Search results

The purpose of this paper is to outline the qualitative research findings of the effectiveness of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service Programme Needs Assessment (PNA) in supporting decision making regarding selection onto high-intensity offending behaviour programmes.

Qualitative data analysis was used through the application of thematic analysis. Results were pooled using principles from meta-synthesis in order to draw conclusions as to whether the PNA was operating as designed.

Four overarching themes were identified, which have meaning in guiding decision making into, or out of high-intensity programmes. These were risk, need and responsivity, the importance of attitudes, motivation and formulation and planning.

The majority of data were collected from category C prisons. Generalisability of findings to high-intensity programmes delivered in maximum security prisons and prisons for younger people aged 18–21 years is limited. The research team had prior knowledge of the PNA, whether through design or application. Procedures were put in place to minimise researcher biases.

Findings suggest that the PNA is effective in guiding clinical decision making. Practitioners and policy makers can be assured that the processes in place to select into high-intensity programmes are effective, and aligned with the What Works in reducing re-offending.

This is the first evaluation into the effectiveness of the PNA designed to support clinical decision making regarding participant selection onto accredited offending behaviour programmes. Implications for practice have been discussed.

There is little research that examines the experiences of individuals who were assessed as having a sexual preference for children. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lived experience of five incarcerated participants who possessed a sexual preference for either prepubescent or pubescent children and had completed an accredited programme for males convicted of sexual offences in HM Prison Service in England and Wales.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out and the data were analysed using the principles of an interpretative phenomenological approach.

Three recurrent themes were identified. These were: internal battle, I am always going to have these thoughts, and there is no help out there. In particular, these participants perceived that their sexual preference was relatively enduring and would require continuous management.

The results have implications for clinical practice and further research. Clinicians may need to think particularly creatively about their therapeutic plans and extend the parameters of desirable treatment goals for clients with sexual preferences for children.

To date there are very few studies that have examined the accounts of men with a sexual preference for children regarding their lived experience. Paedophilia constitutes a stable sexual preference, suggesting that convicted perpetrators with such a preference face an inherent problem. Whilst sexual urges may be regulated and arousability reduced, the underlying attraction may remain intact. In response to the lack of research in this area, the aim of this study was to investigate the lived experience of a sexual preference for children.

The need for random assignment in sexual offending programme evaluation is clear. Decades of high dependence on weak-inference methodology, that of observational studies, has inhibited professional agreement regarding the effects of programmes. Observational studies have a place in evaluation research when more rigorous scientific designs precede them, as occurs in neighbouring fields of drug development and health. If, however, observational studies remain the only method used to evaluate sexual offending programmes, the field will continue to endure uncertainty with confident causal inferences regarding their effects remaining elusive. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper takes the form of a literature review and discussion.

The case for random assignment is made alongside a rebuttal of arguments against their use.

This is an original look at the need for random assignment in sexual offending programme evaluation taking into account existing studies and discussion topics.

The adaptationist approach of evolutionary psychology provides a model of substantial scope for understanding the function of human behaviour, including harmful behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the evolutionary importance of social belonging, and also its relevance to why people deny stigmatised harmful behaviour, and the potential problems of labelling them by it.

The paper takes the form of a discussion and professional opinion.

Evolution reveals how natural selection has shaped the human nervous system for threat-detection and cooperation. It casts a light on why people convicted of harmful and stigmatised behaviour may hide, deny and lie as a means of limiting social devaluation and maintaining their fitness to belong in groups.

Amidst all our efforts as forensic practitioners to empower people to pro-socially reconnect and lead safer crime-free lives, endlessly associating them with their most unacceptable and harmful acts, might not help.

Evolutionary forensic psychology and evolutionary criminology are sub-disciplines of science that are progressively emerging. They place the adaptationist approach front and centre in the study and theory of criminal behaviour. This paper aims to offer an example of this synergy, but with a specific focus on forensic practice itself.

This paper intends to explore the relationship between participants' eye fixations (a measure of attention) and durations (a measure of concentration) on areas of interest within a range of online articles and their levels of information discernment (a sub-process of information literacy characterising how participants make judgements about information).

Eye-tracking equipment was used as a proxy measure for reading behaviour by recording eye-fixations, dwell times and regressions in males aged 18–24 (n = 48). Participants' level of information discernment was determined using a quantitative questionnaire.

Data indicates a relationship between participants' level of information discernment and their viewing behaviours within the articles' area of interest. Those who score highly on an information discernment questionnaire tended to interrogate the online article in a structured and linear way. Those with high-level information discernment are more likely to pay attention to an article's textual and graphical information than those exhibiting low-level information discernment. Conversely, participants with low-level information discernment indicated a lack of curiosity by not interrogating the entire article. They were unsystematic in their saccadic movements spending significantly longer viewing irrelevant areas.

The most profound consequence is that those with low-level information discernment, through a lack of curiosity in particular, could base their health, workplace, political or everyday decisions on sub-optimal engagement with and comprehension of information or misinformation (such as fake news).

Ground-breaking analysis of the relationship between a persons' self-reported level of information literacy (information discernment specifically) and objective measures of reading behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent a person’s psychophysiological well-being is affected by misinformation and whether their level of information discernment has any positive or negative effect on the outcome.

Participants (n = 48) were randomly and blindly allocated to one of two groups: control group participants were told a person they were working with was a student; experimental group participants were additionally led to believe that this other participant had extreme religious views. This was both stigmatising and misinforming, as this other person was an actor. Participants completed a pre-screening booklet and a series of tasks. Participants’ cardiovascular responses were measured during the procedure.

Participants with high levels of information discernment, i.e. those who are curious, use multiple sources to verify information, are sceptical about search engine information, are cognisant of the importance of authority and are aware that knowledge changes and is contradictory at times exhibited an adaptive stress response, i.e. healthy psychophysiological outcomes and responded with positive emotions before and after a stressful task.

The findings indicate the potential harmful effects of misinformation and discuss how information literacy or Metaliteracy interventions may address this issue.

The first study to combine the hitherto unrelated theoretical areas of information discernment (a sub-set of information literacy), affective states (positive affect negative affect survey) and stress (challenge and threat cardiovascular measures).

The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative investigation into whether online textual postings, produced by undergraduate students as part of an undergraduate module, can demonstrate their information literacy (IL) capabilities as a discursive competence and socially enacted practice. It also asks whether these online postings embody power relations between students, tutors and librarians.

Foucault’s notion of discursive competence and the separate but complementary concept of practice architectures (specifically focussing on “sayings”) devised by Lloyd were used as thematic lenses to categorise online discussion board postings from a formative online peer assessment exercise created for first-year UK undergraduate students. Online postings were the node of analysis used to identify patterns of language across online conversation. These postings were inductively analysed through manual content analysis. Subject’s responses were initially categorised using open coding.

Postings appeared to embody student’s discursive competence and information practice in IL, especially their level of information discernment and what constituted a quality “reference” for an assignment. However, they also demonstrated that the notion of “references” (information artefacts such as a journal article) perform a certain function in reproducing the discursive practices of an academic discipline as an agreed construct between tutor, student and librarian.

Students were engaged in the process of becoming good scholars by using appropriate online postings to create valid arguments through assessing other’s work, but what they did not do was question received meanings regarding the quality of information they used as evidence. Far from exhibiting the desired outcome of critical thinking (a cornerstone of IL) students who appeared most articulate in discussion tended to emulate the “strong discourse” put forward by their tutors and librarians.

This research uses practice architectures and discourse analysis to analyse students’ IL capabilities and the context in which they are developed. An approach not employed hitherto. This has practical implications for the ways in which academics and librarians introduce students to the academic discourse of their discipline and the ways in which the production, communication and exchange of information in academic contexts is characterised.

This paper aims to provide a brief and accessible introduction to genetics and epigenetics for forensic practitioners. It provides two primers which define key genetic concepts and explain what epigenetic mechanisms actually are. The primers are provided alongside sections that focus on genetic research relevant to forensic practice, with a range of key messages that support the call to contextualise harmful behaviour and build better awareness of gene-environment relationships.

This is an opinion paper.

Select and seminal studies from the genetic literature that have forensic practice relevance are cited. These include studies from candidate gene research and epigenetic research. They highlight a number of key themes, including the way neurodevelopment and behaviour are contextually adjusted to fit certain environments, with epigenetic changes being an underpinning biological mechanism that facilitates this.

This article aims to introduce forensic practitioners to basic concepts in genetics and epigenetics so that they are able to engage with the relevant literature and understand the far-reaching implications for forensic practice.

It is becoming increasingly useful for forensic practitioners to appreciate how life experiences are encoded into biology through epigenetics. This paper highlights the potential of genetic and epigenetic research to provide major contributions to real-world practice in the coming years. It provides a modern biopsychosocial perspective on harmful behaviour and helps deepen the understanding of our efforts to support behaviour change. It offers ways to think of social and rehabilitative initiatives in biological terms.

This paper is one of few modern texts that focusses on the relevance of genetic and epigenetic research in applied forensic practice. It aims to introduce relevant concepts in an accessible manor. It intends to introduce biologically informed ways of understanding harmful behaviour within context and with attention to its function. It contributes to a de-pathologising narrative.

Today’s digital and mobile learning environment has contributed to the increased availability of and interest in e-textbooks, and many school systems are conducting trials to evaluate their effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze instructors’ levels of use (LoU) of e-textbook features and innovations at a southeastern US community college. This study also evaluated the effectiveness of e-textbooks compared to paper textbooks on student achievement during a pilot period of e-textbook implementation.

Using a survey research design, the LoU of the Innovation framework was applied to identify and analyze instructors’ LoU rankings for eight e-textbook features. The study also used historical data on student demographics and final course grades to evaluate student achievement between text formats. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to answer the research questions.

Results showed that e-textbook features were used at a low to non-existent level by instructors and that there was no significant difference in grade average between text formats among students. However, interactions between text format, age and gender were found.

This study added to the body of knowledge regarding e-textbook efficacy. While many studies stop with the conclusion that there is no difference in student outcomes between text formats, this study addressed a gap in literature on how to improve student performance with e-textbook technology by using the LoU of an innovation framework.

Although our society has made college more universal through vastly increased access to postsecondary education, college completion has stagnated, and the return on a college degree varies by field of study. Therefore, gaining admission to college – even a four-year college – is no longer a guaranteed ticket to social mobility. As colleges and universities attract and enroll more diverse populations of students, the barriers to student success once enrolled remain prominent concerns. To explore stratification processes regarding student success, choice of major, and completion, interviews were conducted with 41 low-income students at a large research university. These interviews illustrate the ways that students’ aspirations are lowered after entering college and how the cooling-out process functions within STEM majors. The primary catalyst facilitating the lowering of student aspirations and migration out of STEM majors was negative experiences in introductory math and science courses. Students responded to this catalyst by either lowering their aspirations or changing their behavior to improve performance in those courses. Students who were able to persist in STEM majors had a family member or mentor who helped them to frame the problem as a reflection of their behavior, not their innate ability, and to strategize behavioral changes. Institutional agents played both the role of support which helped some students maintain their aspirations and the role of steering students out of STEM illustrating the importance of the messages we send as advisors, student affairs professionals, or faculty. These findings demonstrate the ways in which the cooling-out process works in four-year institutions to perpetuate structures of opportunity within degree attainment and access to elite careers.