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Avoidance and Misunderstanding: A Rejoinder to McDowall et al.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Chester L. Britt ,
Gary Kleck  and
David J. Bordua
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Extract

McDowall, Loftin, and Wiersma (1996) avoid our criticisms of the univariate interrupted time series design (ITSD) by misstating our criticisms, by addressing what they claim we “implied” rather than what we plainly stated, and by ignoring crucial points in our article in this issue (Britt et al. 1996). We reiterate: McDowall et al.'s (1992) conclusions regarding the alleged efficacy of the Washington, D.C., handgun ban (mislabeled by McDowall et al. as a licensing law) collapsed once any of three improvements were made to their analysis: (1) use of a more appropriate control series, (2) use of a more appropriate, theoretically based specification of the intervention model, and (3) use of an alternative, extended time series beyond the period studied by McDowall et al. (1992). Nothing McDowall et al. (1996) write has rebutted our assertions.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , 1996 , pp. 393 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by The Law and Society Association

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References

Britt, Chester L., Kleck, Gary, & Bordua, David J. (1996) “A Reassessment of the D.C. Gun Law: Some Cautionary Notes on the Use of Interrupted Time Series Designs for Policy Impact,” 30 Law & Society Rev. 361.Google Scholar
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