of punishment" (pp. 338-339). If every punishment leads to an increase of the probability of recidivism, than the demand for an unlimited term of imprisonment is logical, if the crime rate is not to increase. But such a policy will probably lead to a dramatic increase of the incarcerated population, and such a policy is also dubious from a judicial and ethical point of view. An alternative solution for the prevention of recidivism can be seen in the mitigation of punislunent and in the reduction of negative social implications of

Dieter Hermann

546

punishment. But this treatment should be combined with an individual control of success. as recidivism has its own dynamic and processes of this kind are difficult to control (Mayntz and Nedelmann. 1987). Generally. an intervention into a social process leads to undesirable negative side effects. If this process is a feedback process. the side effects influence the future of the process itself. From an extreme point of view. an intervention in a dynamic process without correction of the outcome is more like gambling than like a controlled process. So the development of recidivism can hardly be stopped by the classic intervention. because it usually neglects to notice and correct undesired side effects.

7.

Summary

The empirical comparison of a static and dynamic theory of recidivism leads to a rejection of the first theory. According to this. criminal careers have their own dynamic. The probability of recidivism is increased by the consequences of punishment. With this result it is possible to criticize those concepts of crime policy that suggest an aggravation of punishment as a preventive means of reducing recidivism. such as the selective and collective incapacitation concept. The increased inevitability of recidivism. which is the consequence of punishment. counteracts the desired success. More effective for prevention of individual recidivism is probably the mitigation of punishment and the reduction of the negative social consequences of the punishment. However such a treatment should be combined with the possibility of correcting undesired side effects. Because of the dynamic of recidivism. criminal careers can hardly be stopped from further development without such possibilities of correction. This means that it is necessary to discard the illusion that criminal careers can be controlled by the classic methods of intervention.

Notes The findings in a methodologically elaborate study of a birth cohort of about 10,000 young men by Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin (1987) were that 6% of the subjects or 18% of the delinquent subgroup are responsible for 52% of the delinquency recorded by the police. Similar results were obtained in other cohort studies (see Walker, 1985). 2 Criminal policy is characterized by the probability of being convicted and by the length of sentencing. Characteristics of the result of criminal policy are the number of criminal acts per year and the number of prisoners, and the crime situation is characterized by the number of criminals and its crime rate.

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3 For the deduction of the mathematical model of selective incapacitation see Hermann and Janssen (1989). 4 A general view of the empirical. studies on recidivism is given in Villmow and Kaiser (1974). 5 The empirical comparison of recidivism theories is part of a previously published study by Hans-Jiirgen Kerner (University of Tiibingen) and myself (Hermann and Kerner, 1988). 6 For the research design of Dieter Hobbel's study see Hobbel (1968a, 1981) and Kerner and Janssen (1983). 7 See the report by Hans-Jiirgen Kerner and Helmut Janssen (1983). 8 This method of measurement is in accordance with classical prognosis research. This field of research considers that recidivism is not caused by single individual deficits but by the entire total of deficits. Though individual determinants for explaining recidivism are interchangeable (a detailed argumentation can be found in Kerner and Hermann, 1984), it is instructive that the determination coefficient in very complex Anglo-American evaluation studies - as far as they use statistical methods - is not higher than in the traditional prognosis research. So it can be expected that the methods measuring the individual deficits only have a slight influence on the results of recidivism research.

References Albrecht, H.J. (1983). Kriminologische Aspekte der Riickfallkriminalitit und des Riickfalls. In H.J. Jeschek and G. Kaiser (Eds.), Erstes deutsch-polnisches Kolloquium iiber Strafrecht und Kriminologie (pp. 101-131). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Albrecht, H.J., DUnkel, F., and SpieS, G. (1981). Empirische Sanktionsforschung und die Begriindbarkeit von Kriminalpolitik. Monatsschrift fUr Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, 64, 310-326. Alexander, F., and Staub, H. (1929). Der Verbrecher und seine Richter. Ein psychoanalytischer Einblick in die Welt der Paragraphen. Wien: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag. Aschaffenburg, G. (1923). Das Verbrechen und seine Beklimpfung (3rd ed.). Heidelberg: Winter. Avi-Itzhak, B., and Shinnar, R. (1973). Quantitative models in crime control. Journal of Criminal Justice, I, 185-217. Becker, H.S. (1973). AuBenseiter. Zur Soziologie abweichenden Verhaltens. FrankfurtlM.: Fischer. Berckhauer, F., and Hasenpusch, B. (1982). Legalbewiihrung nach Strafvollzug. Zur Riickfiilligkeit der 1974 aus dem niedersiichsischen Strafvollzug Entlassenen. In H.D. Schwind and G. Steinhilper (Eds.), Modelle zur Kriminalitiitsvorbeugung und Resozialisierung. Beispiele praktischer Kriminalpolitik in Niedersachsen (pp. 281-333). Heidelberg: Kriminalistik.

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Bettmer, G., Kreissl, R., and Vo6, M. (1988). Die Kohorrenforschung als symbolische Ordnungsmacht. Zur Neuordnung von Kriminalitat zwischen Diversion und "Selective Incapacitation". Kriminologisches Journal, 20, 191-212. Blumstein, A., Farrington, D.P., and Moitra, S. (1985). Delinquency Careers: Innocents, desisters and persisters. In M. Tonry and N. Morris (Eds.), Crime and justice. An annual review of research (pp. 187-219). Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press. Busch, T. (1988). Selective Incapacitation - ein Beispiel fUr den Versuch von Kriminalprlivention durch Strafzumessung. MUnchen: Verlag V. Florentz. Clemmer, D. (1958). The prison community (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Cremer-Schafer, H. (1975). Stigmatisierung von Vorbestraften und Riickfallkriminalitat. In M. Brusten and J. Hohmeier (Eds.), Stigmatisierung. Zur Produktion gesellschaftlicher Randgruppen (pp. 129-143). Neuwied, Darmstadt: Luchterhand. Diekmann, A. (1980). Dynamische Modelle sozialer Prozesse. MUnchen, Wien: Oldenbourg. Dillig, P. (1983). Bedingungen von Riickflilligkeit bei jungen Strafgefangenen - ein PfadModell und seine empirische Priifung. In H.J. Kerner, H. Kury, and K. Sessar (Eds.), Deutsche Forschungen zur Kriminalitatsentstehung und Kriminalitlitskontrolle, Vol. 6/3 (pp. 1778-1817). Koln: Heymanns. Oolde, G. (1988). Sozialisation und kriminelle Karriere. Miinchen: Minerva. DUnkel, F. (1980). Selektion und Riickfilligkeit nach Entlassung aus unterschiedlichen Formen des Strafvollzugs in West-Berlin. In Forschungsgruppe Kriminologie (Ed.), Empirische Kriminologie: ein Jahrzehnt kriminologischer Forschung am Max-Planck-Institut Freiburg i. Br. - Bestandsaufnahme und Ausblick (pp. 467-487). Freiburg: MPI. DUnkel, F. (1981). Prognostische Kriterien zur Abschlitzung des Erfolgs von Behandlungsma6nahmen im Strafvollzug sowie fiir die Entscheidung iiber die bedingte Aussetzung. Monatsschrift fUr Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, 64, 279-295. Eitzmann, G. (1988). Die Bedeutung der Freiheitsstrafe fiir die Erziehung junger Rechtsbrecher. FrankfurtlM.: Lang. Frietsch, R. (1982). Verlaufsformen krimineUer Karrieren. Heidelberg: Kriminalistik. Glueck, S., and Glueck, E. (1957). Unraveling juvenile delinquency (3rd ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. GOppinger, H. (1983). Der Tater in seinen sozialen Beziigen. Ergebnisse aus der Tiibinger Jungtiiter-Vergleichsuntersuchung. Berlin: Springer. Greenwood, P.W. with Abrahamse, A. (1982). Selective incapacitation. Santa Monica, CA: Rand. Haferkamp, H. (1975). Kriminelle Karrieren. Handlungstheorie, teiinehmende Beobachtung und Soziologie krimineller Prozesse. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Haferkamp, H. (1985). Kriminelle Karrieren. In G. Kaiser, H.J. Kerner, F. Sack, and H. Schellhoss (Eds.), Kleines Kriminologisches Worrerbuch (2nd ed.), (pp. 267-272). University of Heidelberg: Miiller.

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Hermann, D., and Janssen, H. (1989). "Selektive Incapacitation" - eine Kritik. Unpublished paper, University of Heidelberg. Hermann, D., and Kerner, H.J. (1988). Die Eigendynamik der Ruckfallkriminalitiit. KOiner Zeitschrift fUr SOliologie und Sozialpsychologie, 40, 485 - 504. Hess, H. (1978). Das Karriere-Modell und die Karriere von Modellen. Zur Integration rnikro-perspektivischer Devianztheorien am Beispiel von Appartment-Prostituierten. In H. Hess, H.U. Storzer, and F. Streng (Eds.), Sexualitiit und soziale Kontrolle. Beitriige zur Sexualkriminologie (pp. 1-30). Heidelberg: Kriminalistik. Hobbel, D. (1968a). Bewiihruog des statistiscbeo Progooseverfahreos im Jugendstrafrecht. Zugleich eine Untersuchung der Friih- und Ruckfallkriminalitiit von 500 lU Jugendstrafe Verurteilten. Gottingen: Schwartz. Hobbel, D. (1968b). Die Bewiihrung des statistischen Progooseverfahrens im Jugeodkriminalrecht. Mooatsschrift fUr Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, 51, 263 - 277. Hobbel, D. (1981). Nachtrag zu "Die Bewiihrung des statistischen Progooseverfahreos im Jugendkriminalrecht". Monatsschrift fUr Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, 64, 179184. Kerner, H.J. (1985). Riickfall, Ruckfallkriminalitiit. In G. Kaiser, H.J. Kerner, F. Sack, and H. Schellhoss (Eds.), Kleines Kriminologisches Worterbuch (2nd ed.), (pp. 361-365). Heidelberg: Muller. Kerner, H,J., and Hermann, D. (1984). Belastungen des Probanden, Situation des Bewiihrungshelfers und Bewiihrungserfolg. Bewiihrungshilfe, 31, 136-162. Kerner, H.J., and Janssen, H. (1983). Ruckfall nach Jugendstrafvollzug - Betrachtungen unter dem Gesichtspunkt von Lebenslauf und krimineller Karriere. In H,J. Kerner, H. GOppinger, and F. Streng (Eds.), Kriminologie - Psychiatrie - Strafrecht. Festschrift fUr Heinz Leferenz (pp. 211 - 232). Heidelberg: Muller. Klapdor, M. (1967). Die Ruckflilligkeit junger Strafgefangener. GOningen: Schwartz. Lamnek, S. (1982). Sozialisation und kriminelle Karriere. Befunde aus lwei Erhebungen. In H. Schiller-Springorum (Ed.), Mehrfach aufflillig. Untersuchungen zur Jugendkriminalitiit (pp. 13-85). Munchen: Juventa. Liszt, F. von (1905a). Der Zweckgedanke im Strafrecht. In F. von Liszt (Ed.), Strafrechtliche Aufsiitze und Vortriige: Band 1 (pp. 126-179). Berlin: Guttentag. Liszt, F. von (1905b). Die Kriminalitiit der Jugendlichen. In F. von Liszt (Ed.), Strafrechtliche Aufsiitze und Vortriige: Band 2 (pp. 331 -355). Berlin: Gunentag. Lombroso, C. (1887). Der Verbrecher: Band 1. Hamburg: Richter. Ludwig, W. (1982). Mehrfachtater im Kontext gesellschaftlicher Produktion von Jugendkriminalitiit. Eine Untersuchung anhand von Polizeiakten. In H. Schuler-Springorum (Ed.), Mehrfach aufiallig. Untersuchungen zur Jugendkriminalitiit (pp. 86-125). Miinchen: Juventa. Mayntz, R. and Nedelmann, B. (1987). Eigendynamische soziale Prozesse. Kolner Zeitschrift fUr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 39, 648-668. Meyer, F. (1956). Rohrscheid.

Ruckfallprognose bei unbestimmt verurteilten Jugendlichen.

Bonn:

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Meyer-Wentrup, H.-E. (1966). Die erneute Straffiilligkeit nach Jugendstrafe. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hamburg. Nolte, C. (1978). Die Ruckfalligkeit Jugendlicher und Heranwachsender nach der Verbii8ung von Jugendarresl. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of GOttingen. Opp, K. D. (1974). Abweichendes Verhalten und Gesellschaftsstruktur. Darmstadt, Neuwied: Luchterhand. Opp, K. D. (1979). Strafvollzug und Resozialisierung. MUnchen: Fink. Petersilia, J., and Greenwood, P. W. (1978). Mandatory prison sentences: Their projected effects on crime and prison population. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 69, 604-615. Quensel, S. (1970). Wie wird man kriminell? Verlaufsform einer fehlgeschlagenen Interaktion zwischen Delinquenten und Sanktionsinstanz. Kritische Justiz, 4, 375-382. Shinnar, S., and Shinnar, R. (1974175). The effects of the criminal justice system on the control of crime: A quantitative approach. Law and Society Review, 9, 581-611. Traulsen, M. (1976). Delinquente Kinder und ihre Legalbewiihrung. Frankfurt/M.: Lang. Trotha, T. von (1983). Strafvollzug und RuckfaIligkeit. Eine Studie zur soziologischen Theorie und Empirie des Riickfalls von Strafgefangenen. Heidelberg: Miiller. Villmow, B., and Kaiser, G. (1974). Empirisch gesicherte Erkenntnisse uber Ursachen der Kriminalitil. Eine problemorientierte Sekundiiranalyse. In Der regierende Biirgermeister von Berlin (Ed.), Verhutung und Bekiimpfung der Kriminalitiit: Abschluflbericht vom Planungsausschufl. Berlin: Senat. Walker, S. (1985). Sense and nonsense about crime. A policy guide. Monterey, California: Brooks/Coole Publishing Company. Wolfgang, M.E., Figlio, R.M., and Sellin, T. (1972). Delinquency in a birth cohort. Studies in crime and justice. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press. Wolfgang, M., Thornberry, T., and Figlio, R. (1987). From boy to man, from delinquency to crime. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.

School Drop-Out and Juvenile Delinquency: First Results of a Dutch Experiment Josine Junger-Tas

1.

Introduction

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part I will briefly examine the relation between school and delinquency as it appears in the literature. In the second part I shall introduce a Dutch experiment in three vocational training schools, whose main objective is to reduce truancy, school problems, school dropout, and delinquency. The experiment is still continuing for a further 2 years so I can give you only some preliminary results. Does the school have an impact on the development of delinquent behavior, and if so in what way? Many theories explaining delinquency emphasize the role of the family or macrosociological factors. The importance of school in the life of young people seems to be underestimated. The school can be compared to the workplace of adults: It presents young people with a social class system in which their own social position is clear to them; they are rewarded for their achievements and punished for their failures; they make friends and operate in a social community that transfers important cultural values and social norms.

2.

School Factors and Juvenile Delinquency

The Relationship Between School and Delinquency

A great number of studies have demonstrated the relation between behavior and achievement in school and delinquent behavior (Glueck and Glueck, 1950; Cohen, 1958; Polk and Schafer, 1972; Elliott and Voss, 1974; Polk, 1975; Junger-Tas, 1976; Junger-Tas et al., 1984, 1985; Dijksterhuis and Nijboer, 1986; Rutter et al., 1979; Wolfgang et al., 1972). Most of the research shows that the worse academic achievement and social behavior in school are, the greater is the risk of deviant and delinquent behavior. In my own research among 12- to 18-year-old juveniles (1988), I found that both academic

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Josine Junger-Tas

achievement and social behavior were very strongly related to delinquency: Of those students who functioned well, 38 % reported that they had committed at least one out of seven offences; while of those who did badly, 93 % reported at least one offence. Moreover, we have made a distinction between different school types: vocational and technical schools; junior high-school; and senior high-school or grammar-school. One remarkable finding was the much stronger relation between school type and delinquency than between age and delinquency. The same is true for social class: The level of education has a stronger relation to delinquency than social class, operationalised by father's profession. This has also been found in a Canadian study among urban adolescents (Hartnagel and Tanner, 1982). In fact, social class did not come out as a good predictor of delinquency; being in the lower level or higher level of the educational system was much more important. Truancy. Another factor strongly related to delinquency is truancy. I found that of those who reported no truancy, 50% reported having committed offenses during the preceding year, while 93% of frequent truants reported having done so. Moreover, truants committed a wider range of offenses and they did so with greater frequency. Farrington, in his well-known Cambridge study (1980), found that truants and delinquents had the same background and the same characteristics. Comparing truants with students who were absent for other reasons, Galloway (1983) showed that truants had committed offenses more frequently and were more often placed under a measure of supervision. The average number of offenses committed by truants was 11.25 compared to only 3.6 among the other absentees.

School dropout. School dropout is another important predictor of delinquency. A large follow-up study of more than 2,500 students by Elliott and Voss (1974) showed differential involvement in delinquency between future school dropout and students who finished school with a certificate. This difference was greatest during the period preceding school dropout and was followed by a strong decline in delinquency after leaving school. The authors conclude that the school itself generates delinquency in the first place. However, Thornberry et al. (1985) criticized that normally there is a decrease in delinquency after the school leaving age of 16 and 17.

Thornberry et al. did not find any decline in delinquency after dropout but, instead, a strong relation between dropout and later adult criminality. Among those who left school with a high-school diploma, delinquency declined from

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age 16 to 18 while for dropouts, the decline started at age 20 and reached the level of the other group only at age 23. Although dropouts were considerably more criminally active than the regular school leavers, both groups had practically abandoned criminal behavior at age 22 or 23. Thornberry's findings have been confirmed by Farrington (1986) who showed that dropping out of school is strongly related to criminality. But how do school dropouts fare in their adult life? A 10-year follow-up study of high-school students in New York compared the life course of those with a high-school diploma to a group of chronic truants and a group of dropouts (Kandel et al., 1984). The truant group had more often changed jobs, were more often divorced, were less healthy, participated less often in conventional activities such as voting or going to church, were also more delinquent, and were more often arrested. School dropouts showed an even more unfavorable picture than chronic truants concerning these variables. In order to find clearly predictive factors for the purpose of early intervention, longitudinal studies are necessary through which one can find out how many, and under what circumstances, low-achieving students and frequent truants become delinquents. Ouston (1984) examined children at age 12 and age 14. Relations were studied between school factors, background factors, and judicial contacts, either at the prosecutor level, or at the level of the juvenile judge. Results showed that teacher scores, intelligence, father's profession, and ethnic origin were all related to judicial contacts. At age 14, teacher scores and judicial contacts were even more strongly related. This might be due to the troublesome behavior of the adolescent in school or the information of the teacher about contacts with the juvenile justice system. This is confirmed by the fact that no relation between negative teacher scores for antisocial behavior at age 10 and delinquent behavior at age 14 was found. Farrington found in the longitudinal study mentioned above (Farrington, 1986) that convictions between age 10 and age 13 were best predicted by "troublesomeness" at school between age 8 and 10, as scored by teachers and peers. Convictions in higher age categories were best predicted by convictions in the preceding age categories. These findings are confirmed by our own follow-up results in a similar study (Junger-Tas et al., 1985). In contrast to Farrington's rather deterministic view of a later delinquent career, we found that favorable or unfavorable changes in the life of young people over a period of 2 years were related to a decrease or an increase in delinquent behavior.

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Personality Factors and Delinquency The education system might argue that it is not so much the school as the personality characteristics of students that determine the functioning of children at school. Hence, the relation between I.Q. and delinquency is analyzed by a great number of researchers. Wolfgang et al. (1972) found a significant difference between delinquents (I.Q. = 101) and nondelinquents (I.Q. = 108). In 1977, Hirschi and Hindelang stated that I.Q., independent of race and social class, is strongly related to delinquency, claiming that the influence of I.Q. operates through school achievement and through attitudes toward the school. In contrast, Wolfgang et al. (1972) conclude from their findings that I.Q. is

related first to ethnic group, second to social class, and only then to delinquency. Studies that are based on a representative sample and use the self-report method, such as one conducted by Menard and Morse (1984) did not confirm Hirschi's model. Their own model included variables such as the adolescent's perception of the way the school judges his or her school performance, social behavior, and attitudes toward school, family, and delinquent peers. The authors conclude that I.Q. is an individual characteristic that will, or will not be rewarded by an institution such as the school but that cannot be considered in itself as a cause of delinquency.

Learning disabilities and delinquency. Learning disabilities is a rather vague concept of physiological causes of disturbances that are related to delinquency (Dalby et al., 1982). This would include hyperactive children, children with reading difficulties, or children with motor, auditive, or visual handicaps. A special Commission in Alberta, Canada, defines it as a "significant discrepancy between the estimated, potential learning ability and real learning achievement"; thus defining the disturbance without speculation about its causes. A study by the U.S. Department of Justice (Cellini and Snowman, 1982) showed that twice as many officially registered delinquents as nondelinquents had learning disabilities. Comparing a group of convicted juvenile delinquents with a sample of adolescents in the public school system, learning disabilities were found among 33% of the delinquents and 18% of the school students (Zimmerman et al., 1981). In contrast, the self-report data of school students showed that although

convicted delinquents had committed more delinquent acts than school students,

School Drop-Out and Delinquency

555

the extent of delinquency was the same within the group with and the group without learning disabilities. In addition, children with and without learning disabilities had the same number of contacts with the police. The fact that children with learning disabilities are so disproportionately represented in populations of convicted delinquents might be due - according to the authors - to a selection of these children by the juvenile justice system on the basis of characteristics that have nothing to do with delinquent behavior.

Aggression within the school. A rather serious problem is aggression in the school, often called "bullying". It consists of continually threatening, calling names, humiliating, and pushing, beating, kicking, and locking up children (Olweus, 1978, 1990). Olweus (1978) states that the aggressors are not particularly found among those who fail at school, but he found a strong relation between violent behavior in school and later court convictions for criminal behavior. The absence of strong nonns of the peer group condemning aggression in the classroom, teachers who do not want to interfere, and a lack of supervision outside the classroom are characteristic traits of the school climate that are related to aggressive behavior. Experiments with special intervention programs to counteract violence in the school in schools in Norway, Sweden, and also the United States were very successful. The programs were based on active collaboration between parents and teachers, clear stating of rules with respect to aggressive and violent behavior, adequate supervision of these rules, and protection of the victims. A striking result of these experiments was that in addition to a 50% reduction of violence, other antisocial behavior, such as theft, vandalism, and truancy, was substantially reduced. At the same time, general satisfaction with school life increased among students. Summing up the results of these studies, a direct relation between personality factors and delinquency is not confinned. It is true, however, that children with certain characteristics have difficulties perfonning within such a competitive system. It is above all the reaction of the school to specific characteristics or handicaps that provokes the troublesome or disturbing behavior and then reinforces the process of marginalization and exclusion as well as the frequent occurence of aggression and violence that is caused by the climate within schools.

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Josine Junger-Tas

School Factors and Delinquency The role of student has become the most important role for adolescents, but there are, however, a number of factors that make it rather difficult to fulfil this role adequately (Polk, 1984). The first is the segregation of young people: The school has become an adolescent ghetto in which only a few adults move around. The second is the prolonged economic dependence of young people on adults. The third is the passivity of students in the education process. There is no participation in active teaching, no responsibility for the school or the community. The fourth is the routine denial of fundamental individual rights for students, contributing to feelings of powerlessness. Generally, in Europe, the position of young people in the education system just as in other systems, such as the family or the juvenile court - has been strengthened during the last two decades. Moreover, the successful student has all kinds of rewards, not only in terms of grades and the praise of teachers but also because the future has so much more to offer the student in terms of economic success and social status. School failure, on the other hand, is punished with exclusion: special classes, denigrating treatment, loss of status, and the expectation of an unskilled and badly paid job or no job at all.

Adolescent subcultures. One of the ways in which young people try to structure their lives and to get more support is to form some sort of adolescent subculture together with their peers. The successful student participates in all kinds of organized groups, which are generally directed by adults and thereby form a bridge to adulthood. But those who fail often do not get access to this "sponsored" adolescent culture, because they do not meet the necessary requirements. Instead, they join other marginalized youths and participate in activities involving cars, discotheques, alcohol, and drug use. Thus, they participate in more or less deviant subcultures. Another contributing factor to delinquency might be the selection process at the end of elementary school that results in the distribution of 12- and 13-yearolds over different school levels. Polk and Schafer (1972) found higher delinquency rates in lower-level schools. In my studies, I also noted higher delinquency rates in lower vocational training schools than in the higher-level "grammar" school (Junger-Tas et al., 1984). The tracking system promotes the segregation of less gifted and/or less successful students and thereby the development of more or less marginal peer groups with little motivation for educational achievement and few inhibitions with respect to delinquency (Hartnagel and Tanner, 1982).

School Drop-Out and Delinquency

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It seems that nonnative orientations have changed in accordance with the orientation toward education. Thus Tygart (1980) noted among high-school and university students between 1968 and 1976 a shift toward a greater tolerance of delinquent behavior, and in contrast to 1968, the majority of students in 1976 were pessimistic about their future and found education of little relevance in this respect. The study suggests a relation among students between fear and pessimism concerning the future and a turning away from traditional values and norms.

Specific School Factors

A number of more specific factors have been found in a large-scale study of a representative sample concerning 5,578 American schools (Rubel, 1978), 582 of which were more closely examined. Concerning the size of schools, large schools suffer more from burglary, theft, and vandalism than small schools, and more violence is reported in schools with large classes. Damage per head of the school population was not higher in large compared to small schools. There was more violence in schools with crowded classrooms, because teachers in such classes are not able to develop a personal relationship with their students. In schools in which teachers have little contact with students and can have little personal influence on them, there is more criminality. Discipline and the respective school climate is an important factor. Schools in which school rules are strictly enforced and classroom behavior is tightly controlled have a lower level of property delinquency; a good coordination between staff and teachers has the same effect. The perception of students that there are strict rules with tight controls that are not handled arbitrarily or punitively is also related to a lower level of violence in the school. It has to be taken into account that when students are extremely difficult the school is not always capable of enforcing strict rules, as might be the case in high-crime neighborhoods. But there are schools that are stricter and better organized than others, independent of the kind of students they receive. Concerning the structure of rewards, schools that have a strong orientation to success by means of high grades have less violence but more property delinquency.

558

Josine Junger-Tas

The study showed that a greater emphasis on school performance together with a reward system for potential dropouts drastically reduced violence in school.

Swnmary

Swnmarizing the main results of this short review of the literature, the following factors appear to be related to delinquency: First, there are factors that are due to the educational system, such as the distribution of children over different types of school according to their mental abilities and social status. There is more delinquency in lower-level schools than in high-level schools. Too large schools and crowded classrooms are related to aggressive behavior and delinquency. A clear emphasis on school performance, associated with meaningful incentives and rewards, is negatively related to delinquency. Second, there are factors connected with the personality of the students. In conclusion, I.Q. and learning disabilities influence school performance in a negative way. School failure leads to negative reactions from the school, to problems of discipline, to truancy, and to dropout. Research has shown that these factors are strongly related to juvenile delinquency. Adolescents resist failure by forming their own subcultures, which reward delinquent behavior. They oppose the power of the school by denying its meaning and value and develop a lifestyle and leisure style of their own.

3.

A Prevention Experiment in Some Technical Schools

Introduction In 1983 the Dutch government - on the basis of an agreement between the parties in power - set up a committee with the mandate "to advise the Minister of Justice and other ministers on possible improvements in the prevention and reduction of petty crime".

The basic conclusion of the committee was that crime control cannot be the responsibility of the police and the justice system alone but should be that of society as a whole. As a result, negotiations were started to involve other ministries in crime prevention policies. On the national level, these included the Ministry of Education for its school policy, the Ministry of Welfare and Health for its youth, alcohol, and drug policy, and the Ministry of Transport for its public transport policy. At the local level, much attention has been given to the

School Drop-Out and Delinquency

559

municipalities' responsibility in crime prevention. Clear responsibilities were assigned to what may be called the middle level of public and private management, such as the national association of professional football (with respect to football hooliganism), the associations of department stores and of local shopkeepers (with respect to shoplifting), sports and youth organizations, neighborhood committees, teacher organizations, and so forth. The three main fields of action in crime prevention distinguished by the government are: 1. the design of an urban environment; 2. strengthening the bond between the coming generation and society (in family, school, leisure, labor); and 3. intensifying "functional surveillance" or informal control by tram and bus conductors, janitors, shop assistants, sports coaches, youth workers. To encourage change, the government funded local experimental projects. One of the requirements for receiving a grant was that the project should be accompanied by an evaluation study of the organization process and of the effects of the measures taken. This resulted in about 250 crime prevention programs in more than 80 municipalities allover the country.

The Theoretical Basis of Dutch Prevention Policy This crime prevention policy in our country is based on two important theoretical perspectives: social control theory (Hirschi, 1969) and opportunity theory (Cohen and Felson, 1979). Social control theory has a direct link with opportunity theory. Adolescents who do not yet have a strong identification with society and feel none or little responsibility for it will commit delinquent acts if there are good opportunities and the risk of being caught is small. Socially well-integrated persons do not commit offenses because they have much to win by conforming to social norms and much to lose by committing criminal acts, while less well-integrated persons have little to lose by committing crimes. With respect to these assumptions, control theory is based on the concepts of attachment, commitment, involvement, and beliefs.

Attachment covers at least three subconcepts: affection between the adolescent and significant others, communication between them, and the supervision that is exercised on juveniles. All three are extremely important.

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Josine Junger-Tas

The concept of commitment refers to the degree to which young people agree with conventional society and its objectives and values that are the reflection of society's demands on young people and are transferred by parents and educators. Involvement refers to the degree to which adolescents are integrated into subsystems, such as school, work, or conforming groups. The greater their involvement and their commitment, the more rewards they receive and the less they are prepared to put these rewards at risk by committing offenses. Moreover, one consequence of a strong involvement in conventional activities is that delinquency is not perceived as a potential behavior alternative. Beliefs include moral values and specific behavioral norms, which are transferred by parents and educators, that is, generally conventional, socially accepted norms. Research has shown that most delinquent adolescents have the same conventional belief system as nondelinquents (Junger-Tas et al., 1984), but the more offenses they commit, the more deviant are their behavioral norms. The norms seem to be adapted to the behavior rather than the reverse.

Implications for Prevention Policy

The school experiment is specifically based on social control theory, mainly on the following hypotheses: 1. The better young people function in school and the more their role in the family, church, and youth organiziations is perceived as rewarding, the greater their commitment to society; 2. The more the social network and social environment exercises supervision on young people, the better they are integrated; 3. When young people are well integrated, that is, when they have strong bonds with society, the costs related to the detection of delinquent acts, in terms of a loss of respect, affection, and trust, are greater. 4. The greater the risk of detection of delinquent acts, the greater the inhibitions to commit such acts: Strong bonds with society thus are related to more external social controls as well as to more internal social controls. Three policy implications were based on these hyphotheses: 1. The costs of petty crime must be referred to and supported by the offenders.

School Drop-Out and Delinquency

561

2. Policy must promote that "young people have a better relationship with their parents and other educators, are more committed to, and involved in school, church, or other organizations". 3. Intensifying norm transfer as well as reinforcing supervision and informal function-related social control will be the best solution in the short and middle term.

The School Experiment

The program training schools. we have found technical schools

a quasi-experiment - is being carried out in three technical This school system has been selected because in prior research both more dropouts and considerably more delinquency in than in other types of school (Junger-Tas, 1988).

The lower technical training education system is characterized by some common features: 1. 2. 3. 4.

little continuity of teaching, due to a considerable turnover of teachers; little control of student absenteeism; hardly any contacts between students' parents and the school; due to the fact that during the first 2 years the curriculum is mainly theoretical, many students lose motivation and drop out of school; S. a huge increase in ethnic minorities of foreign background, which poses special problems; 6. insufficient support within the school for potential dropouts coming from multiproblem families; and 7. a high number of missing teaching hours. The program has two main objectives: first, to reduce truancy and dropout of weak students; second, to reduce delinquency in frequent truants and potential dropouts. The program consists of three subexperiments (Mutsaers, 1988): truancy control, an educational worker, and a special class.

Truancy Control

First, truancy control was introduced on the basis of a computerized truancy registration system, including individual student data and school curriculum data. Parents are telephoned twice a day, controlling for absences in the

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Josine Junger-Tas

morning and in the afternoon. This is done in a systematic way in order to convince students that truancy is always noted and punished. The main assumption is that immediate control of relatively incidental and nonserious truancy will prevent drifting into more serious and structural truancy, which generally is the precursor of considerable learning or other school problems. On the basis of opportunity theory, we expected to solve most of the problem of occasional truancy by means of a simple but strict control mechanism. In contrast, the behavior of the remainder of very frequent truants is not the result of simple opportunity but of structural problems that have to be tackled in a different way. In order to do this, two other elements were added to the program: an educational worker and a special classroom in which students with serious difficulties could study for a limited time with the help of specialized teachers. The role of the educational worker is twofold: On the basis of the registration, he signalizes as early as possible those students who are at risk of dropping out of school because of low achievement, disciplinary problems, or frequent truancy; furthermore, he fulfils an advisory role for teachers who have to deal with these students. The educational worker acts as a model, making teachers more competent and teaching them the skills needed to deal with problem students. The special classroom called "combi-classroom" has been designed to give students with serious learning difficulties or other serious problems the necessary quiet and individual attention they need. Students are referred to the classroom by the educational worker. Generally the special program does not exceed 3 months. Students may be placed in the classroom all day or only part of the day so as to avoid any stigmatization. Intensive contact is maintained with the students' regular teachers in order to make the transfer to the regular school system as smooth as possible. The classroom is managed by two teachers, one of whom teaches technical skills; the other is an educationalist testing the boys - and a remedial teacher.

The Research Design

The subprograms have been introduced one after another. First we set up the computerized registration system, as this formed the basis of all other experimental interventions. Then we introduced the educational worker and as a final step the combi-classroom. In order to be able to measure the effects of

563

School Drop-Out and Delinquency

each separate intervention and in order to make policy recommendations, it was necessary to introduce them at distinct moments as well as to use a design with two control schools: Experimental school:

F~tcontrol

school:

Second control school:

Telephone truancy control and student assistance Telephone truancy control but no assistance No intervention

In the first control school, the telephone control of truancy was also introduced:

In this way the school could be used as a control for the special student assistance, which was introduced later on in the experimental school. The second control school, in which no change was introduced, served as a control for the telephone experiment. Before the program started, data were collected on the schools to ensure their comparability: These covered their organization, specialization, and internal communication; the curriculum and the school rules; the selection of students; and the assistance of students and of teachers within the school. Data were also collected on the neighborhoods of the schools to obtain an estimate of the criminal opportunity structure of the neighborhood: These data covered the social status and the composition of the neighborhood population, the amenities and state of the buildings, as well as the nature and extent of the crime problem. Finally a first student self-report survey was conducted, which is to be repeated every 6 months for a period of 4 years (i.e., the length of a complete school career). The truancy registration is the first of the instruments measuring intervention effects. The computer registers not only truancy data but also background variables of students (sex, age, family situation) and school variables, such as school career and grades. This allows us to obtain more insight into the nature, frequency, and background of truancy. The other instrument is the self-report survey, which measures family background, school integration, school performance, and delinqent behavior of students. Both instruments are related in order to get a complete view of truancy, school performance, social behavior, disciplinary problems, dropout, and criminality.

S64

Josine Junger-Tas

First Research Results The interview sample. The representative sample included 535 students of whom 96.5% were boys and only 3.5% were girls - lower vocational training being almost entirely a boys' business. About 18% of the students were foreigners: 60% of this group had come from Morocco and 22.5% from Turkey. More than 75% of them had been in school in their country of origin and only 25% stated that the family speaks Dutch at home. Many technical training schools in the Netherlands have a special section for those students who have difficulties in following the normal curriculum. In this section, with a low student-teacher ratio, the teaching is very much individualized. We found large differences in student origin here. 71 % of the Dutch students and two-thirds of the Turkish students followed the normal curriculum; about one-third of them were placed in the special section, while two-thirds of the Moroccan students were placed in the special section. Twothirds of the fathers were skilled or unskilled blue-collar workers nearly 25% were unemployed.

School attitudes. Two-thirds of the students were satisfied with what the school offers them; 90% wanted to finish their training with a diploma, but only half of them wanted to continue into further education. Two-thirds of the students claimed they got along fine with their teachers and took into account their teachers' opinion; about 21 % simply did not care. Although most students attached much importance to high grades, only half did their homework regularly; about half of the parents controlled their sons' homework, while the other half felt this was their sons' own responsibility. About 20% of the students saw themselves as outstanding; two-thirds considered themselves as middle of the road; only 5% saw themselves as bad students, despite the fact that 20% of the students had repeated classes.

Truancy. About 25% played truant from time to time; only 7.5% were frequently absent from school (once a week at least). Half of the frequent truants said their parents were aware of their behavior. Nearly one-fifth of parents did not give any reaction when they learned their children had been absent from school, and about 25% covered up the illegal absences of their children. Half of the frequent truants said they skip school once or twice a week, the other half mentioned a frequency of up to ten times a week. Sixty percent of

56S

School Drop-Out and Delinquency

those who had repeated classes and 25 % of those who wanted to leave school truanted regularly. Fifty-three percent of those reporting a bad relation with their teachers truanted more or less regularly, which is far more than the average. Only 3% of those who claimed to always do their homework reported regular truancy, versus 44 % of those who never do homework; twice as many boys without parental control of homework reported regular (10%) or infrequent truancy (34,5%) than those who were controlled. Criminal behavior. Infonnation was gathered on 16 offenses covering a period

of 4 months. The data show that detection of the delinquent behavior was related to the more or less public character of the act: this applied to arson (mainly burning Christmas trees without pennission), vandalism, and violence. About 25 % of the interviewed students reported that some of the delinquent acts were discovered by the police, although the overall rate was 8.5%. Only 5.5% of the parents were reported to be aware of what had happened and this was in cases in which the consequences of the act could not be hidden, for instance, in assault cases. Typical "group" offenses were vandalism, graffiti, trespassing, arson, and harrassing women. Offenses committed with one other boy were shoplifting and bicycle theft. Assault, receiving, and fraud were mostly committed alone. Tab. 1:

Offenses Committed and Detected as a Percentage of the Sample (N

Offense

Arson Graffiti Receiving Fare-Dodging Vandalism (gen.) Assault Shoplifting Shop fraud Vandalism to persons Bicycle theft Theft at school Vandalism to schools Threat with weapon Harassing women Burglary/Trespassing Theft from car

Frequency

Detected

Police

32.1 27.9 21.7 17.6 14.4 14.2 13.8 13.8 11.2 10.7 5.6 5.6 5.2 2.8 2.8

45.3 25.5 15.3 22.4 35.1 SO.3 25.7 13.5 58.4 19.3 16.7 54.4 35.8 13.4 46.7 0.0

18.0 4.6 3.5 0.0 22.0 15.7 5.4 0.0 11.6 8.7 10.0 3.3 3.5 0.0 26.6 0.0

1.3

= 535)

Detected by ... Others

13.8

13.5 6.7

3.3 43.3

Parents 2.3 6.0 8.9 6.3 1.2 32.8 4.0 6.7 5.0 5.2 3.3 3.3 3.5 0.0 0.0 0.0

Josine Junger-Tas

566

Truancy and delinquency. The relation between frequency of truancy and offenses committed during a period of 4 months is shown in Table 2. Tab. 2: Truancy Frequency and Delinquency Offenses Never

Arson Graffiti Receiving Fare-Dodging Vandalism Shoplifting Bicycle theft Threat with weapon Burglary/Trespassing

31.0 26.5 20.0 17.0 13.0 12.5 8.5 4.5 1.5

Truancy Occasionally Frequently 34.0 28.0 21.0 16.0 15.0 13.5 13.0 4.0 4.0

It is clear that especially the frequent offenses than the other students, while play truant and the other students were but the frequency of truancy that (Junger-Tas, 1988).

37.5 40.0 32.5 27.5 25.5 27.5 25.0 15.0 10.0

truants committed considerably more differences between those who never not significant. It is not truancy itself was related to delinquent behavior

Some Preliminary Results of the Truancy Control Experiment

The program was introduced in three stages: In Stage 1, the computer was used only as a registration instrument in order to establish the extent and nature of truancy; in Stage 2, control on truancy was introduced; and in Stage 3, the project operated as planned. In this paper, I will only present some results from the experimental school, although results from the first control school are comparable. A distinction was made between absences for unknown reasons and unpermitted absences: The first category means simple truancy, while the second category includes those who had some initial excuse, but this appeared not to be confirmed by parents or doctor. It appears from Table 3 that truancy control by telephoning parents is effective. From March 1987, the number of school absences diminished substantially, despite the fact that normally the number of hours absent grows over the school year. There were, however, some seasonal influences: The effects were

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567

Tab. 3: Number of Hours of Truancy and Unpermitted Absences 1st stage:

Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb.

1986: 1986: 1987: 1987:

5,872 6,598 8,066 7,461

2nd stage:

Mar. Apr. May June

1987: 1987: 1987: 1987:

4,944 3,341 1,990 3,181

3rd stage:

Sept. 1987: Oct. 1987: Nov. 1987: Dec. 1987:

4,427 2,379 2,546 2,903

strongest at the beginning of the school year in the 3rd stage, probably because at that time students had not yet reached a specific level of truancy. After the initial effects, there was a certain stabilization, followed by a slight increase of hours absent. In June, the increase was substantial because of different school events, such as examinations, sports days, and the like. Table 4 shows the reduction in student absenteeism during the same periods. Tab. 4:

Student Absenteeism During Experiment as a Percentage of the Sample (N = 535)

1st stage

Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb.

1986: 1986: 1987: 1987:

66.5 63.0 66.5 73.5

2nd stage

Mar. Apr. May June

1987: 1987: 1987: 1987:

66.5 55.0 56.5 56.5

3rd stage

Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec.

1987: 1987: 1987: 1987:

46.0 28.0 31.5 37.0

Looking at the number of students truanting, we note the same trend: There was a considerable reduction of students registered for truancy after the onset of the control experiment. This is the more remarkable when we know that in the course of the school year and approaching the holidays, truancy always

568

Josine Junger-Tas

increases. Again the effect was strongest in the 3rd stage, probably because the control started immediately after the summer holidays and habituation of truancy could not establish itself. Another approach is to calculate the average nwnber of truancy hours per month and per student. In this case, the interesting conclusion is that there was even a reduction in truancy hours among truants. The final measure was a school week average, independent of the total nwnber of absences (e.g., due to an influenza epidemic). Tab. 5:

Average Truancy Hours per Absent Student and per Month

1st stage

Nov. 1986: Feb. 1987:

8.38 8.86

2nd stage

Mar. 1987: June 1987:

6.71 8.50

3rd stage

Sep. 1987: Dec. 1987:

7.97 6.18

Figure 1 shows that these averages had substantially dropped since the start of the control of truancy. Before the introduction of the experiment, the average student truanted 1.41 hours per week; after its full introduction, the average truancy time was reduced to 0.49 hours per week. 2.0

hours

1.S

-

1.0

-

.5

-

\:t

1.41

.70

.49

nov.-febr.

mar.-june

sept.-dec.

tel truancy Fig. 1: A verage hours of truancy per week and student

School Drop-Out and Delinquency

569

Conclusion One of the interesting aspects of this quasi-experiment is its direct link to criminological theory. The truancy control program is an application of opportunity theory: It has led to a considerable reduction of truancy among those students who just took advantage of the opportunity to skip school. Supervision and control appear to be sufficient to influence the behavior of the average student. However, supervision and control of truancy are in themselves very limited interventions: They do not have an impact on school performance or on social behavior in the classroom. In other words, they do not promote the students' social integration in the school. When students have really serious problems, they continue to truant or drop out of school. For these students, other types of interventions of a more fundamental nature are needed. In addition, the student assistance part of the program is an application of social control theory. The bond with school and teachers is to be reinforced by measures of support and assistance to students with learning disorders and other problems; direct supervision of truancy and rapid intervention in the case of serious problems contribute to strengthening the commitment to education and to the value of a diploma. Both the program of truancy control and the special class have the purpose of improving involvement in school and preventing failure and dropout. Finally, both the direct control of truancy - in collaboration with parents - and the assistance offered to potential dropouts contribute to transferring essential social norms to students and integrating these young people in society.

Just how effective these interventions will be, both in terms of school integration and in terms of delinquency reduction, we cannot yet say. What can be said already is that this experiment represents one of the most thorough and most explicit efforts to promote the social integration of young people in Dutch society through the means of the educational system.

References Cellini, H.R., and Snowman, J. (1982). Learning disabilities and juvenile delinquents. Federal Probation, 46 (3), 26-32. Cohen, A. (1958). Delinquent boys, the culture of the gang. Glencoe: Free Press.

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Dalby, J.Th., Schneider, R.D., and Arboleda-Florez, J. (1982). Learning disorders in offenders. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 26 (2), 145-151. Dijksterhuis, F.P.H., and Nijboer, J.A. (1986). LBQ.onderwijs en Delinquentie. Groningen: Criminologisch Instituut Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Elliott, D.S., and Voss, H.L. (1974). Delinquency and dropout. TorontolLondon: Lexington. Glueck, S., and Glueck, E. (1950). Unraveling juvenile delinquency. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Farrington, D. (1980). Truancy, delinquency, the home and the school. In L. Herdor and I. Berg (Eds.), Out of school (pp. 49-64). Chichester: Wiley. Farrington, D.P. (1986). Stepping stones to adult criminal careers. In D. Olweus, J. Blok, and M.R. Yamour (Eds.), Development of antisocial and prosocial behavior. New York: Academic Press. Farrington, D.P., Gallagher, B., Morley, L., St. Ledger, RJ., and West, DJ. (1986). Unemployment, school leaving and crime. British Journal of Criminology, 26 (4), 335-356. Galloway, D. (1983). Truants and other absentees. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24 (4),607-611. Harlan, J.J.P., and McDowell, C.P. (1980). Vindictive vandalism and the schools: Some theoretical considerations. Journal of Police Science and Administration, 8 (4), 399-405. Hartnagel, T.F., and Tanner, J. (1982). Class, schooling and delinquency: A further examination. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 24 (2), 155 -172. Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hirschi, T., and Hindelang, M.J. (1977). Intelligence and delinquency: A revisionist review. American Sociological Review, 42 (4), 571-587. Junger-Tas, J. (1976). Verborgen jeugddelinquentie en gerechtelijke selectie. Brussel: Studiecentrum voor Jeugdmisdadigheid, publicatie nr. 38. Junger-Tas, J., and Junger, M. (1984). Juvenile delinquency behavior. The Hague: ROC, Ministry of Justice.

Backgrounds of delinquent

Junger-Tas, J., Junger, M., and Barendse-Hoornweg, E. (1985). Jeugddelinquentie II invloed van justitieel ingrijpen. 's-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij.

de

Junger-Tas, J., and Block, R.L. (1988). Causal factors: Social control theory. In J. Junger-Tas and R.L. Block (Eds.), Juvenile delinquency in the Netherlands (pp. 4175). Amstelveen and Berkeley, Ca.: Kugler Pub.. Kandel, B., Raveis, V.H., and Kandel, P.E. (1984). Continuity in discontinuities - Adjustment in young adulthood of former school absentees. Youth and Society, 15 (3), 325352. Menard, S., and Morse, B.J. (1984). A structuralist critique of the I.Q.-delinquency hypothesis: Theory and evidence. American Journal of Sociology, 89 (6), 1347 -1378. Mutsaers, M. (1988). Preventie-experiment in het LBO, deel I: de spijbelcontrole. 's-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij.

571

School Drop-Out and Delinquency

Nijboer, J.A., and Dijksterhuis, F.P.H. (1983). Onderwijs en delinquentie: de relatie tussen het functioneren op school en delinquentie. Groningen: Criminologisch Instituut Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Olweus, D. (1978). Aggression in the schools: Bullies and whipping boys. Washington D.C.: Wiley. Olweus, D. (1990). Bullying among school children. In K. Hurrelmann and F. LOseI (Eds.), Health hazards in adolescence (pp. 259-297). Berlin - New York: Walter de Gruyter. Ouston, J. (1984). Delinquency, family background and educational attainment. British Journal of Criminology, 24 (1), 2-26. Polk, H., and Schafer, W.C.S. (1972). Schools and delinquency. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Polk, H. (1975). Schools and the delinquency experience. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2 (4), 315-338. Polk, H. (1984). The new marginal youth. Crime and Delinquency, 30 (3),462-480. Rubel, R.I. (Ed.) (1978). HEW's safe school study. Maryland: Institute for Reduction of Crime. Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P., and Ouston, J. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours Secondary schools and their effects on children. London: Open Books. Rutter, M., and Giller, H. (1983). Juvenile delinquency Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Trends and perspectives.

Thornberry, T.P., Moore, M., and Christenson, R.L. (1985). The effect of dropping out of high school on subsequent deliquent behavior. Criminology, 23 (I), 3-18. Tygart, C.E. (1980). Student social structures and/or subcultures as factors in school crime: Toward a paradigm. Adolescence, 15, 13-22. Wolfgang, M., Figlio, R., and Sellin, T. (1972). Delinquency in a birth cohort. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zimmerman, J., Rich, W.P., Keilitz, I., and Broder, P.K. (1981). Some observations on the link between learning disabilities and juvenile delinquency. Journal of Criminal Justice, 9 (1), 1-17.

Moral Beliefs: Patterns of Crystallization and Individual Stability - Findings From a Panel Study Karl-Heinz Reuband

1.

Introduction

Behavior is the product of motivational and situational contingencies. Understanding it and its development therefore requires the inclusion of attitudes and situational opportunities into the research design. In the longitudinal research tradition in criminology, in contrast to the theoretical tradition, however, delinquency is usually explained only in the light of the earlier delinquency, the interventions by the criminal justice system, and the social characteristics of the offender. Attitudes and situational opportunities are neglected. In view of the available data - mostly documents in social control agencies - this is quite a "natural" approach. But even when interview data have been used, the basic approach has often been similar, and data on moral attitudes have hardly been assessed. Given the neglect of attitudinal data on deviance we know very little about their patterns of crystallization and individual stability. In the realm of political objects, studies have shown that a high rate of individual turnover exists even when the responses on the aggregate level are stable and short-time periods are covered. This has been interpreted as an indication of scarcely crystallized attitudes or "nonattitudes" (see Converse, 1964, 1970). Whether the same pattern applies to moral attitudes is beyond our knowledge. It could be argued that the findings of instability in political attitudes are due to the low political interest of most people. The less interest and reflection, the greater the instability. Moral attitudes, partially acquired early in childhood and youth and figuring prominently in day-to-day affairs, should be more crystallized and hence more stable. In the following we want to deal with the question of attitudinal crystallization, as assessed by the individual level of stability over time. We start with the hypothesis that longer held orientations are more crystallized and stable. Consequently, the moral evaluation of new types of offense should be more fluctuating than that of old ones. And younger respondents, given the shorter passage of time, should have less stable orientations than older respondents.

574

2.

Karl-Heinz Reuband

Methodology

Our analysis was based on a longitudinal study covering roughly half a year and using a general population sample rather than adolescents alone (as in most of criminological research). The offenses mainly consisted of those against the state and the public. Newly evolving types of offense, such as destruction of electricity masts and boycotting the census, were included. Some of the offense formulations were taken from a study by W. Kaupen (1973), the first nationwide study in West Germany on peoples' attitudes toward law and offenses. Other offense formulations were newly developed. The response categories used were identical to the Kaupen study: Respondents had to indicate whether they considered the type of offense to be "very bad", "somewhat bad", or "not so bad". The research was based on a random sample of the adult population of West Germany over the age of 18. The studt was performed in the midst of the public debate about the German census. The first panel wave was conducted by the GETAS institute in May 1987, shortly before the census started; the last wave in December 1987 after the data collection for the census was completed. The offenses were included in the first and the last wave; a few selected ones were additionally incorporated into the second wave. The number of respondents participating in all three waves was 1,192. Kendalls taUb coefficient is used as a measure of agreement in the following. It constitutes an appropriate instrument for ordinal responses and attains its highest value when all the responses are concentrated in the diagonal (see Galtung, 1970, p. 227; Meulemann, 1984, pp. 209-210).

3.

Aggregate and Individual-Level Stability

At the aggregate level, most offenses had a stable rating over time (see Table 1). Noteworthy differences, encompassing a difference of more than five percentage points, only concerned the census boycott offenses: In cases of boycotting the census, the moral evaluation had become more negative. Similar though smaller trends could be found for "giving false replies to the census interview". Given the fact that most of the public debate and campaigns focused on boycotting the census and not on cheating, the findings indicated that moral evaluations are susceptible to the contents of public campaigns, but that reevaluations are restricted to the specific objects of the debate. There was no spillover to other types of offense; no general strengthening of the public sentiment on crime and deviance.

575

Moral Beliefs Tab. 1:

Moral Evaluation of Offenses: Aggregate and Individual Stability

Offenses

Rating as "very bad, fairly bad" (in %) 1st 2nd 3rd wave wave wave

Difference (in % ) 1st vs. 3rd wave.

taub

Use of public transport without paying (1) Work without paying taxes (2)

60

65

+5%

.37

48

49

Tax evasion (3)

89

.33 .29

Damaging telephone (4) Damaging traffic sign (5)

98 80

98 81

+1% +1% 0%

93 59

Destruction of electricity pole (6) Blockade of traffic (7) Change of residence without registration (8) Boycotting of the census (9) Faking the census (10)

44

89

90

+1%

.28 .29

94 62

+1% +3%

.36 .37

50

.32 .41 .45

32

53 52

SO

+6% +18%

6S

76

72

+7%

1st wave: March-May 1987. 2nd wave: June-July 1987. 3rd wave: Nov. 1987-Jan. 1988

Note:

•

Correlation berween 1st and 3rd wave. taken as indiC8lOr of individual stability. is based on the three response categories "very bad". "fairly bad". and "IlOl so bad". "don't know" and "no answer" are excluded.

Appendix: Translation of the questionnaire Please look at these cards. Each card describes a situation or behavior. For each card. please state whether you personally consider the described behavior to be very bad. fairly bad. or IlOl so bad. ("Birte sehen Sie sich diese Kiinclten an. Auf jedem dieser Kirtclten ist eine Situation oder Verhaltensweise bescltrieben. Sagen Sie mir birte zu jedem Kirtclten. ob Sie personlich das bescltriebene Verhalten SeM sclt1imm, ziernlich sclt1imm oder nicht so schlimm linden".)

1. Somebody uses public transport without paying. ("Jemand flihrt absichdich ohne Fahrschein mit affentliclten Verkehrsmirteln wie Bus oder Balm"). 2. Somebody is moonlighting on weekends and does not pay taxes for his additional annual income of 5,000 OM (about $ 3.000). ("Jemand arbeitet am Wocltenende schwarz und versteuert sein Nebeneinlr.ommen von jahrlich 5000. - OM nicht"). 3. A businessman takes a part of his earnings, let us say OM 250.000. abroad in order to evade taxes. ("Ein Geschiiftsmann bringt einen Teil seines Vermogens, sagen wir Om 250.000. iDS Ausland. urn keine Steuem zahlen zu mOssen"). 4. Somebody wilfully desttoys the phone in a public telephone box. ("Jemand reiJlt mUIWillig in einer Telefonzelle den Harer abO). 5. A car driver damages a traffic sign when parking and drives off without reporting it. ("Ein Autofahrer knickt beim Einparken ein Verkehrsscltild urn und flihrt heimlich davon"). 6. An opponent of nuclear energy saws down an electricity mast. ("Ein Atomlr.raftgegner .agt einen Strommast abO). 7. Protesters block the rush-hour traffic on the freeway for half an hour. ("Demonstranten blockieren eine halbe Stunde lang den Berufsverkehr"). 8. Somebody has changed his residence without registering it with the authorities. ("Jemand ist umgezogen und hat sich nicht umgemeldet"). 9. Somebody does not complete the census questionnaire. ("Jemand fti11t den Fragebogen der Volksziihlung nicht aus"). 10. Somebody is intentionally giving false replies to the census interview. ("Jemand Mit den Fragebogen der Yolks· ziib)UDg absichtlich falsclt aus").

576

Karl-Heinz Reuband

As indicated by the taUb coefficient, a change of response was not unusual. But as further data showed, it did not seem to be totally random. When change occurred it tended to go to adjacent categories; transgressions to totally different 2 answers were rare. Contrary to our asswnptions, census offenses did not turn out to have the lowest individual stability. On the contrary: They had the highest. This was even more noteworthy, since aggregate stability was the lowest in this case, increasing the chance of individual change. Two points can be made out of this finding: Firstly, it is not only aggregate stability that is compatible with individual instability, as has been shown in the literature. Aggregate instability is also compatible with individual stability.3 And secondly: the recency of the offense does not reduce individual stability; it seems to increase it. Perhaps individual stability is greatest when people have recently thought about the issue regardless of how long it existed before. People might have given more thoughts to the less controversial topics in the past. The issues might have meanwhile faded out of their minds, leading to some kind of decrystallization of opinions. Possibly Elizabeth Bott's observations on how people construct their social-class conceptions are useful in this connection: According to her findings, people do not have ready-made answers in the interview. What takes place instead is an active memory search on the part of the respondent for experiences, attitudinal elements, and cognitions. These elements are then pulled together, made sense of, and structured into a coherent frame, as far as this is required by the interviewing task (Bott, 19S7, pp. 1S9 - 191). If such processes take place in other attitudinal areas apart from social-class conceptions, it would imply: The more often people have heard about a topic or talked with others about it, the more cognitions and argwnents have already been activated and structured into a consistent frame. Opinion crystallization in this way becomes a matter of past and present mobilization, dependent not only on an individual's characteristics but also on the prevailing social historical circwnstances. That processes of mobilization and reflection make up for greater attitudinal crystallization and stability is indicated by studies showing that attitudinal correlation tends to increase in panel studies from the first to the second wave (see Jagodzinski et al., 1987) and that attitudes tend to become more coherent during election campaigns (see Lazarsfeld et al., 1968, pp. xi, xxxviii).

577

Moral Beliefs

4.

Age and Individual Level Instability

It is a common assumption that younger people are especially prone to attitudinal change. They have had less experience with social reality and have undergone less cumulative socialization. The more time passes and the older they get, the more stable their attitudes are said to become (see, e.g., Mannheim, 1970, pp. 509-511). If one takes aggregate change over time as a yardstick, there is - although not without exceptions - in fact evidence for greater change among younger people (see, e.g., Glenn, 1974; Reuband, 1980a, pp. 548-550, 1988, p. 83). And if one studies data on party identifications on the individual level, the findings take the same direction: The older people are, the more often they consider themselves strongly attached to a party (see, e.g., Butler and Stokes, 1969, pp. 78-80; Converse, 1976, pp. 43-45). However, some reservations about these findings have to be made: Aggregate change must not necessarily run parallel to individual attitude change, as we have seen. And party strength might be a bad example, since party orientation is something that is enacted in the form of repeated voting and thereby reinforced again and again. Tab. 2:

Stability of Attitudes Toward Specific Offenses According to Age - lst Versus 2nd Panel Wave (taub Coefficient)

Offenses

Age 18-30

31-45

46-60

>60

Total

Use of public transport without paying (1)

.38

.31

.40

.29

.39

Work without paying taxes (2)

.37

.38

.29

.23

.33

Tax evasion (3)

.33

.25

.26

.11

.29

Damaging telephone (4)

.33

.26

.27

.22

.28

Damaging traffic sign (5)

.36

.28

.26

.26

.17

Destruction of electricity pole (6)

.35

.37

.28

.25

.36

Blockade of traffic (7)

.38

.43

.28

.28

.37

Change of residence without registration (8)

.33

.30

.25

.24

.32

Boycotting the census (9)

.46

.38

.42

.30

.41

Faking the census (10)

.46

.43

.42

.39

.45

578

Karl-Heinz Reuband

If we look at our data (Table 2), we find a pattern that deviates from the assumptions of time as a detenninant of attitudinal crystallization. Stability tended to decrease with age in most of the listed offenses. The fact that younger respondents had a higher level of education, which in turn makes for greater attitudinal stability, did not account for the pattern. It basically remained the same, even when the level of education was controlled. In order to understand the age relationship, perhaps one has to look at the same principles of mobilization as mentioned before. One might have to look at the time period when conscious confrontations take place with the topic under investigation. Crime and deviance are concentrated in young age (Farrington, 1986); with older age the rate decreases. Parallel to that, the reflections on the morality of these acts should vanish; morality being increasingly taken for granted and not made the object of debate. This might make for less consciously held attitudes. Moreover, it could be argued that the process of summarizing the attitudinal bits of information becomes more difficult as the number of experiences people make increases: Respondents might now think of the various situations in which they themselves or their acquaintances had been. They might think of the different actors who commit the offense and their possible motivations. In other words: There might evolve conflicting evidence among the older in favor of and against the act, creating some forms of cross-pressure and ambivalence in summarizing their position along the pregiven response categories. Although different in emphasis, the inherent mechansim is similar to the one mentioned before: Cognitive imbalance makes for instability as long as it has not recently become the object of reflection and been structured into a coherent cognitive frame. There were only a few exceptions to the prevalent age pattern, and two referred to the census offenses: In the case of boycotting the census, the age relationship was irregular; in the case of false reply, it was continuous but smallest in size. In fact there was nothing linking them to age-specific experiences and a process of "memory loss" (except indirectly due to political interest in it). Rather than being a contrast to our interpretation, the findings seemed consonant with it, given the different developments in time.

5.

Conclusions

What do the findings mean for the longitudinal study of deviant behavior? In order to understand behavior one cannot rely on attitudes assessed in earlier waves of the longitudinal study. One also has to look at those of the present in

Moral Beliefs

579

their different aspects. And one has to obtain access to the "deeper", latent form of thinking. Perhaps the stability in opinions is smaller, the less reflective the respondent is on this topic and the more conflicting evidence is held: People might think of various situations in which the specific act is performed, making it serious and somewhat less serious in their evaluation. If this is so, it would imply that we have to assess the prevailing, although vague, orientations that cut across the situation-specific attitudes. Multiple indicators for the same offense, but specified on a more specific level, could be a starting point in this direction. Instead of giving a global description, the various ways in which people come to practice the delinquent act have to be listed. Pulling together the separate evaluations should allow a more adequate assessment of the prevailing attitudinal orientation.

Notes The study was part of a large research program at the Zentralarchiv fUr empirische Sozialforschung (Cologne) focusing on the attitudes and participation of the German population in the 1987 census. (Project director: Prof. Dr. E.K. Scheuch; researchers: S. Kuhnel and L. Grif). The author was involved in the construction of the offense list. 2

In between 51 and 77% of the cases. the same response was given in the later wave. Given the three categories available in the interview schedule ("very bad", "fairly bad", "not so bad") and the marginal distribution, high rates of agreement might have been partially determined by chance. Under these circumstances, the correlation coefficient is more useful for indicating the level of agreement. Concerning the kind of change taking place in 7 out of the 10 offenses, the tendency was to go from a lenient evaluation ("not so bad") to a less lenient with increasing age. Respondents thus gave a more conservative reply. With regard to the severe rating ("very bad"), the turnover was less systematic. If there was a tendency, it entailed the younger respondents switching somewhat more often to a less serious rating. Older and younger respondents seemed to lean toward the climate of opinion that was characteristic in their age group. The shifts seemed to cancel each other out.

3

For a general discussion of individual and aggregate stability and instability see Reuband (1980b, p. 149).

References Bott, E. (1957). Family and social network. Roles, norms and external relationships in ordinary urban families. London: Tavistock.

Butler, D., and Stokes, D. (1969). Political change in Britain. Forces shaping electoral choice. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Karl-Heinz Reuband

Converse, P.E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D. Apter (Ed.), Ideology and discontent (pp. 206-261). New York: Free Press. Converse, P.E. (1970). Attitudes and non-attitudes. In E.R. Tufte (Ed.), The quantitative analysis of social problems (pp. 168-189). Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Converse, P.E. (1976). The dynamics of party support. Cohort analyzing party identification. Beverly HillslLondon: Sage. Farrington, D.P. (1986). Age and crime. In M. Tonry and N. Morris (Eds.), Crime and justice. Annual review of research (pp. 189-250). ChicagolLondon: University of Chicago Press. Galtung, J. (1970). Theory and methods of social research. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Glenn, N.D. (1974). Aging and conservatism. In Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 415, 176-186. Jagodzinski, W., Kiihnel, S.M., and Schmidt, P. (1987). Is there a "socratic effect" in nonexperimental panel studies? Consistency of an attitude towards guest workers. Sociological Methods and Research, 15, 259-302. Kaupen, W. (1973). Das Verhaltnis der Bevolkerung zum Recht in einer demokratischen Gesellschaft. In H. Steinert (Ed.), Der ProzeB der Kriminalisierung. Untersuchungen zur Kriminalsoziologie (pp. 27-50). Munchen: Juventa. Lazarsfeld, P., Berelson, B., and Gaudet, H. (1968). The people's choice. New York/London: Columbia University Press. Mannheim, K. (1970). Wissenssoziologie. BerlinlNeuwied: Luchterhand. Meulemann, H. (1984). Gemeinsamer Alltag - geteilte Perspektiven? Die Ubereinstimmung zwischen Mann und Frau in einer repriisentativen Befragung von Ehepaaren. In H. MeuJemann and K.H. Reuband (Eds.), Soziale Realitiit im Interview (pp. 207-239). Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Reuband, K.H. (198Oa). Sanktionsverlangen im Wandel. Die Einstellung zur Todesstrafe in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit 1950. Kolner Zeitschrift fUr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 32, 535-558. Reuband, K.H. (198Ob). Life histories. Problems and prospects of longitudinal designs. In J. Clubb and E.K. Scheuch (Eds.), Historical social research (pp. 135-163). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Reuband, K.H. (1988). Von iiuBerer Verhaltenskonformitiit zu selbstiindigem Handeln. Uber die Bedeutung kuJtureller und struktureller Einfliisse fiir den Wandel in den Erziehungszielen und Sozialisationsinhalten. In H.O. Luthe und H. Meulemann (Eds.), Wertewandel - Faktum oder Fiktion? (pp. 73-97). FrankfurtlNew York: Campus.

Simulation Models in the Analysis of Panel Data New Ways of Predictive Theory Formation m Longitudinal Social Research Klaus Peter Strohmeier

1.

Introduction

"Analyzing change" (Plewis, 1985) is the purpose of most empirical social research, longitudinal and cross-sectional. In the logic of scientific inquiry, post-factum explanations of change are also conditional forecasts of future change. In the first part of this paper, I will demonstrate how microsimulation (a forecasting strategy) can be used as a tool for (explanatory) theory formation if applied to a multiwave panel. This approach, developed in longitudinal research on early family development, can be generalized and applied to other fields such as evaluation research. However, the fact that modeling and forecasting require a specific quality of data input is frequently neglected. Data collection techniques are the stepchildren of social scientific methodology. A brief discussion based on concrete research experience of the advantages and limitations of the most prominent techniques of collecting longitudinal survey data, the panel and the retrospective event history, will be appended.

2.

Description of the Study

The modeling approach presented here has been developed in the course of a three-wave panel survey on "family development in North Rhine-Westphalia" (Kaufmann et al., 1984, 1988; Grunwald et al., 1988; Strohmeier et al., 1985). Data were collected in two rural and two urban districts in the West German state of North Rhine-Westphalia between 1981 and 1986. Objectives of the study were: (a) identification of factors explaining family foundation and the earlier phases of family development, and (b) integration of these findings into

582

Klaus Peter Strohmeier

a multivariate dynamic model with prognostic capacity, the unit of forecasting being the individual (couple, family) and not - as in conventional demographic projections - the demographic aggregate. The original sample consisted of 2,620 women of cohorts 1952 to 1963 interviewed directly; we have written interviews with male partners of 60% of the women in each wave. The female sample had reduced to 1,054 respondents after the third interview; the reason for this relatively high panel mortality being mainly systematic. Specific legal regulations ("Datenschutzgesetz NW") require all respondents to sign a written agreement permitting the storage of their address for further interviewing. During a period of great public debate about the 1987 national census, this signature was frequently refused (after the first wave, the panel was thus reduced by approx. 1,000). Sample-size reduction did not, however, produce serious disproportions in the composition of the sample in subsequent waves. Panel mortality would definitely have been higher if we had not displayed an "open information policy" during the course of the project by delivering especially designed descriptive project information to the respondents before every new interview and - if requested - sending intermediary publications to respondents to demonstrate what was actually being done with the information delivered to us. Response rates increased over the three waves.

3.

MicrosimuJation

During the course of the projf'ct, four generations of a microsimulation model were developed. This paper will only refer to the last version. In practice, microsimulation is most prominently used as a forecasting strategy. This application is illustrated in Figure 1. The principle is that a set of properties of each individual in a sample is "forecasted" over a model period to construct a hypothetical sample from the future. Applications (e.g., calculation of future social service expenditures) are discussed in Grunwald et al. (1988) and Vetterle (1986). Most of the models used so far are not explanatory but, instead, operate on the basis of a "Monte Carlo lottery": A priori probabilities for individual status changes, like having a child, getting married, or death, are derived from aggregate population statistics, and individuals are assigned their new status whenever their values on a random number generator fall within the ranges of their a priori probability.

Simulation Models

S83

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -> "Socioeconomic process"

(1)

Sampling

"Inference"

Stochastic projection of sample-elements by microsimulation model

(2)

(3)

Projected sample with selected variables

I

t

+

1

I

see Galler 1983

Fig. 1: Microsimulation mcx1eJ

In contrast, our approach is explanatory and much stricter: Future values of dependent variables, that is, the probabilities of individual status changes to be simulated, are estimated from a function containing the actual value of the same variable plus the effects of a set of explanatory variables x:

The basic idea is to estimate the probability that an individual will change his status from to to tl from a set of equations containing explanatory variables at to. The dependent variables are: (a) parity (Le., number of children); (b) occupational status (Le., housewife/unemployed, working on a job, in education); (c) partner status (Le., single, separated, cohabitation, married couple). Explanatory variables XI had to meet a strict methodological requirement: To be incorporated into the model, their future values had to be predictable, that is, their change in discrete time had to be modeled. Quite a number of popular demographic cause-effect assumptions were ruled out that way (because nobody could say how the assumed causes would change over time).

In this strategy, explanations of changes in the dependent variables along discrete time intervals are taken as conditional forecasts of future changes including forecasts of the explanatory factors themselves. The model is differentiated into several "modules" in which future dependent statuses are assigned to the individuals.

S84

Klaus Peter Strohmeier

Housewife

Employment

Vocational

Training

'"P

po

P

(Employed) (Housewife)

-p

P'

(Employed) (Trainee) (Housewife)

Single

~ (Employed) ~ (Housewife)

Married

Cohabilation

P'

(wilhout/ no Panner) ~ cohabilation 1l' (Marriage)

1l'

'P'

(without/no Partnerl Cohabilation) (Marriage)

o

Extrapolation of explanatory variables

Fig. 2: MicrosimuJatioD model

2

S8S

Simulation Models

4.

Microsimulation With Panel Data

If we apply this model to the sample interviewed in the first round, we can construct "hypothetical samples" for the two subsequent waves. Forecasting results can be checked against the "true" changes in the real samples interviewed in panel waves two and three. This strategy is described in Figure 3.

It is obvious that forecasts based on explanatory hypotheses about the behavior of individuals (in a relatively small sample) have to face a higher risk of falsification than, for example, the numerically quite precise but not at all explanatory demographic macromodels. Our interest, thus, has not been to

>

v

SIr- p I

I

t1

t2

1981/82

1983/84

ca. 2 years 51 : sample at fIrSt measurement S2 : sample at second measurement S3 : sample at third measurement S2' : hypothetical sample at second measurement S3' : hypothetical sample at third measurement F M : Monte-Carlo forecasting V : comparison of simulated variable combinations with observed values p : predictors and parameters for model changes from 51 to S2 ~t

Fig. 3: MicrosimulatioD of three wave panel

I

t 3 time

1986

586

Klaus Peter Strohmeier

perform exact demographic prognostication but to use forecasting results as an empirical test of sociological explanation. Combining panel data analysis and microsimulation promises to be an efficient strategy of theory formation, especially in a field like ours in which, as yet, ideology and simple bivariate cause-effect models abound and empirically confirmed solid knowledge is scarce. This paper concentrates on a presentation of the general research strategy and modeling approach chosen, necessarily leaving in-depth presentation of research results to the project literature cited. Figure 3 describes the general strategy: Comparing our first two samples S, and S2' we can observe changes of individuals on the dependent categorical variables "parity", "partner status", and "occupational status". These "real " changes are used to estimate parameters (P) in a set of logit-regression equations (see Sensch, 1988) by which each individual's probability of staying in the initial status or changing to another status (by, e.g., birth of a child) is calculated. These probabilities are the basis of subsequently assigning individuals their hypothetical future status values at t2 by microsimulation. Having done this, plus the forecasting of explanatory variables (e.g., by incrementation or regression) for each individual (Fm), we have a complete hypothetical sample at t2 , S' 2. This hypothetical sample will then undergo the same procedure again for the next modeling period using the same equations and parameters. The result is a "second order hypothetical sample" S'3 after the second model period. The last step in this strategy is validation (V) of simulation results by comparing the predicted changes in S'3 to the "real" developments observable with S3 at t3 • Correspondence of prediction and reality is a test of the explanatory power of l the underlying causal hypotheses. With respect to the "parity" variable, for example, our first attempts have already led to acceptable results (see Table 1). Tab. 1:

Simulated and Factual Number of Children in 1986 2

0 316 42.3

179 24.0

209 28.0

43 5.7

%

342 45.8

195 26.1

195 26.1

15 2.0

n %

+26 +8.2

+16 +8.9

-14 -6.7

-28 -65.2

Faetual number of children

%

Simulated number of children Deviation

3 and more

D

D

Simulation Models

587

Only third children are dramatically underestimated (a problem also experienced by other microanalytic researchers). As to the other dependent statuses, partner status and occupational status, results differ and are not yet satisfactory. Tab. 2:

Simulated and Factual Partner Status in 1986 of Respondents Unmarried in 1981

Factual status Simulated status Deviation

Tab. 3:

n % n % n %

Single

Cohabitating

168 49.6 156 46.0 -12 - 7.2

58 17.1 68 20.1 +10 +17.2

Married 113 33.3 115 33.9 +2 + 1.8

Simulated and Factual Employment Status in 1986 Employed

Vocational training

Housewife unemployed

Factual employment status

n %

402 54.2

53 7.1

287 38.7

Simulated employment status

n %

284 38.3

64 8.6

394 53.1

Deviation

n %

-118 - 28.4

+11 +20.8

+107 + 37.3

An important reason for this is that, in the actual model version, we have strictly excluded all "subjective" variables (attitudes, orientations, etc.) as predictors, although we know from earlier model versions that these are very important determinants of behavior (Strohmeier, 1985). But so far we have not been able to model the dynamics of attitudinal change, and following the rule that values of explanatory variables should also be forecasted, we have only used "hard" indicators, such as age, education, duration of marriage, and so forth, as predictors in the current version. If we consider, however, that, for example, getting married today is much more likely to be based on subjective feelings like "romantic love" than on hard facts, the reduction of the set of 2 explanatory factors appears artificial. Although the remaining predictors produce stable significant parameters over two periods, they are not yet the best predictors.

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The advantage of our approach is, nevertheless, that it can be repeated iteratively, gradually improving the initial prognostic hypotheses and parameter estimates. The approach is a combination of deductive and exploratory research. Deductive, because we start with a set of predefined interrelated hypotheses (though the first and worst to be found in the literature are already ruled out in the first step of multivariate parameter estimation);3 exploratory, because iteratively the full information in the longitudinal data set will be exploited to achieve the best possible theoretical understanding of the working of strategic factors in developmental processes (tested by forecasting).

5.

Further Applications: Evaluation Research

The idea of linking simulation to a panel can be extended to other fields of sociological research, such as program evaluation. Regarding the purpose and potentials of sociological evaluation, two initial assumptions should be accepted: 1. The quality of prognostication is not only measured by its capacity to forecast what will happen but mainly by its ability to say why and under which conditions it will happen. 2. The objective of evaluation research is not just to prove that a "treatment" has or has not produced the intended or assumed effeet(s) but to identify which effects it had at all (irrespective of goals) and how these effects came into existence. It is furthermore assumed that politicians (should) also have an interest in knowing how their programs work. Evaluation as "meaningful social research" (see Kaufmann and Strohmeier, 1981) delivers empirically grounded theory that identifies the working mechanisms of social intervention. The methodological debate among evaluation researchers was dominated up to the late 1970s by the search for approximations to the perceived ideal of the experimental design in the natural science (see Wollmann and Hellstern, 1978). Regularly, however, political intervention in the Federal Republic is not experimental but based on legislation, making sure that everybody fulfilling necessary conditions can benefit from a program and nobody can be excluded (who could be assigned to a "control group"). In the general methodological debate, Rene Konig was quite early in pointing out that all scientific inquiry is based on "experimentation" as a fundamental research strategy with a variety of discipline-specific and problem-adequate technical realizations, ranging from the natural scientific experiment to Max Weber's "Gedankenexperiment". The

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application of a specific technique as "meaningful social research" (Kaufmann and Strohmeier, 1981) is decided by its problem-adequacy. It can be shown that, for a number of evaluative research problems, microsimulation (linked to panel data) can, indeed, be a feasible problem-adequate strategy of "experimentation". A few basic possibilities of application will be outlined in this section. I will limit this description to the evaluative potentials in my own data set and simulation model. It should, however, be noted that other applications are conceivable when using other data (e.g., clinical or institutional records, or the microcensus). Evaluation research differs from basic research in the type of variables used: Explanatory variables (at least, one) in evaluation research are "political" or "policy-induced" variables. It has been one of the important results of the project that "family development" is a process that cannot be influenced directly by (e.g., "pro-natalist") "population policy". The predictors for the birth of the first child and for the second child (in the respective modules of our simulation model) are: First child: type of place of residence (e.g., tertiary agglomeration) occupational qualification of respondent general school level of respondent age of woman at household formation age of husband at marriage duration of marriage Second child: place of residence (see above) duration of residence general school level of respondent general school level of respondent's parents number of siblings of respondent age of respondent age of woman at household formation age of first child A detailed interpretation is given in Grunwald et al. (1988). Some of these factors are indicators for subjective phenomena or for certain qualitative properties of the partner system (see Sirnm, 1987), none of them is a "political" or directly "policy-induced" variable, although some variables, like the educational or occupational qualification of women, historically speaking, do

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express effects of a "democratization" of life chances (Strohmeier, 1988). The estimation of possible demographic impacts of all sorts of political action ("demographische Politikfolgenabschatzung") is a new issue in demography and social policy research in Germany. Simulation can, in this context, be used as an ex ante and ex post evaluation method. In the preceding sections, we have described a strategy for improving the explanatory power of a model by iteratively increasing its predictive capacity. Given a model with sufficient explanatory properties, we can deliberately manipulate it. This idea resembles Weber's "Gedankenexperiment", although it allows for more complex and quantifiable insights into direct and related consequences of manipulating one or more variables. We could test the consequences of either changing the values of strategic variables or adjusting their relative weight by changing their parameters.

First Children (Examples) As other researchers have also confirmed (Klijzing, 1988), there is no direct causal effect of women's labor force participation on the probability of the birth of the first child (our model does, in fact, consider that, due to bare necessity, causality goes the other way around). But there is an effect of occupational qualification. An increase in the quality of female labor force participation can be observed especially in the postwar cohorts. Several ways of performing evaluative simulation of future trends are conceivable: 1. Estimation of the impact of an overall increase in the occupational qualification level (by raising each individual's qualification level) on family formation. 2. Estimation of the impact of a compensatory increase of qualification; in this case, only lower levels would be raised to some critical value. 3. Estimation of the effects of no further change, that is, occupational levels are kept as constants over the simulation period. In all three examples, general school level would have to be manipulated together with occupational qualification. In each case, comparison of simulation results (n of first children) with the "real" values in the panel data would be a measurement of expected change. Other applications can be related more directly to political intervention: 4. Using the explanatory variables listed above, we could, for example, do an

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ex ante evaluation of the effect on family formation of a legal reform abolishing discrimination against nonmarita/ cohabition. Cohabitating couples could be included into the "first-child module" by using household formation as the relevant event in the "age of husband at marriage" - and "duration of marriage" - variables. S. Finally, the ecological variable could be substituted by local infrastruetural or labor market indicators that could be manipulated to estimate the effects of alternative infrastructural or labor market policies on family formation.

Second Children (Examples)

1. The last mentioned experiment could also be performed in the "secondchild module". 2. Manipulation of "place of residence" and "duration of residence" enable us to simulate the potential effects of different types of mobility (as the only politically tangible demographic behavior) on family expansion.

Furthermore, the structure of predictors for the second child allows us to demonstrate another evaluation potential of microsimulation: Where real control groups (sometimes due to the nature of the process under study) do not exist, we can construct them as "hypothetical" samples. This application can be used in ex ante and ex post evaluation: The democratization of education (after the mid-1960s) is part of a "modernization" process (Kaufmann, 1988) that has led to Europe's "second demographic transition" (van de Kaa, 1987) - with reproduction below replacement level and a deinstitutionalization of marriage and the family (Strohmeier, 1988). In our "second-child module" we are able to (at least, tentatively) model the hypothetical impact of a "nondemocratization" of the educational system on actual family development:

1. Each individual female respondent would be given the same general education level as her mother, or: 2. Each individual's general education should not exceed the highest level in the parents' generation, and so forth. Only these reactionary variants would probably lead to hypothetically larger families than observed. (None of these suggested manipulations has so far been applied empirically to our own model and data set, the project's objective having been to understand what is going on and not to suggest manipulations of

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birth rates.) All fonner examples would more or less result in a continuation of actual family development trends. It should finally be noted that manipulations, like the ones suggested, would, due to the interrelatedness of "modules", not only affect the "children modules" but also other variables. In general, evaluation research could use microsimulation models as an adequate fonnalization of cause-effect and related hypotheses. Hypothetical effects of a "treatment" and also the effects of "no treatment" can be simulated and, by comparison to multiwave panel data, be validated.

6.

Design and Data

Three predominant approaches are known in quantitative survey methodology: Apart from cross-sectional interviewing (chosen most frequently for pragmatic and economic reasons), there are two modes of collecting longitudinal data: the panel (repeated interviewing of an identical sample in discrete time intervals) and the collection of retrospective life event histories. The only longitudinal research operation is the panel; cross-sectional and retrospective surveys are single-round surveys. The analytical and prognostic deficiencies of crosssectional analysis are well-known and obvious. Davies (1987) summarizes them as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

No distinction of age and cohort effects on behavioral or attitudinal items; ambiguities in causality; omission of explanatory variables "omitted outcomes", that is, unobserved alternative/indirect effects of explanatory variables.

As Hoffmann-Nowotny and Hopflinger (1985) quite rightly state (in defence of the explanatory and prognostic value of their cross-sectional material), these critical questions can also be put to longitudinal approaches. I will, instead of continuing to attack the cross-sectional design, try a comparison of the panel and the retrospective strategy by taking up Davies' "ambiguities in causality" and "omission of explanatory variables" arguments and adding a few remarks on general validity. Blossfeld et al. (1986), in a textbook on event history analysis, rank the order of research designs according to the comprehensiveness of processual information obtainable.

593

Simulation Models Stages of career

Illness Unemployment Job 4

•

Job 3 Job 2 Job 1

Training Timet

Stages of career

Faur-_~

•

Illness

•

Unemployment Job 4

•

Job 3 Job 2

•

Job I

Training Time

t

Stages of career

Illness Unemployment Job 4 Job 3 Job 2 Job I

Training

Fig. 4:

~

Coverage of a person's occupational and educational career by means of crosssectional. panel. and event-history interviews

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This qualitative ranking is the inverse of a rank order by frequency of use. Only retrospective event histories give full coverage of a time period t with respect to (in the example) the different occupational and educational statuses taken by an individual, the duration of statuses, and the timing of status changes. The event history in Figure 4 does not contain any blind spots within the observational period ("left" and "right" censoring are a different problem). In contrast, panel data on the same items appear as a series of snapshots of individual respondents' actual situations at different measurement times, with dark periods in between the photo sessions, with unobserved moves and unknown statuses in the dark phases.

This comparison, however, considers the "ideal type" of design. Practically, cross-sectional and panel surveys will also contain retrospective information on status change and duration (e.g., "When did you get married?"). In my own project, we have retrospectively collected complete fertility, migration, and occupational histories, most of them repeatedly, in a three-wave panel. Comprehensive information on the duration of different processes in continuous time is an essential for analyzing processual interdependencies (as demonstrated in Huinink's paper). This comprehensive information is, however, incomplete regarding its potenial for: 1. Analyzing subjective dimensions of change and development, that is, attitudinal or motivational variables, intentions, expectations, values, or social norms (there is a systematic omission of this type of explanatory variable in retrospective interviews). Attempts to analyze retrospectively collected (migration) motives (Wagner, 1985) do not appear too encouraging. 2. Omission of subjective variables will also limit the potential of identifying other than temporal (e.g., causal) interdependencies. A specific temporal order of events is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of causality. 3. Furthermore, recall error in retrospective event data is regularly underestimated. In consequence data can be wrong though overtly complete. To illustrate criticisms (1) and (2), I would like to use an example: Imagine a girl who after leaving school at age 14 (the legal school-leaving age some decades ago) has stayed at home, never entering a job or going through further training, who has looked after her elderly parents and her younger siblings while living on their income. Event history reconstruction might have (as is conventionally done in fertility surveys) started at age 15 (leaving school would,

Simulation Models

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thus, be a left-censored event) and ended at age 45, when our woman's parents would still be alive, though now very old. Consequently this person would not be able to report any events - she would not have lived in the eyes of event history methodology (no spells in Figure 4). On the other hand, her depressing life may have driven her to terminate it by murder or suicide some time after the interview(right-censored event). We would not know. The subjective elements of our female person's overtly eventless life, her "biography" (plus the right-censored tragedy) could be excellent material for a novel or TV documentary on her changing mental constitution in an empty life. The term "biography" (in contrast to life course) denotes a chain of subjective changes, experiences, expectations, or frustrations that go with and sometimes explain "objective" events. Matthes et al. (1981) claim the subjective dimension of developmental processes as the domain of qualitative "biography research", criticizing the pseudo-objective enumeration of events in quantitative life history analysis. We need not go that far, because - if we accept quantification of subjective variables - it is obvious that even the old cross-sectional interview and, of course, the panel, applying the same data collection procedure, can easily collect subjective variables. Panel data do also allow the analysis of subjective change over (discrete) time. Omissions of a whole set of potentially powerful variables do not only result in a comprehensive collection of event histories as processual surface data, but are also troublesome for causal analysis. Motives, intentions, and subjective reactions to objective conditions are important predictors of individual behavior. These factors are systematically overlooked in event history data. In a more complete though yet unfinished version of our actual simulation model (Strohmeier, 1985), the most important predictors of first, second, and further births inbetween our three panel waves were subjective variables, like the women's occupational and family orientation, the "value of children", or qualitative dynamic properties of the partner system. With respect to the relevance of subjective factors in a process event history, data only allow the generation of hypotheses but not their testing. Consequently the advantage of comprehensiveness of information on interdependent processes in continuous time goes with a systematic exclusion of a whole set of variables with potentially high relevance for causal analyses.

Finally a few comments on measurement (or recall) error and the possiblity of cross-validation should be made. Retrospective interviewing is the only technique making use of the fact that respondents are the most competent

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reporters of events in their own lives. The problem, however, is to make sure that the respondent's report is organized along the same chronological order in chronological time as the researcher's. In the literature on demographic event history research (see the review in Hobcraft and Murphy, 1987), we find the regular remark that data (after edition and correction, which are sometimes performed by computers) are practically free of recall error with events (some of them decades before the interview) dated to the month (Blossfeld et al., 1986). The meaning of this, however, is only that timing and sequencing of life-time events recorded are plausible, not that events are placed correctly in chronological time. Sometimes researchers choose shorter "window" periods (like the last 7 years; cf. Klijzing, 1988) to avoid recall errors with events too long ago. But even with very "fresh" events it can be demonstrated that "recall error" occurs quite frequently, provided that retrospective data are collected in a multiround (panel) design, which conventionally is not the case. The sources of recall error are differentiated. We have repeatedly collected retrospective event histories (fertility, partner "career", occupation, migration) in the three waves of our project on early family formation, using the same set of questions in intervals of 2 years. Table 4 contains the comparison of answers that we obtained from a fairly "normal" (non-"alternative") subsample of 510 young women, married to the same partner in 1981 and 1983, with at least one child in 1983. The questions were about the most recent family events. Tab. 4:

Proponions of Identical Information About Dates of Family Events (Month and Year) in Two Successive Interviews (dt = 2 Years) by Type of Event Month

+

Year

Year

Birth of 1st child

88.3%

93.5%

First contact with spouse/partner

30.1%

55.6%

Formation of actual household

48.6%

72.9%

Data of marriage (actual partner)

75.8%

87.1%

510

510

N

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These deviations have three sources, of which true "error" is but one. The others have to do with the measurement situation itself and the social context in which it occurs: 1. Inspection of the raw material shows that sequences of events are repeatedly reported in an identical logical order but with transformations in chronological time sometimes exceeding 2 years. This should indicate that respondents do not necessarily organize their biographic experience by an objective chronological time but use their own subjective or "biographic" time scale. 2. Quite frequently the order of events changes, both alternative versions are plausible: Incidence and duration of premarital cohabitation, for example, can be calculated as the difference between the "age" of the household and the duration of marriage. Positive differences indicate cohabitation. Five percent of the respondents in our subsample have valid, that is, identical positive differences in both interviews; 17% report a nonidentical positive difference (see above); 2% perform an identical negative difference (marriage before household formation); and 1 % show nonidentical negative values. But 24.4% of all respondents produce values with different signs after 2 years (Le., positive, negative, or one value zero the other not) on our cohabitation variable, indicating not just an uncertainty in the duration of premarital cohabitation but a qualitative shift in the type of household . reported .4 unIon The observed differences in the 1981 and 1983 retrospective data subsets are by no means negligible, although an ordinary single round retrospective survey would not have discovered them. Repetitive panel interviewing is, thus, an advisable strategy for validating retrospective event histories. Obviously there are physical (for the respondents) and economic (for the researchers) limitations preventing too many repetitions. To summarize this chapter, the hierarchy depicted in Figure 4 is correct only with respect to a very limited field of application: the reconstruction of the visible features of social processes and the modeling of their interdependencies. But even here, the "best" design yields better results if the "second best" research strategy is used with it. The particular strength of the panel is its capacity to collect subjective variables and to follow their change over (at least) discrete time. A relatively optimal research design in the field of individual life course and family development research would be a combination of both retrospective plus "ordinary" interviewing in a multi-round panel with relatively short intervals between the waves to make sure that subjective variables are measured as closely as possible to the events to which they refer.

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Notes 1 Bad forecasts, however, do not necessarily imply that a model is bad. Sometimes reality behaves differently than assumed in a model (e.g., general change, period effects). In our case we had stable parameters from Sl to S2 and from S2 to S" which indicates no general periodic change. 2

A special research project on the biographic dynamics of attitudinal change is in preparation.

3

We found, for example, that the most popular political intervention in the family, money, has nothing to do with the decision to become a mother or a father, but it is still one of the problems that mothers and fathers have.

4 In these cases, the second measurement reveals more premarital cohabitation than the fIrSt. Most respondents were interviewed by the same (female) interviewer in each round. After the fIrSt interview, respondents had been given information about descriptive results.

References Blossfeld, H.-P., Hamerle, A., and Mayer, K.-U. (1986). Ereignisdatenanalyse. Statistische Theorie und Anwendung in den Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften. FrankfurtlM.: Campus. Davies, R.B. (1987). The limitations of cross sectional analysis. In R. Crouchley (Ed.), Longitudinal Data Analysis (pp. 1-15). Aldershot: Avebury. Galler, H.P. (1983). Mikrosimulationsmodelle als demographische Planungsgrundlage. In H. Birg (Ed.), Demographische Entwicklung und gesellschaftliche Planung (pp. 143-178). Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Grunwald, M., Schiebel, B., and Strohmeier, K.P. (1988). Familienentwicklung in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Modellierung und Mikrosimulation mit Paneldaten. Materialien des Instituts fUr BevOlkerungsforschung und Sozialpolitik, Nr. 27, University of Bielefeld. Hellstern, G.M., and Wollmann, H. (1978). SanierungsmaBnahmen. Stiidtebauliche und stadtstrukturelle Wirkungen. Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Schriftenreihe Stadtentwicklung des Bundesministers ffir Raumordnung, Bauwesen und Stiidtebau. Hobcraft, J., and Murphy, M. (1987). Demographic event history analysis: A selective review. In R. Crouchley (Ed.), Longitudinal data analysis. Surrey conferences on sociological theory and method (pp. 16-58). Aldershot: Avebury. Hoffmann-Nowotny, H.-J., and Hopflinger, F. (1985). Zur politischen und prognostischen Tragweite einer Ehepaarbefragung in der Schweiz. In J. Schmid and K. Schwarz (Eds.), Politische und prognostische Tragweite von Forschungen zum generativen Verhalten (pp. 141-169). Wiesbaden: DBGW.

Kaa, D. van de (1987). Europe's second demographic transition. Population Bulletin. Vol. 42, No.1. Washington D.C.: Population Reference Bureau, Inc..

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Kaufmann, F.-X. (1988). Familie und Modernitlit. In K. Liischer, F. Schultheis, and M. Wehrspaun (Eds.), Die "post-moderne" Familie. Familiale Strategien und Familienpolitik im Ubergang (pp. 391-415). Konstanz: Universititsverlag. Kaufmann, F.-X., and Strohmeier, K.P. (1981). Evaluation as meaningful social research. In R.A. Levine, M.A. Solomon, G.-M. Hellstern, and H. Wollmann (Eds.), Evaluation research and practice. Comparative and international perspectives (pp. 132-148). Beverly HiUslLondon: Sage. Kaufmann, F.-X., Strohmeier, K.P., Quitmann, 1., Schulz, M., and Simm, R. (1984). Familienentwicklung in Nordrhein-Westfalen - Sozia1riwnliche Kontexte, Modellierung und Mikrosimulation. lBS-Materialien, Nr. 17, University of Bielefeld. Kaufmann, F.-X., Strohmeier, K.P., Buhr, P., Grunwald, M., Schiebel, B., Simm, R., and Strack, P. (1988). Partnerbeziehungen und Familienentwicklung in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Generatives Verbalten im sozialen und regionalen Kontext. Heft 50 d. Schriftenreihe des Ministerpriisidenten des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, DUsseldorf. Klijzing, F.K.H. (1988). Beruf undloder Kinder? Ergebnisse einer Retrospektivbefragung in den Niederlanden. In A. Herlth and K.P. Strohmeier (Eds.), Lebenslauf und Familienentwicklung. Mikroanalysen des Wandels familialer Lebensformen. Leverkusen: Leske. Matthes, 1., Pfeifenberger, A., and Sto8berg, M. (Eds.). (1981). Biographie in handlungswissenschaftlicher Perspektive, Niirnberg: Verlag der Niirnberger Forschungsvereinigung. Plewis, I. (1985). Analysing change. Measurement and explanation using longitudinal data. Chichester: Wiley. Sensch, 1. (1988). Okonometrische ModeUe mit qualitativen abhingigen Variablen. lBS Materialien, Nr. 27, University of Bielefeld. Simm, R. (1987). Partnerschaftsdynamik und Familienentwicklung. Die interne Dynamik von Partner- und Familiensystemen und ihre strukturellen Bedingungen und Foigen. lBS Materialien, Nr. 26, University of Bielefeld. Strohmeier, K.P. (1985). Familienentwicklung in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Generatives Verbalten im sozialen und regionalen Kontext. Heft 47 d. Schriftenreihe des Ministerprasidenten des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, DUsseldorf. Strohmeier, K.P. (1988). Geburtennickgang aIs Ausdruck von Gesellschaftswandel. Soziologische Erklarungsversuche der BevOlkerungsentwicklung in der Bundesrepublik. In: Bevolkerungsentwicklung und Bevolkerungspolitik in der Bundesrepublik. "Biirger im Staat", Vol. 1081 (pp. 55-83). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Strohmeier, K.P. Schulz, M., and Kaufmann, F.-X. (1985). ModeUierung und Mikrosimulation von Prozessen der Familienentwicklung. In 1. Schmid, and K. Schwarz (Eds.), Politische und Prognostische Tragweite von Forschungen zum generativen Verhalten (pp. 170-208). Wiesbaden: Deutsche Gesellschaft fUr Bevolkerungswissenschaft e.V. Vetterle, H., (1986). Konstruktion und Simulation mikroanalytischer Modelle. Augsburg: Maro. Wagner, M., (1985, November). Wanderungen im Lebensverlauf. Paper presented at the Symposium "Modellierung und Prognose demographischer Prozesse", University of Bielefeld, lBS.

The Analysis of Interdependent Social Processes The Example of Life-Course Analysis Johannes Huinink

1.

Introduction

Over the last years there have been notable theoretical, methodological, and empirical advances in the study of social processes. It is not possible to give an exhaustive overview here. Various aspects will be covered by other presentations in this volume. I will deal with two main issues in my contribution. First, I will probe a central problem in dynamic analysis or longitudinal research that has implications for the following question: How can we analyze interdependence between different domains in individual-level or social processes? And, how can we analyze interdependence between an individual-level process and social, political, and economic, that is, macro-level processes? Second, I will focus on the usage of longitudinal data obtained through retrospective design as opposed to pure panel design, the other method of acquiring longitudinal data. In almost every empirical study there are retrospective data: in the simplest case, the birth date of the respondents or information on the parental family. However, the aim of retrospective analysis is to secure complete event histories or life-history data. It is important to discuss the advantages and problems of this strategy. Third, I will introduce the concepts of event-history analysis, one prominent approach analyzing interdependent social processes. Finally, I will present an example for modeling interdependence of job career and birth of children in the female life course and demonstrate a technique for analyzing it.

2.

From Simple to Complex Models of Interdependence

I shall start with some conceptual considerations on how to deal with the problem of interdependence in social dynamics. To illustrate the following definitions, I will give examples referring to events and developments in individual life courses, starting at different points in historical time and show-

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ing different phenomena of interacting life domains and societal conditions. One can distinguish at least three basic types of interdependence that can be found in multidimensional, multilevel processes. A first simple example of interdependence in the life course or a social process can be observed when later life events are linked with earlier experiences and decisions. For example, events occurring during the family or job career, that is, the organization and structure of later life, rely on early experiences during the socialization process or the educational career. This phenomenon can be understood as the effect of "cumulative contingencies" (Mayer, 1986, p. 168) or the "cumulative impact of life transitions" (Hareven, 1982, p. 9). There may be "turning points" (Elder, 1985, p. 33) in the life course that have a strong structuring effect on later life events and statuses. I call this type of interrelatedness the model of the life course or process preformation. An example of this is the relation of education, job experience, and the birth of children for women. It is well-known that for women in particular there is a high correlation between the probability of completing vocational training and one's social background, that is, the social status of the parental family, the number of siblings, or whether both parents were present during one's childhood, and so forth. This completed training, then, is associated for women with a high probability of entrance into the labor force and delay of motherhood. However, for men, no completed training means a substantial delay in the process of family formation, probably because they are not acknowledged as persons who can "nourish a family". Thus, we can observe preformation effects from social status on the organization of later life, including occupational career and family formation (Huinink, 1987; Blossfeld and Huinink, 1989). The correlation between the labor market participation of women and the birth of children might even be spurious controlling for background factors. In this first concept of interdependency, we primarily examine previously attained absorbing states such as the outcome of the educational career or socialization and effects of social background that may under certain conditions influence the entire subsequent life-course process, the trajectory of different subprocesses or within different domains of the life course, and the structure of their interdependence.

Another simple basic model is the model of local interdependence, in which one analyzes the relationship between two subprocesses in local phases of the life course that represent two dimensions or domains of this life course. Looking again at the example of women and the interdependence of job career and childbirth, we can study the relationship between the events "enter/leave a job"

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and "being pregnant with another child", in order to understand how these two trajectories of job and birth history are posited toward each other. There are two processes, each staying in a nonabsorbing state in which one can influence the other. The primary aim is to estimate the likelihood or the probability that a change in these states might occur in varying order. It can be asswned that these estimates provide information on the causal relationship between the processes as indicated by the two interrelated event histories. A special case of this interdependence might be docwnented by synchronized events whereby two events occur simultaneously during a specific, rather short interval of time, for example, leaving school and starting training, leaving home and marriage, or leaving the labor force and birth of the first child. This leads to the important theoretical question of how synchronized events are to be defined in terms of the time interval in which they shall occur. Results of the analysis of local interdependence are very sensitive to different ways of operationalizing synchronization. The nwnber of dimensions included in a dynamic model is, in general, not restricted. This first means considering the association of more than one ongoing subprocess in the life course (e.g., employment status, place of living, family formation, etc.). Elder (1985) calls this the concept of "differentiated life course". It "extends in time the familiar notion of multiple roles and their potential cross-pressures. We can thus approach competing life spheres or trajectories from the vantage point of role strain and the allocation of scarce resources." (p. 33). Another consequent elaboration of the model is to combine the prestrueturing forces (i.e., previously reached absorbing states such as social background and education) with the analysis of current nonabsorbing states (e.g., employment status and childbirth). Then, for example, we can test for spurious effects of local interdependence. However, so far the model is a one-level model, neglecting the multiple embeddedness into higher level processes. The next step in the analysis of life courses is therefore to combine individual-level data on life events and statuses with data on events in other domains of the society (e.g., economic and political processes and trends, technological progress). We supplement the internal interdependence in one-level processes with the cross-level interdependence between processes on different societal levels. The individual life course is strongly affected by social and economic institutions, by "state intervention and regulation", historical events, and cohort-specific current

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conditions (Mayer, 1986). One could add cultural patterns, like social age norms (Riley, 1986), social and spatial contexts, and so forth. There is also the thesis of the institutionalization of the individual life course (Kohli, 1985), which proposes that higher order processes and structures have an increasing structuring power over the life course. By implementing this dimension into models of social processes, we produce the most complex form of multilevel, multidimensional models. The inclusion of the historical dimension of time gives the opportunity to study the impact of social change on individual or lower-level processes. The logic of higherlevel effects again can be conceptualized in terms of preformation and local interdependence. These models, however, are not truly dynamic multilevel models because the converse relationship, the relevance of individual action for societal change, is not covered by this concept (Huinink, 1986). To discuss this elaboration of models of social processes is beyond the scope of this paper. If we have time as a source of variance, it is possible to perform asymmetric multilevel analyses (context analysis) without a large number of macrounits. This is not without severe problems because of the possibility of "historical fallacy". When one analyzes only one time period within a certain temporal phase, one must be very cautious because, for example, the structure of interdependence can change over time. It also depends on the time-specific position of the analyzed units in time, that is, the age of the units. One important strategy therefore is to control as much as possible the time-dependent conditions of the observed processes in the micro- and the macrolevel and to obtain indicators of time-specific embeddedness. Accordingly, the estimation of those models requires a design similar to that used in cohort analysis. In the next section I will further clarify this by briefly discussing different ways in which time is involved in these kinds of models.

3.

Time in Longitudinal Research

There are three aspects of time that have to be taken into account when analyzing individual life courses and social processes. For the sake of clarification, let me explain this by using the term "episode". Each subprocess or dimension of a process can be seen as a series of episodes. An episode is a time interval (with a beginning time but not necessarily an end) in which the subprocesses remain in a particular state. During a life course there can be

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60S

episodes of employment, living at certain places, being subject to a certain treatment, and so forth. Discrete events are necessary in the definition of episodes. But even in continuous individual processes, one needs, at the very least, a discrete starting point that should be so distributed in time that one can analyze the impact of social change. First, we have the time of origin of an episode. This can be the time of the occurrence of an event with an initial status (birth, entering school, etc.) or a process with an initial starting value. It can also be the time of change in a certain status (leaving school, changing job). Also on the macrolevel we can think of such reference points in time, indicated, for example, by political interventions, a technical innovation, and so forth. Concerning the individual life course, this time might be conceptualized as a proxy for a special individual, household, or historical situation, relevant to the regarded dimension, that can be taken into account through explicit measurements of external conditions of the analyzed process. Economic conditions at the time of leaving school or training and starting a job career are important for further job opportunities and the following job career (Blossfeld, 1989). In terms of classical APC-analysis, this aspect of time would be called the origin of a cohort. The birth date, for example, is the origin of a birth cohort. However, the meaning taken by this aspect of time here is far more general, concerning the beginning of an episode in a micro- or macroscopic process dimension (Huinink, 1988a; Mayer and Huinink, 1987).

Second, we have the actual time of observation or analysis. Events can happen, episodes can end, changes in continuous variables can take place. All these changes can be relevant for actual behavior, independent of history. The actual macroscopic situation, such as economic and political conditions, is connected to this point in time and may constrain individual action. The situation at a given point in time may be a complex mixture of continuous states, varying statuses in different episodes, and memberships to different cohorts. Hence, this point in time should also be conceptualized as a proxy. For example, family formation (childbirth) was delayed by many people during the postwar era because of the many hardships suffered at that time. In terms of classical APC-analysis, this time dimension is called the current period.

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Third, we have a period of duration in a certain status or the duration of an episcxJe. For example, the direct effect of social background on different processes in the individual life course diminishes through time after the end of exposure to the parental sphere. Or, regarding the relationship between macrolevel events (such as political interventions) and individual behavior, it may be modeled using typical aggregational structures of duration dependence in the reaction pattern of individuals. Or, there may be typical time-dependent effects of medical or psychological treatments, and so forth. In terms of classical APe-analysis, this dimension is age.

4.

Methods of Analyzing Multilevel, Multidimensional Processes

The Data To analyze the models of interdependence sketched above, one needs data on the dimensions of the processes to be studied that are without gaps: a continuous flow of information. This can usually only be guaranteed through retrospective methods of data collection, which has several consequences. However, longitudinal data usually are obtained from panel studies. There is much discussion on the utility of retrospective data as compared to panel data. Some advantages of retrospective data are (Featherman, 1979): 1. One has access to a continuous flow of information. 2. One can attain a greater efficiency in collecting time varying data about more than one cohort, defined, for example, by demographic events like birth, marriage, and so forth. 3. There is no panel mortality. 4. They consume less financial resources than long-term panel studies, even though there are high editing costs. However, several disadvantages also have to be discussed: 1. One problem often mentioned in regard to retrospective data is reliability. What do we mean when talking about the quality of retrospective data? Featherman argues that the quality of retrospective data must be compared with the quality of the reporting of actual events in cross-sectional or panel surveys. In this sense no general disadvantage of retrospective observations can be proposed, particularly with respect to "hard information" like event recording, when there is a serious editing of the data. Of course the occurrence of severe biases depends on many circumstances such as the issue people have

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to report on and so forth (Bernhard et al., 1984; Freeman et al., 1987; Bradburn et al., 1987). This is true for retrospective data as well as for panel and cross-sectional data. The strategy of correcting for inconsistencies also serves to strengthen the reliability of information in retrospective (or panel) designs. The quality of the information will also be improved by the "history-oriented" design of the questionnaire. There is also a methodological argument concerning problems with incorrect data in multivariate analysis. The methods of event-history analysis are fairly robust, when the data errors or the errors in the dates of the occurrence of an event are assumed to be random (Tuma and Hannan, 1984; Peters, 1988). Results from testing the quality of the life-history study data from the German Research Association's (DFG) Special Research Area 3 (SFB-3) and the Max-Planck-Institute have been very encouraging (Mayer and Briickner, 1989). There has been an extremely elaborated data editing with many consistency checks of the data and the use of numerous other strategies for improving the quality of the data. Tape recording the interview (personal or telephone interview) is very helpful. Another important tool is computerassisted data collection (Bruckner and Hess, 1989). At least at a middle level of aggregation, we have proved the representativeness of the data at the time of the interview as well as the reliability of the retrospective information on sociostructural variables and the rate of childbirth, marriage, and other demographic variables (Blossfeld, 1987; Huinink, 1988a). 2. I have already emphasized the importance of a cohort-specific design in analyzing dynamic models of this complexity. Unfortunately, by using a retrospective design of data collection in only one interview, we can observe members of different cohorts only until different ages, that is, the age at interview. For example, in the life-history study, information was collected from German men and women born in 1929 -1931, 1939 -1941 , and 1949 1951. The interviews took place in 1981 and 1982. Thus, the respondents were about 51, 41, and 31 years old when they were interviewed. There is not only the problem of missing information but also that of modeling cohortanalysis-type models of processes that were not completed before the interview date because there is only a triangular-type matrix of information. This can lead to artifacts in the model results. 3. One other disadvantage frequently mentioned is that qualitative, subjective data dealing with opinions and attitudes in earlier life spans usually are not

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available through retrospective data (Featherman, 1979). In general, the quality of retrospective information depends on the topic people are asked about. Even event counts are problematic, as discussed in the literature (Bernhard et al., 1984; Bradburn et al., 1987). So one primarily has to deal with objective events. This can be a severe shortcoming, particularly when the aim is to investigate the complicated structure of multilevel processes in social change. However, there is no reason for not using strategies such as "objective" retrospective observations to gain hints at attitudes and individual reasoning on decisions in the life course. The complexity of the data and the model structures available may make this possible, as examples in our research show (Grundmann, in press).

Statistical Methods In recent years, different mathematical concepts have been used to develop several statistical methods to estimate models of the discussed structure. One rather simple method is classical cohort analysis (APC-analysis), in which one connects two dimensions of the life course (mostly just aging with discrete events like marriage, childbirth, etc.). The dependent variable, for example, may be an age-specific transition rate or transition probability, say for the entry into marriage or parenthood, and so forth. There are many modifications in which we, above all, try to overcome the "identification problem" of APCanalysis (Huinink, 1988a). These methods are not discussed in greater detail here. When the dependent variable is discrete, a more advanced option is eventhistory analysis (Mayer and Huinink, 1987). Continuous dependent variables need a system of stochastic differential or difference equations. When one studies a process yet) with a dichotomous outcome, one can analyze the timespecific transition probabilities from one status to the other, or as is done in event-history models, the transition rates at time t. Transition rates ret) are defined as the quotient of the density function score f(t) of the cumulative probability distribution F(t) of transitions from one status to the other at t, and the probability of not having a transition until t, that is, 1 - F(t). For example, for a person being in status y(ta>=O at to for t > to. the following holds for the rate rolt) of the transition to y(t)= 1:

Interdependent Social Processes

609

represents the momentary likelihood of changing the status in the observed dimension at t (Tuma and Hannan, 1984; Blossfeld et al., 1986). It is possible to estimate the time-dependent transition rate as a function of timeindependent and time-dependent covariates: ret)

rolt) = g(l., IIJ8(t), M., MlIlt), D(t),INT(t)) 1. and Illlt) are time-independent (absorbing) and time-dependent (nonabsorbing) individual level statuses and attributes that can be either discrete or continuous. They can include information on the history of the individual level process, like counts of previous events in certain life domains. For the estimation of effects of time-independent, higher-level attributes M., one, of course, needs a number of higher-level units or aggregates (states, cohorts, etc.) that is sufficiently large to obtain stable estimates. For example, this information may differ for members of different cohorts included in the analysis. Then it is measured at the different cohort origins such as birth, marriage, and so forth, and can be constant over the life course as a cohortspecific indicator of historical experiences. It only differs from cohort to cohort. MlIlt) are higher-level variables that vary over time, measured during the whole time interval. D(t) are time-dependent durations of staying in statuses designed by the time-dependent 1- and/or M-variables. INT(t) stands for interaction variables. They can combine different variables: status information in the land M-variables with the duration information, time-independent with timedependent status information.

This type of model can be modeled by different strategies. There is the semiparametric approach of Cox with the time dependence of the rate put into a nuisance function and with the assumption of proportional effects. There are parametric approaches explicitly assuming a parametric form of the time dependence of the considered rate (Weibull, Gompertz, log-logistic, lognormal, etc.). There is the concept of estimating interval-specific constant rates, in which the analyzed time interval is split up into several time intervals, and a constant rate model is estimated for each interval (Blossfeld et al., 1986; Tuma and Hannan, 1984). Particularly when time-dependent information on different levels is included or there is no reason for applying one of the parametric models, one can employ the method of episode splitting: One splits up the observed time intervals into

610

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small units of time (e.g., one month), assumes the rate to be constant in these time intervals, and estimates an exponential model treating each interval as a separate case with interval-specific, individual-level, and macrolevel attributes. An Example

I will illustrate the event-history approach with an example of an extended model of local interdependence, controlling for preformation effects. I will not present multilevel models, even though there already are some studies including macrolevel data in event-history models (Allmendinger, 1988; Blossfeld, 1989; Papastefanou, 1988; Blossfeld and Huinink, 1989). The example uses the partial likelihood approach of Cox. The logic of the estimated model of local interdependence has been developed by Courgeau and collaborators (Courgeau and Lelievre, 1988; Courgeau, Lelievre, and Wagner, in press). It is displayed in Figure 1. E,nC

D

D

nE,nC rE,nElne _--:... ....:...--

D - - -D E,C

nE,C

rE,nElc

E C

=

Status of being employed

= Status of being pregnant with a first child (date of birth - 7 months)

Fig. 1: Diagram of local interdependence model

The population at risk in the following study is childless employed women, who mayor may not be married. The aim is to analyze the local interdependence between leaving the job and getting pregnant for the first time. In Figure 1, different combinations of transitions or nontransitions are presented. E means being employed, nE being unemployed. C indicates the first pregnan-

Interdependent Social Processes

611

cy. A woman may quit a job (E,nC -. nE,nC) with the rate f E.nE/nC and then, afterwards, she may get pregnant with her first child. Then the rate is fnC.C/nE (nE, nC -. nE,C). There is also a certain probability that she could get pregnant first (B,nC -. E,C) and then quit the job by the rate fE.nE/C' The question is what the previous transition in one process (called the perturbation) does to the transition rate in the other and vice versa. Another question is whether preformation effects are apparent, and whether some of these change after the occurrence of the perturbation (interaction effects). Including the additional time-dependent process of getting married, we also control for its effect. Finally, changes in the effects over the cohorts are considered. Only in this simple way I will differentiate here by historical factors and societal settings, the individual process that took place. The estimation is made with data from the life-history study of the DFG's SFB-3 and the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development and Education, conducted under the guidance of K. U. Mayer (Mayer and Bruckner, 1989). These data give information on life histories of Germans born in 1929 -1931 , 1939 - 1941, and 1949 -1951 with regard to nearly all life domains. The sample is representative for the German population of the three cohorts. There are the two time-dependent indicators: (1) of the incidence of leaving a job (lEU), and (2) the first pregnancy (IK.1), the rates for which I will estimate in turn (and which are the perturbations in turn). lEU is a dummy variable that takes the value zero until the last month of employment and then switches to one; IK1 is zero until the last 7 months before the reported first birth, then it switches to one. Miscarriages could not be considered. Both models include also the time-dependent indicator for marriage (IMARR) which can be interpreted as a second perturbation. The model additionally includes: the age at the beginning of an observed episode, the socioeconomic status of the father, the number of siblings, the level of education and the socioeconomic status of the respondent in the current employment spell, and the education of the partner. No additive duration effect is considered. Howe-ver, some interaction terms of the time-dependent indicator of the perturbation event with the education of the respondent and her partner and the respondent's socioeconomic status are included. Finally, the models are estimated separately for the three cohorts 1929 -1931, 1939 -1941 , and 1949-1951.

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The model for the transltlon rate to pregnancy includes ties, that is, cases in which the first months after leaving the job and the month lying 7 months before the first birth are the same. In the model for the transition rate to the interruption of employment, these ties are excluded. It is not plausible to assume that leaving the job takes place as an instantaneous reaction to the first experience of pregnancy. Tab. 1: Model of Local Interdependency Between Transition to Nonemployment and First Pregnancy of Employed Childless Women (a-Coefficients). Panel A. Transition to nonemployment, perturbation: First pregnancy (IKl), estimation without ties. Cohort 1929 - 31

First pregnancy Indicator for marriage n )(' (dO

0.79 11.02 305 292.35(16)

Cohort 1939-41

Cohort 1949-51

2.31-)

6.52 3.OJ

14.51 300 440.35(16)

310 333.90(16)

Panel B. Transition to flJ'st pregnancy, perturbation: Transition to nonemployment (lEU), estimation with ties. Cohort 1929-31 Incidence of leaving a job Indicator for marriage

n )(' (dO

1.66 10.90 305 282.79(16)

Cohort 1939-41 1.21 9.51 300 254.00(16)

Cohort 1949-51 1.18 3.33 310 82.03(16)

.) Bold faced coefficients are significant on the .01 level.

The results cannot be discussed in detail. Therefore only the estimated acoefficients of the perturbation and IMARR in the model for the transition to the first pregnancy and for discontinuing employment are shown in Table 1, Panels A and B. a-coefficients can easily be interpreted, For a certain covariate, 100 (a - 1) is the percentage by which the rate will change when the covariate increases by one unit. First in Table 1, Panel A displays the results of the model estimation of the transition rate to nonemployment. They show that in the 1930 cohort there is

Interdependent Social Processes

613

no significant partial effect of getting pregnant on leaving employment. But a strong positive effect of marriage is found. In the 1950 cohort, however, there is a strong positive effect of first pregnancy, while the effect of marriage is much smaller, although still present. Corresponding to this figure in the 1930 cohort, there is a positive significant effect of leaving employment on getting pregnant (Table 1, Panel B). In the 1950 cohort there is no longer any significant effect. This tells us that women in the more recent cohorts tend to stay employed as long as possible until childbirth and more often stay employed even when they have their first child. Women in the older cohorts follow the traditional pattern of family formation, already staying at home as housewives at the beginning of the family formation process. In the model for the transition rate to first pregnancy it can also be seen that the effects of lMARR drastically decrease when the 1950 cohort is compared with the 1930 and 1940 cohorts. This means that corresponding to the abovementioned result, married women are, on average, also remaining childless for a longer period in this cohort, while they are also staying employed for a longer time.

5.

Conclusion

In this presentation I have introduced some concepts and methods of longitudinal data analysis that are capable of dealing with complex models of interdependence in social processes. They are powerful tools and should be taken into account when considering studies conducted in the context of the DFG's SFB 227 that deal with questions of processes in the earlier phases of the individual life course.

However, one has to be aware of the consequences for the theoretical design and the methodological strategy, and there are also many traps and problems. There is the problem of obtaining adequate data. Some of the criticism of the retrospective design is of particular significance when studying processes in early life phases of individuals. In some contributions to the actual discussion, empirical results on the question of the validity of information have been published with regard to this issue. In part they seem to be somewhat discouraging. In fact, a combination of retrospective and panel design could help to solve some of the problems here.

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A second concluding point that I would like to raise concerns the robustness of the refined methods, presented here against measurement error or, which is often forgotten, against misspecification of the model. This is not only because of missing important variables but also because of erroneous concepts of interdependent relations or the time dependence of the rate. The former, measurement error or selection bias and so forth, might be detected and corrected for empirically. The latter is primarily a matter of theory and requiring "concrete" knowledge of the logic and the timing of individual processes, of the impact of the structuring forces of the societal context, and of their change over time.

References Allmendinger, J. (1988). Career mobility dynamics. A comparative analysis of the United States, Norway, and West Gennany. Unpublished doctoral dissertation: Cambridge, Mass. Bernhard, H.K., Killworth, P., Kronenfeld, D., and Sailer, L. (1984). The problem of infonnant accuracy. The validity of retrospective data. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13, 495-517. Blossfeld, H.-P. (1987). Zur Reprasentativitlit der SFB-3-Lebensverlaufsstudie. Ein Vergleich mit Daten aus der amtlichen Statistik. Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv, 71, 126-144. Blossfeld, H.-P. (1989). Kohortendifferenzierung und Karriereproze6. Frankfurt: Campus. Blossfeld, H.-P., Hamerle, A., and Mayer, K.U. (1986): Ereignisanalyse. Statistische Theorie und Anwendungen in den Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften. Campus: Frankfurt. Blossfeld, H.-P., and Huinink, J. (1989). Die Verbesserung der Bildungs- und Berufschancen von Frauen und ihr EinfluB auf den ProzeB der Familienbildung. Working paper No. 292, available from SFB 3, University of Frankfurt. Bradburn, N.M., Rips, L.J., and Shevell, S.K. (1987). Answering autobiographical questions: The impact of memory and inference on surveys. Science, 236, 157 -161. Briickner, E., and Hess, D. (1989). Cati - eine Chance zur methodischen Verbesserung der Erfassung verkniipfter und sequentieller Daten. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development and Education. Courgeau, D., and Lelievre, E. (1988). Estimation of transition rates in dynamic household models. In N. Keilman, A. Kuijsten, and A. Vossen (Eds.), Modelling household formation and dissolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Courgeau, D., Lelievre, E., and Wagner, M. (in press). Leaving home and marriage in France and Gennany. Population Studies. Elder, G.H., Jr. (1985). Perspectives on the life course. In G.H. Elder, Jr. (Ed.), Life course dynamics. Ithaka: Cornell Univ. Press.

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Featherman, D.L. (1979). Retrospective longitudinal research: Methodological considerations. Journal of Economics and Business, 32, 152-169. Freeman, L.C., Romney, A.K., and Freeman, S.C. (1987). Cognitive structure and informant accuracy. American Anthropologist, 89, 310-325. Grundmann, M. (in press). Zur Rekonstruktion institutionaler Lebensverlaufsmuster. In P. Albeit, and E.M. Hoerning (Eds.), Biographisches Wissen: Beitrage zu einer Theorie lebensgeschichtlicher Erfahrung. Frankfurt: Campus. Hareven, T.K. (1982). The life course and aging in historical perspective. In T.K. Hareven, and KJ. Adams (Eds.), Aging and life course transitions: An interdisciplinary perspective. New York: Guilford Press Huinink, J. (1986). Mehrebensystem-Modelle in den Sozialwissenschaften. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Bielefeld, West Germany. Huinink, J. (1987). Bildung, soziale Herkunft und das Alter bei der Geburt des ersten Kindes. Zeitschrift fUr Soziologie, 16 (5), 367 -384. Huinink, J. (1988a). Methoden der explorativen Kohortenanalyse. Zeitschrift fUr Bevolkerungswissenschaft, 14, 69-87. Huinink, J. (1988b). Die demographiscbe Analyse der Geburtenentwicklung mit Lebensverlaufsdaten. Allgemeines Statistiscbes Archiv, 72, 359-377. Kohli, M. (1985). Die Institutionalisierung des Lebenslaufs. Kolner Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 37, 1- 29. Mayer, K.U. (1986). Structural constraints on the life course. In M. Kohli, and J.W. Meyer (Eds.), Social structure and social construction of life stages. Human Development, 29, 163-170. Mayer, K.U., and Huinink, J. (1987, December). Age, period, and cohort in the study of the life course: A comparison of classical A-P-C-Analysis with event history analysis or farewell to lexis? Paper presented at the Workshop on Methodological Issues in Longitudinal Research. Ronneberga, Stockholm. Mayer, K.U., and Bruckner, E. (1989). Lebensverliiufe und Wohlfahrtsentwicklung. Konzeption, Design und Methodik der Erhebung von Lebensverlaufen der Geburtsjahrgiinge 1929 - 31, 1939 - 41, 1949 - 51. (Materialien aus der Bildungsforschung Nr. 35, available from Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development and Education, Berlin). Papastefanou, G. (1988). Familiengrundung und Lebensverlauf. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Freie Universitiit Berlin. Peters, E. (1988). Retrospective versus panel data in analyzing lifecycle events. The Journal of Human Resources, 23, 288-513. Riley, Mathida W. (1986). The dynamics of the life stages: Roles, people, and age. In M. Kohli, and J.W. Meyer (Eds.), Social structure and social construction of life stages. Human Development, 29, 150-156. Tuma, N.B., and M. Hannan (1984). Social dynamics: Methods and models. New York: Academic Press.

Author Index

Abbott 245 Abramowitz, C.V. 349 Abramowitz, S.1. 349 Abt 401 Achenbach 314 Adelson 220 Adler 276 Adorno 150 Ajzen 388 Alanen 145 Albrecht, G. 422 Albrecht, H.-J. 457, 468, 469, 470, 473, 540, 544, 545 Alexander 39, 539 Allmendinger 610 Arnbron 305, 310 Anthony 208 Antonucci 220 Antze 207 Apel65 Arboleda-Florez 554 Ardoino 98 Arntson 207 Aronson 212 Aschaffenburg 539 Atkinson 349 Avi-ltzhak 537, 538 Bach 221 Ballou 224 Bangert-Drowns 307, 308 Bardy 143 Barendse-Hoornweg 553, 556, 560 Baron 506, 507 Baross, v. 463 Barrett 207 Bartlett 127 Basaglia 95 Basham 200

Bastine 415 Bateson 84 Baum 177 Baunach 420 Beardslee 209 Beatty 203 Beck 34, 35, 38, 104, 143, 147, 185, 452 Becker 140, 273, 276, 296, 539 Beck-Gernsheim 43 Bell 24, 219 Belle 213, 220, 221, 222, 224, 228, 229 Bern 222 Benhabib 69 Bennett 420 Benson 169 Berckhauer 540, 544 Bergmark 137 Berkman 199 Berman 518, 519 Bernard 224 Berndt 220 Bernfeld 153 Bernhard 607, 608 Bettmer 537 Bewyl490 Bhrolchain 220, 224 Biefang 401 Bifulco, 211 Binder 459 Birley 201 Bischofberger 459 Blaney 212 Blass-Wilhelms 401 Blau 168 Bliesener 313 Bloom 219 Blossfeld 592, 596, 602, 60S, 607, 609, 610

618

Social Prevention and the Social Sciences

Blumer 41 Blumstein 533, 544 BOhm 103, 107 BOhnisch 168 BOnitz 420 Bohnen 48 Bollen 501,502,503,504,506,507 BonB 104 Bopp 185 Bortz 419, 448 Boruch 254, 255, 340, 348, 382, 383,

Burda 220 Burke 221

398, 410, 413, 420 Bott 576 Boudon 35, 47, 52 Bourdieu 133 Bourgett 159 Boutselis 208 Bowlby 312 Box 366 Bradburn 607, 608 Brandtstiidter 313 Brante 141 Braun 277 Braver 220 Brehm 201 Brinkmann 145 Britan 421 Broder 554 Bronke 158 Brophy 277 Brose 185 Brownell 217 Brown, G.W. 201,211,220,224 Brown, R.A. 208 Bruckner 607, 611 Brulle 159 Briistle 453 Brumlik 66, 67, 68, 69 Brunsson 92 Brunswik 384 Brusten 457 Bryant 221, 308 Bubner 105 Buchanan 23, 24, 27, 30 Bullock 307, 310, 311, 315, 326

Burr 221 Busch 538 Butler 221, 577 Cain 422 Caldwell 219 Campbell 224, 245, 246, 252, 254, 255

259, 261, 281, 310, 315, 323, 382, 383, 391, 398, 406, 407, 412, 413, 416, 420, 421 Caplan 133, 137, 140 Carey 421 Carli 266 Caro 401 Carstensen 508, 509, 510 Carter 440 Castel 133, 143, 147, 152, 185 Cattell 382 Cauce 221 Cellini 554 Checkland 86, 90 Chess 325 Chorover 143 Christenson 552 Christoph 459 Cleary 219 Clemmer 545 Cloward 133, 185 Coates 203 Cobb 206 Cochran 143, 307 Cohen, A. 551, 559 Cohen, J. 84, 92, 290, 298, 307, 358, 360, 440, 445, 446, 448, 452, 517 Cohen, P. 385, 440, 445, 446, 452 Cohen, S. 200 Coleman 52 Collingridge 88, 90 Collins 41, 245 Compton 122 Converse 224, 573, 577 Cook, A. 225, 268

348, 411,

317, 449,

619

Author Index Cook, T.D. 245, 246, 247, 252, 257, 258, 262, 264, 265, 271, 276, 306, 310, 312, 315, 323, 333, 334, 335, 348, 382, 407, 412, 416, 421 Cooney 221 Cooper, D. 133, 140, 289, 291, 293, 295, 296, 298, 301, 302, 305, 307, 308, 354 Cooper, H.M. 287 Cordray 311, 333, 349, 421 Courgeau 610 Coursol 349 Cox 609, 610 Coyne 203 Cozby 221 Cozzens 302 Crain 256 Cremerius 184 Cremer-Schafer 539 Cronbach 247,249,251,260,272,281, 305, 310, 373, 420, 421, 436 Cutler 245 Dabos 383 Daheim 173 Dahl 29 Dahrendorf 21 Dalby 554 Davies 180, 592 Davis 530 Dawes 310, 333 de Mause 145 Dennis 409,410,414,419 Depner 219 DerSimonian 361 Deutscher 420 Devine 245, 252, 257, 258, 262, 264, 265, 268, 271, 276, 333 Dewe 103, 107, 110, 115 Diekmann 539 Dijksterhuis 551 Dillig 544 Dilling 184 Dintzer 421 Dishion 527

Dohrenwend 184 Dolde 544 Donzelot 133 Dornbusch 305, 310 Douvan 220 Downey 509 Droge 207 Druwe 40 DUhrssen 312 DUnkel 544, 545 Dunkel-Schetter, 204 Durkheim 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 47, 53, 54, 55 Dyer 245 Eagley 266 Eberth 479 Eccles 276 Eckenrode 200 Edwards 420 Egg 488 Eitzmann 545 Elder 602, 603 Elias 7, 40 Ellard 202 Ellett 401 Elliott 528, 551, 552 Emery8S Emms 220 Engelbert 146 Engelhardt 137 Enzensberger 31 Eraut 107 Erhard 463 Erickson 528, 534 Erlebacher 383, 391 Ernst 313 Eser 455, 457 Esser 34, 45, 52 Etzioni 169 Evers 140, 147 Eye v. 313 Eysenck 295, 306, 529

620

Social Prevention and the Social Sciences

Fagley 349 Falke 207 Farrington 527, 544, 552, 553, 578 Featherman 606, 608 Feiner 221 Felson 559 Fend 313 Feyerabend 36 Feynman 381 Figlio 528, 546, 551, 554 Fischer 220 Fishbein 388 Fisher 201, 307 Fiske 306, 307 Fitz-Gibbon 421 Fletscher 220 Foerster v. 82, 84, 87, 91, 92 Folger 289 Folkman 204 Fonvieille 99 Foucault 64, 65, 131, 133, 138, 139, 140 Fox 25, 26 Freedmann-Letofsky 207 Freeman, L.C. 207, 401, 403, 420, 607 Freeman, S.C. 607 French 219 Fricke 305, 306, 308, 309, 317, 354 Friedman 307, 317, 489 Friedrichs 44, 462 Frietsch 544 Funke 309, 318 Furlong 349 Futtermann 276

Giddens 33, 34, 35, 39, 45, 47, 49,51, 54,55 Giesen 39, 42 Gilbert 125, 420 Gildemeister 196 Gilligan 69 Gilner 533 Giordano 221 Gitterman 127 Glass 245, 268, 289, 290, 296, 305, 306, 307, 307, 308, 309, 310, 317, 318, 333, 336, 354, 357, 358, 363, 365, 366, 381, 382, 401 Glenn 577 Glueck, E. 539, 551 Glueck, S. 539, 551 Glymour 272 Godwin 245 Goebel 459 GOppinger 541 Goethe 499 Goff 276 Goffman 132 Goldin 201 Gomes 349 Gomez 340, 348, 413 Good 277 Gordon 127 GotIib 203 Gottfredson 525, 526, 529, 533 Gottlieb 202, 204, 206, 207, 206, 217, 218 Gottschalk 376, 377 Gould 514,515,516,517,518 Gouldner 140 Gove 223, 224 Green 311 Greenberg 289 Greenwald 349 Greenwood 538, 539 Grizzle 420 Gross 168, 221 Grundmann 608 Grunwald 581, 582, 589 Gruschka 404, 405

Gallaway 122 Galloway 552 GallUng 574 Garmezy 209, 313 Geertz 183, 196 Germain 127 German Research Association 455 Gersten 211 Geulen 145 Giaconia 270

621

Author Index Guattari 96 Guba 421 Gunzelmann 306 Guttentag 401, 420 Haag 40 Habermas 115, 148, 149, 150, 154 Hafner 184, 518 Haertel, E.H. 333 Haertel, G.D. 333 HliuJner 463 Haferkamp 42, 457, 540 Hager 310, 435 Hall 169, 311 Halverson 220 Hanunond 305 Hannan 607, 609 Hareven 602 Haring 349 Harris, MJ. 252 Harris, T.O. 211, 220, 224, 272, 274, 278, 299, 447 Harter 208 Hartig 415 Hartmann 307 Hartnagel 552, 556 Hasenpusch 540, 544 Haven 219 Hawkins 220 Hay 421 Hayek v. 27 Heckman 383 Hedges 254, 270, 289, 290, 291, 305, 308, 310, 357, 359, 360, 368, 370, 371, 372, 373, 333, 337, 341 Hegel Ill, 152 Hegner 171 Heine 470, 476, 477 Heller 140 Hellerich 143, 185 Hellstero 400, 401, 588 Hemminger 313 Hendel-Kramer 458 Hengst 146, 152

273,

296, 366, 336,

Hermann 467, 547 Heroes 52 Hess 95, 97, 140, 305, 310, 539, 607 Heyns 143 Hick 389 Hildenbrand 185 Hill 45 Hilsberg 207 Hindelang 528, 554 Hinterhuber 184 Hirsch 27,219,220 Hirscm 525, 526, 528, 533, 554, 559 Hirschman 24, 25, 27, 91 Hobcraft 596 Hobfoll 204, 205 Hobbel541, 542, 547 Hopflinger 592 Hoffmann-Nowotny 592 Hoffmeister 494 Hokanson 203 Holahan 219, 220 Hollister 421 Holly 200 Holzhauer 463 Homans 41 Honig 145, 146 Hood 221 Horkheimer 25, 27 Hornik 305, 310 Hotz 383 House 199,218,219,405 Hovell 333 Howes 203 Huber 44 Huberty 440 Huckabee 223 Hiimbs-Krusche 470, 476, 477 Huesmann 527 Hughes 421 Huinink 594, 602, 604, 605, 607, 608, 610 Humphreys 356 Hunter, J.E. 273, 276, 305, 309, 322, 344, 354, 360, 382, 388 Hunter, R. 309, 388

622

Social Prevention and the Social Sciences

Hurrelmann 314 Hyde 305, 360

Kelly 220, 489 Kemper 421 Kendall 574 Kennedy 420 Kenny 421, 422 Kern 26 Kerner 540, 547 Kessler 223, 225, 227, 509, 510, 511, 512,513,514,519 Ketting 458 Kieser 172 Kinney 349 Kitsuse 133 Klapdor 544 Klee 68 Klein 528 Klenovits 45 Klerman 223 Kliegl 309, 310 Klijzing 590, 596 Knapp 421 Koch 455 Koferl 306, 313 Konig 588 Korner 479 Kohli 185, 313, 604 Kolditz 255 Kon 221 Kornreich 336 Koschorke 456 Krauth 415, 435 Kreuzer 488 Kriesberg 421 Krol245 Krusche 470, 476, 477 Kubicek 172 Kuhn 158 Kuhn 35, 261 Kulik, C. 308 Kulik, J.A. 308 Kurze 488

Ianni 421 Ingenkamp 453 Ingersoll 219 Ingham 219 Irle 161 Itzwerth 134 Jacklin 220 Jackson 305, 306, 344, 354, 360, 382, 388 Jager 389 Janicke 81 Jagodzinski 576 Janssen 547 Jantsch 91 Japp 44, 158, 160, 170, 186 Jehle 488 Jensen 389 Jessop 90 Joereskog 272 Johnson 224 Jones, A.P. 315 Jones, L.V. 307 Jourard 221 Judd 421,422 Jiirgensen 459 Junger 553, 556, 560 Junger-Tas 551, 553, 556, 560, 561, 566 Kaase 43 Kaczala 276 Kaiser 547 Kalaian 296 Kallgren 211 Kandel, B. 553 Kandel, P.E. 553 Kant 65, 66, 68, 69 Katz 469 Kaufmann 145, 581, 588, 589, 591 Kaupen 574 Keilitz 554

Ladeur 90 Laimer 457 Laird 361

Author Index Lakatos 274 Lakey 202 LaLonde 383 Lamnek 544 Landis 199 Landman 310, 333 Lang 146 Lange 401, 405 LaPorte 84 LaRocco 219 Lasakow 221 Lash 29 Lau 459 Lautmann 457 Lazarsfeld 576 Lazarus 204 Leavy 219 Lee 121 Leiebvre 96, 98, 148, 149, 150, lSI, 152, 153, 154 Lehman 202 Lehmann 217 Lelievre 610 Leppin 305, 325 Lepsius 38 Leurvorst 349 Lever 220 Levine 200 Leviton 247, 306, 334, 335 Levy 207 Lewinsohn 208 Lichtman 207 Lieberman 207 Liebl 463 Liegle 146 Light 289, 305, 307, 335, 354, 356, 407, 420 Lindblom 29, 84, 91 Lindenberg 47, SO, 51, 52 Lipsey 264, 306, 377, 419 Liszt, v. 545 Loeber 527 LOsch 168 LOsel 306, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313,315, 325, 382, 401, 422, 423

623 Lombroso 539 Longfellow 220 Losenkov 221 Lourau 98 Lovell 143, 152 Lowenthal 219 Luckner v. 313 Ludwig 314, 544 Liiders 103 Liischer 145 Luhmann 21, 40, 53, 83, 89, 92, 110, 175 Lukesch 313 Lumsdaine 420 Lyall 207 Maccoby 220 Mackie 251 MacMahon 245 MacPherson 153 Madow 364 Mahalanobis 358 Mahard 256 Maine 22 Mannheim 18, 577 Maracek 224 March 84, 85, 86, 91, 92 Margolin 201 Mariak 422 Mark 421 Marsh 422 Marshall 159 Martindale 520 Marx 24, 148, 149, 151, 152 Mathiesen 132 Matt 310, 311, 333, 334, 336, 337, 333, 349, 385 Mattejat 314, 326 Matthes 595 Maughan 551 Max Planck Institute 455 Mayer 602, 604, 60S, 607, 608, 611 Maynard 383 Mayntz 20, 36, 39, 456, 475, 476, 546 Mazel207

624

Social Prevention and the Social Sciences

McCall 205 McCleary 421 McClelland 305 McConaughy 314 McCord 527 McFarlane 219 McGaw 245, 290, 296, 305, 333, 354, 358, 363, 381, 382 McKay 200 McKinney 349 McMullan 221 Mechanic 219 Meece 276 Meehl 272 Meinberg 470, 476, 477 Meltzoff 336 Menard 554 Meulemann 574 Meyer-Wentrup 544 Michels 140 Midgley 276 Milavsky 509 Miller, P. 219 Miller, T.I. 255, 306, 333, 336, 382 Miller, W. 349 Mintz 306 Mischel 382 Moitra 544 Mok 173 Mollenhauer 67; 68 Moore 552 Moos 219, 220 Morch 223 Morris 421 Morrison 358, 439 Morrow 220 Morse 554 Mortimore 551 Mosteller 255, 420 Mourad 440 Muhlbach 103, 107 Muller 107 Mumpower 305 Murphy 5% Murray 534

Musgrave 274 Mutsaers 561 Mutz 196 Nadler 201 Neale 219 NealOn 245 Nedelmann 546 Nelkin 137, 138, 141 Neren 221 Nestrnann 213 Nettler 533 Niessen 110 Nietzsche 6S Nijboer 551 Nisbet 17, 20, 22 Nohke 458 Nolte 544 Norman 219 Novick 422 Nowack 315,401,422,423 Nowotny 137, 140, 147 O'Connor 271 Oelkers 109 Oeter 458 Offe 81 Okun 349 Olk 132, 158, 160, 168, 170 Olkin 288, 289, 290, 291, 296, 305, 310, 333, 336, 337, 354, 357, 359, 360, 366, 372, 373, 440 Olsen 84, 85, 86, 91, 92 Olweus 527, 528, 555 Opp 539 Orr 421 Orwin 311, 333, 342, 349 Oscarsson 137 Otto 103, 107, 115, 132, 158, 168, 170 Ouston 551, 553 Paight 515 Pancer 206 Papastefanou 610 Parson 39

Author Index Parsons 19, 40, 48 Patterson 226 Paykel220 Pearlin 205, 223, 224 Pearson 307 Peckham 365, 366 Pedhazur 437 Peele 137 Perrez 313 Perry 201 Peter-Golden 203 Petermann 415 Peters 607 Petersilia 528 Peto 245 Phillips 200, 219, 305, 310, 403, 500, 501, 502, 503, 504, :,5, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 512, 513, 514, 515 Pieper 107 Pillemer 289, 305, 335, 354, 407 Piven 133, 185 Plake 168 Plewis 581 Podorefsky 209 Poettgen 459 Polanyi 20 Polk 551, 556 Popper 35 Posavac 421 Posner 301 Postman 152 Praag, v. 458 Pratt 440 Predmore 206 Prein 99, 196 Premack 273, 276 Presby 364 Pressman 82 Preusser 159 Primavera 221 Quensel539 Rachman 309 Radtke 103, 110

625 Ramirez 211 Rassaby 220 Raudenbush 264, 265, 277, 296 Rauschenbach 170 Raveis 553 Rawls 30 Reamer 125 Redner 407 Reinecker 306 Reis 205 Reiss 506, 507 Remschmidt 313, 314 Renn 422 Reuband 577 Reynolds 211 Ribble 293 Rich 554 Richman 221 Richter 146, 153 Riecken 398, 420 Riley 604 Rindskopf 420, 422 Rips 607 Robert 185 Robins 312, 529 Rodgers 224 Rogers 207 Rojek 528 Romney 607 Rooney 123 Rosario 223 Rosch 259 Rosenthal 252, 272, 273, 274, 278, 273, 277, 289, 291, 296, 299, 305, 307, 308, 309, 317, 325, 337, 338, 342, 354, 360, 370 Rosewitz 92 Rossi 381, 401, 403, 420, 467 Roy, A. 220 Roy, R. 219 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 476 Rubel 557 Rubin 299, 307, 308, 317, 325, 337, 360,370

626

Social Prevention and the Social Sciences

Riischemeyer 459 Ruther 470 Rutter 205, 209, 212, 312, 313, 325, 533,551

Shadish 247 Shaffer 514,515,517,518 Shapiro, D. 306, 310 Shapiro, D.A. 306, 310 ShevelI 607 Shinn 217, 223 Shinnar, R. 537, 538 Shinnar, S. 537, 538 Shireman 125 Shoptaw 207 Shumaker 217 Sieber 124 Sikes 212 Simitis 145 Simm 589 Simon 90 Smith, M.L. 245, 268, 289, 290, 296, 305, 306, 307, 311, 333, 336, 354, 356,358,363,381,382,405 Smith, P.V. 307, 356 Snapp 212 Snow 249, 436 Snowman 554 Soeffner 111 Soerbom 272 SolIie 220 Sorlie 245 Spector 133 Spiegel 489 SpieB 545 Spiker 421 Stamler 245 Stanley 382, 406, 407, 411 Statistisches Bundesamt 458, 460 Staub 539 StegmulIer 52 Steinert 464 Stelzl429 Stephan 212 Stewart 89, 200 Stipp 509, 513, 514 Stock 349 Stokes 204, 205, 219, 577 Stone 219 Stotsky 201

Sack 467 Salomon 205 Sanders 365, 366 Sandler 202, 211, 220 Sarason, B.R. 200 Sarason, I.G., 200 Sartre 96 Savin-WilIiams 220 Schafer 159 Schafer 551, 556 Scheffe 366 Schiepek 306 Schill 220 Schimank 39, 92 Schleiermacher 64, 67, 69 Schmerl213 Schmidt, P.L. 305, 309, 344, 349, 354, 360, 382, 388 Schmidt, M. 314 Schmidtke 518 Schmitter 29 Schmitz 103 Schneider 554 Schnell 45 Schonhals 457 Schon 105 Schutz 48, 49 Schumann 26 Schumpeter 25, 27 Schwartz 127 Schwarzer 305, 325 Schwendter 140 Scott 141, 168 Scriven 245, 247, 402 Sechrest 271, 407 SelIin 528, 546, 551, 554 Selznick 140 Senchak 205 Sennett 89 Sensch 586

627

Author Index Strack 203 Straf 256, 300 Streeck 22, 24, 26, 28, 29 Streiner 219 Strike 301 Stroebe, M. 204 Stroebe, W. 204 Strohmeier 581, 587, 588, 589, 590. 591,595 Strube 307, 338 Struening 401 Suchman 245 Siinker 143, 146, 151 Sunesson 137 Svyantek 307, 310, 311, 315, 326 Swann 206 Szasz 137 Tanner 552, 556 Tarde 499 Tardy 213 Taylor 207. 421 Teich, C.F. 208 Teich, M.I. 208 Teubner R9, 90 Thierau 422 Thomas 325 Thompson 26, 84, 88, 200 Thornberry 552 Tiedemann 467 Tietjen 220 Tonnies 19. 22 Touraine 21 Traulsen 544 Treiber 429, 430, 436, 437, 438, 442. 447 Treinies 305. 306. 308, 309, 317, 354 Trist 85 Trochim 422 Troschke, v. 458 Trotha, v. 539 Trueblood 225 Tucker 388 Tudor 223 Tuma 607, 609 Tygart 557

Ulich 313 Umberson 199 Underwood 361 Urry 29 Vachon 207 Vanberg 49 Van de Kaa 591 Van Krieken 143 Varela 85 Vaux 200. 219, 220 Vetterle 582 Videka-Sherman 207 Villmow 547 Vincent 489 Viney 219 VOIkl 159 Voss 551, 552 Wachter 256, 300 Wagner 204. 349, 594, 610 Waldrop 220 Walker 305, 310, 546 Wallerstein 220 Wambach 81, 143, 147. 152, 185 Wampold 349 Wasserman 503. 504 Weber 17, 48, 108, 193,306.588,590 Wegscheider 475 Weidlich 40 Weigand 99, 196 Weigel 225 Weiner 305. 310 Weinert 429. 430, 436, 437, 438, 442, 447 Weingart 113 Weir 221 Weis 528 Weiss 400, 401 Weissman 223 Wenzel 158 Werner 313, 458 West 527 Westbrook 219 Westermann 435

628

Social Prevention and the Social Sciences

Whitcher-Alagna 201 White 92 Wild 153 Wildavsky 82 Wilkinson 442 Wille 488 Williams 200, 333, 401 Willke 89 Wilson 41,219,309 Wimmer-Puchinger 458 Windhoff-Heritier 455 Wing 201 Winston 203 Wippler 47, 50, 51, 52 Witte 420 Wittmann 305, 310, 311, 325, 333, 334, 336, 337, 385, 401 Wohlen 168 Wohlfahrt 107 Wolchik 220 Wolf 305,307,308.309,311,317,354

Wolfgang 528, 546, 551, 554 Wollmann 400, 401, 588 Wong 217,219 Wooldridge 421 Wortman 202, 305, 308, 399, 400 Wothke 383 Wottawa 422 Wright 401, 403, 420, 467 Wulf 401 Yates 376 Yeaton 271, 305 Zarit208 Zecca 133, 140 Zee 384 Zehnpfennig 45 Zielke 415 Zimmerman 554 Zimmermann 97 Zundel 457, 459

Subject Index

abortion law 240, 455, 457, 459, 461,

463,46S acceptance of the law 457 access to social support 202 access to the health system 489 action chains 7, 8 action knowledge 109, 110, 111, 116 action research 404 administrative environmental laws 469,

475

advocacy 131, 139, 279 advocatory action 65, 68 aggregate level 43, 572, 574 aggregation of findings 333 aggregation problem 50, 55 aggression 189, 505, 527, 528, 535,

555,571 alienation 23, 66, 148, 168 alpha level 435 Analysis of Yariance for Effect Sizes (ANOYA) 370, 365, 366, 368, 371,

372 antipedagogy 64 antipsychiatry 64 antisocial behavior 324, 527, 529, 531,

532, 533, 553, 555

Ape-analysis 605, 606, 608 applicability 20, 36, 110, 111, 402, 412,

418

application

of

109, 114, 397

(scientific)

knowledge

application of social sciences 101, 103 application research 103, 115 applied social research 401 applied sociology 40, 41, 42, 45 approximate data pooling 308, 309 association 22, 23, 24, 122, 123, 131,

132, 134, 152, 297, 299, 301, 315, 455,501,509,511,559,603,607 attitudes toward school 298, 554 attrition 334, 341, 344, 346, 348 differential - 334,341,344,346,348 autonomy 20, 21, 52, 64, 113, 153, 154 autopoiesis 46

Brunswik Symmetry 381, 383, 384, 385,

389, 391, 393 bullying 555, 571 bureaucratic professional 176, 177 canonical correlation 317, 447, 448 canonization (of knowledge) 238, 422 cardiovascular mortality 489 cardiovascular prevention study 489 case study 248, 311, 313, 350, 407,

420,427

single - 239,246,247,251,257,261,

272, 307-309, 322, 367, 420, 435

causal description 252 causal explanation 245, 249, 250, 251,

252, 272, 273, 282

causal explanatory questions 252 causal generalization 248, 25 I, 253,

256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 263, 281, 282 causal modeling 250, 255, 272, 273, 277, 278, 279, 282 child abuse 125 child benefit 144, 145 child protection workers 125 chronical recidivists 536 clients' movement 141 clients' organizations 141 client-eentered services 167 cognitive imbalance 578 cohort analysis 536, 604, 608 collective incapacitation 536, 546 colonization 148, 153, 154 community 6, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 121, 123, 140, 144, 159, 167, 184, 188, 191, 192, 194, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 228, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 263, 376, 377, 379, 397, 436, 489, 490, 491, 494, 493, 494, 495, 496, 497, 548,551,556 moral - 22, 27, 29-31 community-based prevention 491, 494, 496

630

Social Prevention and the Social Sciences

compensating feedback process 544 compensatory equalization 415 conditional forecasts 581, 583 construct 144, 173, 194, 201, 217, 247,

critical rationalism 404 Critical Theory 18 cross-level fallacy 385 cross-sectional analyses 234, 241, 410, 489, 525,

250, 316, 364, 419, 591

272, 322, 368, 426,

275, 354, 369, 444,

278, 355, 412, 525,

282, 357, 416, 576,

283, 359, 417, 582,

315, 360, 418, 585,

construct validation 272, 283 construct validity 247, 283, 315, 316,

322,412,416,417,418,419

construct-equivalence 444 content characteristics 313, 315, 316,

323, 325, 326

contextual guidance 5 contingency 21, 174, 251, 260, 261,

263,281,360,376,504,516,518

contract 22, 23, 24, 24, 26, 31, 122 control group 238, 252, 254, 255, 264,

265, 267, 290, 336, 339, 341, 347, 354, 355, 358, 360, 361, 367, 368, 398, 405, 406, 408-412, 415, 460, 588,591 control group design 336, 360, 460 controlling 75, 144, 161, 163, 172, 178, 238, 279, 474, 476, 504, 561, 602, 610 control period 503, 512, 513 cooptation 131-135, 137-139, 141 coordination problem 50, 51 coping 73, 74, 75, 89, 90, 91, 101, 113, 127, 185, 188-191, 194, 200, 202-206, 210-212, 215-218, 223, 233, 234, 313, 324, 333, 341 interspousal - 205 coping behaviors 204 coping options 206 coping process 203, 212, 218 corporatism 29, 32 f'orporatist 26 cost-benefit analyses 404 counterbalancing 76, 334, 335, 337, 339, 340, 346, 347 counterculture 131-133, 135-139, 141 counterinstitutions 99 crime prevention 242, 330, 558, 559 criminal careers 241, 534, 538, 539, 546, 570 criminal environmental law 467, 468, 470,474

527, 529-535, 581, 592, 593, 595, 596, 606, 607 daily life 183, 185, 187-193, 195, 197 data availability 271, 277, 278, 279 data protection laws 486, 488 decentralization 158, 159, 162, 164, 184 decentralized care 184 decline of community 17, 19-23,

25-27, 29, 31

deferment of execution of sentence 479,

480, 486

deficient codings 348 deficient reporting 331, 347-349, 351 defining social problems 112 demographic impacts 590 deregulation 18, 27 descriptive causation 280 deterrence 247, 250 deviance 78, 95, 102, 241, 574 dichotomization 325 differentiation 7, 20, 21, 22, 23, 34, 37,

39, 53, 54, 74, 76, 109, 111, 113, 151, 184, 191,452,470 functional - 7,20,21,23,39,53 differentiation of milieu 37, 38 disembeddedness 20, 22 disintegration 23, 43, 44, 55, 115 disorder(s) 6, 102, 143, 209, 213, 215, 224, 232, 233, 239, 312, 313, 314, 316-326, 331, 332, 336, 544, 569, 570 behavioral - 313, 314, 315, 326, 332 combined - disorders 314 emotional - 313, 314, 325, 326 psychologic~ - 6, 312, 323 division of labor 6, 21, 23, 24, 26, 30, 31, 191 divorce 145, 146, 147, 209, 211, 220, 228, 234, 314, 459 drugs

sedative - 135

drug addict 63, 75, 99, 132, 133, 135,

139, 479, 481, 483, 484, 485, 487, 488 drug laws 479 drug therapy 479, 486, 487

631

Subject Index drug user 240 drug-