Additional research evidence for adolescents’ multi-faceted reasoning about ambiguous social issues such as substance use was conducted by Shaw, Amsel and Schillo . They investigated late adolescents’ domain reasoning when presented with hypothetical scenarios involving risk-taking behaviors and by asking respondents to justify engagement or lack thereof in the behavior/activity. It was found that 84% of the respondents’ justifications referred to at least one social domain of reasoning. Moreover, 88% of the justifications respondents provided when evaluating each of the risktaking behaviors made reference to a combination of prudential, conventional, and moral considerations as reasons for not engaging in the behavior/activity. This and other studies have thereby shown the multiple lines of reasoning adolescents employ when reasoning about such ambiguous social issues and behaviors. Such variability in adolescents’ domains of reasoning in the above studies suggests that they are accounting for various contextual factors when judging these issues. As adolescents develop, they are more able to consider multiple facets of an issue rather than thinking about the issue in a unilateral way. Thus, as they become more able to integrate the various features of an issue as well as their informational assumptions,cure cannabis their thinking about these ambiguous issues becomes more complex and their evaluations more multi-dimensional . The above review of the literature indicates that the findings about which social domain of reasoning is most prominent in adolescents’ thinking about an issue like substance use have been inconsistent.
Results also suggest that teens may draw upon a multitude of factors across social domains when reasoning about such issues. Moreover, problems with the methodology and/or analysis of some of these studies suggest that a forced-choice approach to data collection in this line of research limits the clarity and interpretability of results, and therefore the ability to draw conclusions from the findings. As related more specifically to the issue that is the focus of the present research, previous research has suggested that marijuana use is a social matter that involves different and at times conflicting considerations. The array of relevant facets involved in marijuana use make it an ambiguous social issue as opposed to prototypical moral, conventional, or personal issues. Thus far, the following points have been discussed: 1) marijuana use is an important yet vaguely understood social issue that warrants further research, 2) marijuana use is an ambiguous issue that is often comprised of various relevant facets that merit consideration, 3) the salience of these various considerations are associated with the informational assumptions held by an individual, and 4) understanding the various informational assumptions that become salient in adolescents’ reasoning about marijuana use can help elucidate the basis for their judgments and related justifications. In the present investigation, the patterns of adolescents’ judgments and justifications regarding marijuana use were explored through open-ended questions about their evaluations of marijuana use in general and under the consideration of certain hypothetical conditions. These patterns of reasoning were then compared to the patterns of judgments regarding unambiguous issues. In addition to questions about marijuana use, respondents were asked to evaluate a prototypical moral issue and a prototypical personal issue . Adolescents’ judgments and justifications about the prototypical moral or personal issues were expected to be judged within the respective moral or personal domains.
However, judgments and justifications about marijuana use were expected to reflect a different pattern ; evaluations of marijuana use were expected to be inconsistent and to reference various domains of reasoning depending on the informational assumptions held. This study, which assessed adolescents’ evaluations and judgments about marijuana use is modeled on previous social domain research that has investigated individuals’ reasoning about ambiguous social issues, such as pornography, homosexuality, and abortion . The present study used a similar research methodology as the Turiel et al. studies. Some of the questions that were used in the Turiel et al. studies have likewise been adapted for the aims of the present study. The present study employed a short-answer response format to data collection, which allowed for a larger sample size , while retaining the value that qualitative data collection methodology offers. By allowing respondents to provide justifications for their evaluations rather than only expressions of agreement or disagreement, it was expected that the present study would yield greater depth in understanding how respondents evaluate issues. Data were gathered through the administration of surveys that asked participants whether and why/why not 1) marijuana use is all right or not all right, 2) there should be a law in the U.S. prohibiting the use of marijuana, 3) marijuana use by individuals of certain ages is all right, and 4) marijuana use would be all right if was common practice for people in the U.S. to engage in it. Based on the participant’s responses to these items, he/she was asked follow-up questions about his/her evaluation of the issue in the case of certain hypothetical situations.
The survey items addressed whether and how adolescents use informational assumptions when justifying their judgments of marijuana use. This was accomplished by 1) obtaining the participants’ reasons for their evaluations, followed by 2) specific items asking participants whether they think frequent marijuana use causes physical or psychological harm to the user. The participants were also asked follow-up questions based on their response to the item regarding their thoughts on whether or not marijuana use causes harm to the user. If the participant responded that he/she does not think frequent marijuana use causes harm to the user,curing drying he/she was asked to suppose that scientists conclusively determined that marijuana use was in fact harmful to the user and to judge whether marijuana use would be all right or not all right in this case. If the participant responded that he/she does think frequent marijuana use causes harm to the user, he/she was asked to suppose that scientists conclusively determined that marijuana use was not harmful to the user and to judge whether marijuana use would be all right or not all right in this case. Research aims and intended contributions of the present study. Though there have been some studies aimed at understanding adolescent reasoning about marijuana use through a social domain framework , much of the research in this field has been based on a forced-choice, survey format for data collection. While such methods can be useful for amassing large amounts of data by presenting a number of multiple-choice items to participants, they are limited in the capacity to extract the participants’ thinking; the forced choice format fails to reveal the complexity of thinking and the informational assumptions individuals draw upon to reach their judgments. This study adopts an open-ended written response format of data collection. In this way, the study expanded upon findings from previous research by assessing the ways criterion judgments, justifications, and informational assumptions are brought to bear during adolescents’ evaluations of use of marijuana. Specifically, the questions were designed to assess participants’ evaluations and justifications about the acceptability of marijuana use as related to age, rules/laws/authority contingency, and common practice. These questions, as well as specific questions regarding participants’ beliefs and understandings about the presence and degree of harm associated with use, are designed to assess the informational assumptions adolescents maintain regarding marijuana use. There are three hypotheses for the expected results of this study. The first is that marijuana use is regarded as an ambiguous social issue that elicits multi-domain considerations, resulting in positive and negative evaluations that may be inconsistent across- and even within- individuals depending upon the specific criterion judgments and justifications employed. Variation in response types and patterns are expected between participants, as are inconsistent patterns of criterion judgments within participants’ responses . Likewise, variations within and between participants are expected with regard to the justifications and domains that participants reference in their responses.
The second hypothesis is that individual evaluations will be associated with the informational assumptions held regarding the extent of harm in marijuana use. When asked about the acceptability of use under the condition that it is not harmful, participants are expected to evaluate the use of marijuana positively if prudential concerns were part of the basis for their initially negative evaluation of marijuana use. On the other hand, when asked about the acceptability of use under the condition that marijuana use is harmful, participants are expected to provide negative act evaluations in response to this follow-up question if prudential considerations were part of the basis for their initially positive evaluation of use. The third hypothesis for this study is that, whereas evaluations in criterion judgments of marijuana use will be variable within and between subjects, evaluations of prototypical issues will be consistent . In other words, results from the questions addressing marijuana use issue were expected to contrast with results of prototypical moral and prototypical personal issues in that the prototypical moral issue is expected to be consistently evaluated negatively with justifications referencing the Welfare, Justice and Rights, and Moral Obligation categories and the prototypical personal issue are expected to be consistently evaluated positively with justifications referencing the Personal Choice category. To summarize, results from this portion of the study are expected to show the following: 1) consistently negative judgments regarding the acceptability of stealing, 2) consistently positive judgments about the acceptability of using one’s allowance money to purchase music, and, respectively, 3) morally-based criterion judgments and justifications in response to the stealing issue and 4) personal domain-based criterion judgments and justifications in response to the purchasing music issue. Participants for this study were 100 adolescents aged sixteen to eighteen years of age and in their junior and senior years of high school. Participants were composed of 35 males and 65 females. Seven of the participants were age 16, sixty-three participants were age 17, and thirty were 18 years of age. The majority of the participants were in the 12th grade. Fourteen of the participants were in the 11th grade. The racial/ethnic composition of the participants was primarily White and Hispanic , but there were also a small number of participants who identified as ‘Mixed’ , Asian , or ‘Other’ . Participants were recruited from a high school in a mid-sized rural city in the northern San Francisco Bay Area that is primarily composed of middle class households . Participation in the study was optional and based on students’ interest in participating in the research. The surveys were administered to students in the four class periods of the Psychology course offered at the high school. Study administration took place during typical school day hours. The classroom teacher explained to students that they would have the opportunity to participate in a research study being conducted by a graduate student for the purposes of a doctoral dissertation. Students were asked to review Student Consent/Assent forms as well as Parent Permission Form and to return signed forms if choosing to participate in the study . Completion and submission of the Student Consent/Assent and the Parent Permission Form were mandatory prerequisites for being given the choice to participate in the study on the day of administration. The Graduate Student Investigator reviewed three guidelines for the surveys that would be handed out. The following instructions, which had been written on the front board prior to the students’ arrival, were reviewed and further explained with the participants: 1) State “all right,” “not all right,” or “depends” in response to each question, 2) always make sure to state your reason for your response , and 3) for items that have a part and part , answer either part or –the survey provides directions about whether to answer part or based on the previous response given. After reviewing these guidelines, participants were asked if they had any questions. Participants’ questions were answered and the surveys were distributed. Participants were asked about their judgments of marijuana use in general , whether there should be a law that prohibits marijuana use, and whether marijuana use would be all right if there was not a law prohibiting use , or if there was law prohibiting use . Respondents were then asked to evaluate marijuana in the case that the majority of the people in the United States decided that marijuana use should be allowed for individuals ages 21 and over, and in the case that it was common practice for individuals to engage in marijuana use.