Therapeutic Engagement and Treatment Progress: Developing and Testing an In-Treatment Measure of Client Engagement Among Sex Offenders in a Group Program

The engagement process of sexual offenders in group-based cognitive-behavioral treatment is an important area of study. Disclosure management style (DMS), a model developed from grounded-theory research of men undertaking a prototypical program, provides a framework to assess engagement in treatment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sexual abuse 2019-12, Vol.31 (8), p.952-971
Main Authors: Frost, Andrew, Grace, Randolph C., McLean, Anthony P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive therapy
Correctional treatment programs
Criminals - psychology
Grounded Theory
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Psychometrics
Psychotherapy, Group
Recidivism
Recidivism - prevention & control
Recidivism - psychology
Sex offenders
Sex Offenses - prevention & control
Sex Offenses - psychology
Treatment Outcome
Treatment programs
Young Adult
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Summary:The engagement process of sexual offenders in group-based cognitive-behavioral treatment is an important area of study. Disclosure management style (DMS), a model developed from grounded-theory research of men undertaking a prototypical program, provides a framework to assess engagement in treatment. Our goal was to develop a quantitative measure of DMS, to test its reliability and validity, and to evaluate its utility as a measure of treatment progress by examining relationships between DMS and established measures of treatment change. We studied a sample of men (N = 93) who undertook an intensive prison-based treatment program in New Zealand. Variables included DMS measures, psychometric measures of dynamic risk and treatment change, static risk, clinician rating of treatment progress, and recidivism outcomes. We found that (a) DMS shows an acceptable level of agreement between independent raters, (b) DMS-based ratings of engagement changed over the course of treatment and were correlated with measures of change based on offender self-reports, and (c) offenders showed heterogeneity in terms of their trajectories of change as assessed by DMS ratings.
ISSN:1079-0632
1573-286X
DOI:10.1177/1079063218791178