Direct democracy, policy diffusion, and medicalized marijuana.

Virtually all studies of policy diffusion are based on statutory enactments by state legislatures. But a substantial number of medicalized marijuana laws were initiated through citizen initiatives and ratified by referenda (I&R). This case study suggests that the diffusion of laws adopted by I&R requires two modifications to the conventional model of policy diffusion.

Convenient yet not a convenience sample: Jury pools as experimental subject pools.

Scholars greatly benefit from access to convenient, inexpensive data sources. Many researchers rely on student subject pools, a practice that raises concern about the "college sophomore problem," or the possibility that findings from student subjects do not generalize beyond the campus. As an accessible, low cost, and heterogeneous data source, some researchers have used subjects recruited from jury pools, which are drawn from randomly-selected citizens required by law to appear for jury duty.