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This paper reports the findings of structural level research into the process of commitment of criminal defendants as incompetent to stand trial because of insanity in Louisiana. Conceptualizing criminal courts as open systems, it was predicted their structural environments would operate as contingencies in the perception and labeling of defendants as being (or having been at the time of the offense) mentally incompetent. Several structural-cultural features were predicted to have contingency effects on forensic commitment: (1) mileage of parish seat to the state's single forensic facility, (2) ruralness, (3) metropolitanism (SMSA status). (4) religious and cultural ethnicity, (5) relative power of the parish population to influence criminal court outcomes, and (6) community climate of repressiveness. These varibles' effects on parish commitment rates were analyzed using path analysis techniques, and results did indicate that the probability of incompetency and criminal insanity labels being applied were contingent on the parishes' social structural characteristics. Interestingly, the proximity of the parish to the hospital had the greatest direct effect on the commitment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was undertaken to examine the relationship between status indicators and psychiatric diagnosis. The basic assumption tested was that information such as the patient's status inconsistency (which is related to role conflict), achieved status, and ascribed status are used in establishing the psychiatric disposition of the patient. The principal hypothesis tested was that patients with high status inconsistency would receive the more severe diagnoses (i.e., psychotic) while those with low status inconsistency would receive the less severe diagnoses (i.e., non-psychotic). It was found that the status inconsistency of the patients yielded the least explanatory power regarding diagnosis. In contrast, employment, occupation, age, and sex all proffer a moderate amount of explanation. The single most powerful predictor variable was the race of the patient. Our conclusion was that both primary and secondary socialization of the agents for diagnosis (psychiatrists) affected this socially constructed outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which compared the parent orientation of Okinawan and non-Okinawan youth. Features of the Okinawan tradition; Comparison of the Okinawan youth and U.S. youth regarding their parent orientation.

The manifest goals of this research were to: (a) devise a means of measuring the relative importance for youth of two potential types of referents-parents or peers and (b) obtain information on behavioral correlates of parent and peer orientations. Tests of relationship were made relative to parent or peer orientation and: the age-grade level, sex, the perceived source of need satisfaction, and the socioeconomic class of respondents. Ordinal type scales were used where applicable to gain measurements of the variables. Chi-square tests and rank-order correlations provided the measures of association between type of orientation and the independent variables. All the associations were found to be significant, except socioeconomic class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]