This article uses panel data and multiple regression of follow-up on baseline variables to test direction of causality among drug use behavior, informal labels, and formal labels. Baseline and follow-up data were collected on a random sample of 100 adolescents (54 males) and a clinical sample of 88 adolescents (49 males). Separate regressions were performed on male and female respondents using both samples. Slope differences across samples were tested using interaction terms computed by multiplying sample type (coded as 0 = random, 1 = clinical) by each regressor. Results partially supported by the labeling theory proposition of secondary deviance among males, although changes are suggested in this proposition. Among females, drug use behavior was causally prior to labels, which contradicts secondary deviance. Further research is needed to clarify reasons for this sex difference in causal processes over time. An implication for research is to use panel data where possible in testing direction of causality. An implication for theory in the social sciences is that theories may be sex-specific. Thus theories must be tested separately on each sex as well as on samples including both sexes.
In‐depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 25 persons recently convicted of homicide in a largely rural, midwestern state. The primary focus of the study was the definition of the situation, particularly the vocabulary of motives, employed by the respondents at the time of their crime. The results showed that the vast majority of the respondents cited motives involving excuses (e.g., it was an accident, judgment impaired by alcohol/drugs, not oneself because of severe stress). These excuses assumed, or appealed to, conventional moral views of violence. Six of the individuals provided motives that they felt justified their actions. However, these justifications tended to be based upon a plea of self‐defense and demonstrated a commitment to conventional morality rather than to the norms of a violent subculture. There was no evidence that the respondents viewed their behavior as part of a character contest. In most instances, they were unemployed or underemployed persons, living rather dead‐end lives, who in the course of mounting life stress struck out at someone, usually while intoxicated. Frequently they were depressed, and in some cases suicidal, at the time of the act, and the victim was usually a relative or friend. In half of the cases it appeared that the homicide would not have taken place if a handgun has not been present.
A "reverse" Social Distance Scale was created by modifying Bogardus's Social Distance Scale, to measure minority groups' perceptions of the social distance established by the majority group between itself and minority groups. The Reverse Social Distance Scale (Guttman's coefficient of reproducibility = 0.99) differentiated between the African American students and the other two groups of minority students in the present sample--Hispanic students and Others--but did not differentiate between the latter two groups. The relationships between the participants' choices of self-identification terms and their scores on the Reverse Social Distance Scale were varied.
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