The Effect of Brief Sex Offender Training on the Graduate Counseling Students’ Scores on the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire and Working Alliance Inventory
Author
Britton, Kendrick
Abstract
Clinicians who treat sex offenders commonly struggle with the tension between
conceptualizing them as rehabilitative or instinctively predatory. On the one hand, there is the
well-intended goal of forming an alliance with the offender and helping them develop into more
functional human beings. On the other, counselors experience common emotional reactions such
as anger, disgust, and even fear of sex offenders that negatively impact their perceptions and
attitudes. Forensic clinicians are trained to treat sex offenders; however, with the continuing
trend of treating more sex offenders in the community rather than in the prison system, some
community clinicians will inevitably counsel sex offenders after they are released into the
general public. Despite the presence of comorbid and treatable psychiatric symptoms, the
disturbing crimes committed by sex offenders can make them morally intolerable to some
counselors. In these circumstances, there is little guidance to help clinicians carry out their
treatment duties competently and ethically. Participants in this study were graduate counseling
students. The graduate counseling students were divided into two groups and asked to examine
and evaluate a Tier I sex offense. Next, the participants completed the DEQ, which documents
the participant’s emotional reaction to the offense. Afterward, they completed the WAI-SRT as a
pretest that assessed their confidence in establishing a relationship with the offender. A 45-
minute sex offender training intervention (independent variable) was given to one group and no
training to the other. After the training, each group examined and evaluated a Tier III sex
offense. The DEQ and WAI-SRT post-tests (dependent variables) were given to each group to
compare the change over time between the training-treatment and the no training-control groups.
Date
2022-04-26
Citation:
APA:
Britton, Kendrick.
(April 2022).
The Effect of Brief Sex Offender Training on the Graduate Counseling Students’ Scores on the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire and Working Alliance Inventory
(Doctoral Dissertation, East Carolina University). Retrieved from the Scholarship.
(http://hdl.handle.net/10342/10648.)
MLA:
Britton, Kendrick.
The Effect of Brief Sex Offender Training on the Graduate Counseling Students’ Scores on the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire and Working Alliance Inventory.
Doctoral Dissertation. East Carolina University,
April 2022. The Scholarship.
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/10648.
December 10, 2023.
Chicago:
Britton, Kendrick,
“The Effect of Brief Sex Offender Training on the Graduate Counseling Students’ Scores on the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire and Working Alliance Inventory”
(Doctoral Dissertation., East Carolina University,
April 2022).
AMA:
Britton, Kendrick.
The Effect of Brief Sex Offender Training on the Graduate Counseling Students’ Scores on the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire and Working Alliance Inventory
[Doctoral Dissertation]. Greenville, NC: East Carolina University;
April 2022.
Collections
Publisher
East Carolina University