Hidden Choices and Missing Numbers

Abstract

This study works at the intersection of the social construction of drug problems and the social construction of numbers. While others have looked at how the media use numbers and other discursive resources to construct drug problems, this study looks at how researchers select a few numbers from large studies to present to the media in press releases. It focuses on Monitoring the Future, an annual study of drug use among American teens. It examines specifically the choices the principal investigators of the study made about what numbers to publicize during the Crack Scare of late 1985 and 1986, a time when the media were intensely interested in numbers documenting a purported vast increase in cocaine use. It then compares these choices with those the researchers made at other times between 1978 and 2011. Comparisons over time allow us to determine whether the choices about what numbers to publicize in the mid-1980s were unique to that time (and hence reflected the immediate political context) or were similar to choices made at other times as well (and hence reflected routine practices).