Shona Robinson-Edwards, Stephanie Kewley, Laura Riley and Dawn Fisher
The purpose of this paper is to examine prisoner experience of an equine assisted psychotherapy (EAP). This paper explores the use of therapeutic interventions; specifically…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine prisoner experience of an equine assisted psychotherapy (EAP). This paper explores the use of therapeutic interventions; specifically focussing on EAP, within this paper EAP constitutes the use of horses in therapy and involves a team approach from equine and mental health experts.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper took a qualitative approach; due to the exploratory nature of this study a phenomenological approach was adopted. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was deemed appropriate; the intervention took place in an adult, male, open condition prison in England (Category D) however participants who engaged in the equine intervention were from both the open prison and a nearby closed Category C prison. The equine intervention was delivered by qualified therapists who worked to help improve emotional regulation among participants with a history of drug and alcohol abuse.
Findings
The findings within this paper identify a strong correlation between EAP and positive experiences expressed by participants. Alternative approaches such as animal assisted therapies are worthy of consideration when attempting to support the rehabilitation and treatment needs of incarcerated clients. Participants achieved a number of goals and their confidence improved as they felt a sense of achievement.
Research limitations/implications
This paper demonstrates the complexities of therapeutic interventions. Research relating to EAP in the UK is few and far between, consequently understanding is limited. This paper seeks to offer an insight into this topic and build upon this research in the future.
Practical implications
Access to prison for research purposes is challenging. Due to the nature of this study and the resources required sometimes EAP therapy cannot be implemented in or near many prisons in England and Wales. Therefore gaining access to this prison and exploring the data is the first phase of further research in this area.
Social implications
Researching the way individuals experience therapeutic interventions is a “growing phenomenon”. This paper aimed to explore EAP interventions, however due to the sample size it was imperative that the role of EAP was not misrepresented. Therefore this papers intention is to raise awareness of EAP interventions and therapeutic interventions in prisons in England and Wales.
Originality/value
To the authors knowledge no previous study has examined such an intervention using this method and as such the findings of this evaluation are important. Moreover this paper enhances and develops our knowledge about how best to support and treat people with histories of substance use and/or mental health problems and anxiety while in prison, and the vital role such therapies may play.
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Anthony Beech, Tracey Swaffer, Vidyah Multra and Dawn Fisher
This study sought to further develop the growing body of qualitative evidence exploring the content, duration and triggers of cognitive distortions and deviant sexual fantasies in…
Abstract
This study sought to further develop the growing body of qualitative evidence exploring the content, duration and triggers of cognitive distortions and deviant sexual fantasies in perpetrators who offend against adult women, using grounded theory techniques. Detailed accounts of the thoughts and fantasies of 10 rapists pre‐ and post‐intervention were analysed. All participants reported having benefited from the programme. Nine participants reported that the victim‐focused work had the most impact on them. It was also found that after treatment: (a) there was a reduction in the level of cognitive distortions around victim blaming, other justifications for offending (such as alcohol use) and the acknowledgment of the impact that their offences has had upon their victims; (b) reductions in denial of fantasising about the offences prior to their offences. The implications of this study, for the improvement of intervention programmes for this group of offenders, are discussed.
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Anthony Beech, Nick Freemantle, Caroline Power and Dawn Fisher
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential biases in research designs used to assess the efficacy of sex offender treatment.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential biases in research designs used to assess the efficacy of sex offender treatment.
Design/methodology/approach
In all, 50 treatment studies (n=13,886) were examined using a random effects meta-analysis model.
Findings
Results indicated a positive effect of treatment for both sexual (OR=0.58, 95%, CI 0.45-0.74, p < 0.0001), and general recidivism (OR=0.54, 95%, CI 0.42-0.69, p < 0.0001), indicating that the likelihood of being reconvicted after treatment was around half compared to no treatment. RCTs showed no significant effect for sexual or general, recidivism. Significant effects were found for non-RCT designs (i.e. incidental cohort, completers vs non-completers designs). Assignment based on need (i.e. giving treatment to those who were high-risk) indicated a negative effect of treatment.
Practical implications
The results highlight the importance of considering study design when considering treatment efficacy.
Originality/value
The current research reports studies identified up until 2009, and examined both published, and unpublished, research originating from a variety of samples employing a random effects model. Consequently, it can be argued that the results are both original and are reflective not only of identified studies, but are also representative of a random set of observations drawn from the common population distribution (Fleiss, 1993). The results of the study suggest that what is required in future research is methodological rigour, and consistency, in the way in which researchers measure the effectiveness of sexual offender treatment.
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Jody Osborn, Ian Elliott, David Middleton and Anthony Beech
The present study investigates the use of two actuarial assessment measures ‐ Risk Matrix 2000 (Thornton et al, 2003) and Static 99 (Hanson & Thornton, 2000) ‐ with individuals…
Abstract
The present study investigates the use of two actuarial assessment measures ‐ Risk Matrix 2000 (Thornton et al, 2003) and Static 99 (Hanson & Thornton, 2000) ‐ with individuals convicted of downloading child pornography on the internet. A UK community‐based sample of convicted internet sex offenders (n = 73) was assessed using both a standard and a revised version of RM2000 and Static 99 and assessed for rates of reconviction. None of the offenders in the sample were convicted of a further sexual crime between a one‐and‐a‐half and fouryear follow‐up. These results suggest reconviction rates for internet sex offenders are lower than for contact child sex offenders. It was found that both the standard version of RM2000 and Static‐99 overestimate the risk levels posed by internet offenders and that an adapted version of RM2000 may be a more realistic measure of risk level in this population. In addition, it was noted that a higher frequency of low‐risk offenders appeared to be accessing images of younger children and images depicting more serious victimisation than high‐risk offenders.
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Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the effects of servant leadership and despotic leadership on employees’ happiness at work (HAW…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the effects of servant leadership and despotic leadership on employees’ happiness at work (HAW) through job crafting.
Design/methodology/approach
To test the hypothesized relationships, the data were collected from 309 Pakistani employees. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.
Findings
The findings showed that servant leadership is an optimal leadership style for creating employees’ HAW. In addition, job crafting was found to mediate the effects of servant leadership on employees’ broad-based positive attitudinal outcome (HAW). Moreover, results showed that despotic leadership negatively influences employees’ HAW through job crafting.
Originality/value
This study is novel as it investigates how newer forms of positive (servant) and negative (despotic) leadership styles influence employees’ multidimensional attitudinal outcome (HAW) via job crafting. By doing so, this research extends the nomological network of servant leadership, despotic leadership, job crafting and HAW.
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Rania Kamla, Sonja Gallhofer and Jim Haslam
This paper adds to a focus of the social accounting literature (on perceptions and attitudes to social accounting) by seeking to offer insights into Syrian accountants' attitudes…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper adds to a focus of the social accounting literature (on perceptions and attitudes to social accounting) by seeking to offer insights into Syrian accountants' attitudes towards, and perceptions of, social accounting in Syria in the first decade of the twenty‐first century, with particular attention to its role, future development and implementation.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper takes the form of an analysis of interviews of Syrian accountants; contextual analysis (and an appreciation of the prior literature).
Findings
Syrian accountants' perceptions are shaped by developments in Syria's socio‐political and economic context, encompassing imperialism/colonialism, globalisation and cultural specificities, including Islam. Interviewees perceived a significant role for a social accounting – that would parallel the Western form of social accounting – in enhancing well‐being in the dynamic context. At the same time, they were reluctant to see the development and implementation of this accounting in Syria as an urgent issue, so that this social accounting might be left initially at least with an even more marginal part to play than in the West. The study suggests that a combination of forces – global developments, Western imperialism and Syria's colonial history – have had a substantively repressive rather than progressive impact on the development of social accounting in Syria vis‐à‐vis its more positive potential.
Research limitations/implications
All limitations of interview research apply. This study focuses on Syria in a context when economic transition was a major issue. Further studies of economies in transition would be of interest.
Practical implications
An awareness of how the local and the global interact in debates over social accounting can provide insights for policy makers concerned with accounting regulation.
Originality/value
The focus on Syria, a non‐Western country, enriches the social accounting literature, which focuses mainly on Western developments.
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Richard A. Bernardi and David F. Bean
This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardi's (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data…
Abstract
This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardi's (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data into accounting's top-40 journals. While Bernardi only considered publications in business-ethics journals in his initial ranking, we developed a methodology to identify ethics articles in accounting's top-40 journals. The purpose of this research is to provide a more complete list of accounting's ethics authors for use by authors, administrators, and other stakeholders. In this study, 26 business-ethics and accounting's top-40 journals were analyzed for a 23-year period between 1986 through 2008. Our data indicate that 16.8 percent of the 4,680 colleagues with either a PhD or DBA who teach accounting at North American institutions had authored/coauthored one ethics article and only 6.3 percent had authored/coauthored more than one ethics article in the 66 journals we examined. Consequently, 83.2 percent of the PhDs and DBAs in accounting had not authored/coauthored even one ethics article.
This chapter explores the role that birdwatching plays in The Archers. It demonstrates some significant similarities between the way that birdwatching is portrayed in present-day…
Abstract
This chapter explores the role that birdwatching plays in The Archers. It demonstrates some significant similarities between the way that birdwatching is portrayed in present-day Ambridge, and the way it was presented in both fictional and non-fictional literature of the 1940s. These similarities suggest that birdwatching in Ambridge is an activity that tends to perpetuate traditional class and gender divisions. Particularly in terms of gender, this is a surprising discovery, given the many strong female characters in the show, and suggests that cultural assumptions about gender and birdwatching run deep in UK society today. The chapter warns that a failure to recognise these assumptions not only hampers the progress of women who aspire to be taken seriously as ornithologists, but also risks reinforcing dualistic thinking about humans and nature at a time when the environmental crisis makes it more important than ever to recognise the ecological interconnectedness of human and nonhuman worlds. However, the recent development of Kirsty Miller’s storyline, in which she is rediscovering her earlier love of the natural world, not only offers hope of a shift away from this traditional bias but also opens a space for a more nuanced examination of the importance of birds in human–nature relations.
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Alexandra L. Ferrentino, Meghan L. Maliga, Richard A. Bernardi and Susan M. Bosco
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in…
Abstract
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.