NCJ Number
191234
Date Published
2001
Length
36 pages
Annotation
This paper highlights the choices that youth make in terms of priority setting research and practice.
Abstract
To deal effectively with the threats that young people face, teens and adults need to know how big the threats are and how much can be done about them. That means knowing how big the overall burden of adolescent vulnerability is, in order to decide what personal and societal resources to devote to threats to adolescents. It means knowing the relative size of specific threats, and of the expected costs and benefits of opportunities for risk reduction, in order to identify the “best buys” in risk reduction. However, even the best data do not set priorities among threats to adolescents. Those priorities require value judgments regarding the relative importance of different outcomes. This paper is divided into four section sections: 1) “Structuring Prioritization” introduces some general concepts and nomenclature; 2) “Social Mechanisms for Priority Setting” contrasts two general approaches to determining priorities, differing in how explicitly they address value issues; 3) “Deliberative Mechanisms for Priority Setting” considers ways to determine the relevant values, with particular reference to analogous processes developed for setting environment priorities, over the past generation; and 4) the “Conclusion” speculates on the circumstances under which deliberate prioritization might and should occur. Tables, references