| The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between characteristics juvenile offenders exhibit at intake, offenders' progress on treatment goals, and offenders' termination status from outpatient treatment.; Participants consisted of one hundred fifty three juvenile sex offenders who previously had been treated at, and terminated from a sex offender's counseling program in a major city in the southwest. Offenders had been mandated to outpatient therapy, referred by the State's Juvenile Youth Services, Children's Protective Services, a parent, guardian, or other referral source. Participants ranged in age from twelve to eighteen years of age. They had a standard termination report in their file that contained information regarding whether or not their termination from therapy was successful or unsuccessful, in addition to a description of the criteria that was utilized for the termination process.; Volunteers coded offenders termination status from treatment and five behavioral characteristics from clients archival records including: a history of assaultive behavior, the number of previous assaults, degree of force used in the assault, manner of victim selection, and offender's denial of responsibility for the assault. Volunteers also recorded the highest progression level offenders achieved on six treatment goals including: (1) describes what was wrong about his offense behavior, (2) demonstrates victim empathy, (3) talks about his and others' victim(s) respectfully, (4) manages his sexual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors well, (5) can list stressful situations in his life now, and (6) avoids risky “red flag” situations. Offender characteristics were correlated to their ability to achieve treatment goals and their termination status. The relation between characteristics and termination outcome was analyzed using a chi square to examine the strength of the association. This analysis illustrated trends in data regarding history of assaultive behavior, number of prior offenses, and degree of force, but did not result in significant findings. An analysis of variance was utilized to determine which behavioral characteristics were more strongly related to offender's goal progression on treatment progress. The ANOVA's resulted in a significant relation between the characteristic denial of responsibility and treatment goals. The other four characteristics did not result in significant values. The relation between offenders' termination status and goal attainment was analyzed using a MANOVA to examine if offenders with successful or unsuccessful termination reports differed on their therapeutic progress as illustrated by their varied goal attainment on a Likert scale progress report. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
