RQ3: What are the perspectives of mental health correctional staff regarding the themes and motivations of child pornography sex offenders for engaging in non-contact offenses and their potential risk in the future?

Phenomenon: The increasing number of child pornography offenders and limited resources for predicting/assessing future risk.

Criteria: Inclusion criteria are characteristics that the prospective subjects must have if they are to be included in the study, while exclusion criteria are those characteristics that disqualify prospective subjects from inclusion in the study

Inclusion: Be front-line staff (current mental health staff) within the corrections service of Canada in the Alberta region and are currently working with the sex offender population.

· Qualitative Case study

· Content Analysis

· Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

· Published in English

· All ethnic groups

· Front line staff perceptions of non-contact sex offenders behaviors

· Front line staff perspective on non-contact sex offenders biological, sociological and psychological factors

· Front line staff perception of non-contact sex offender risk to re-offend and how they are different from contact sex offenders

Exclusion: The qualitative study with the sex offenders.

· Perspective of the non-contact sex offenders

· Quantitative Questionnaire studies

· Mixed-method studies with mainly quantitative studies

· Surveys

· Observational studies

· Randomized trials and outcome studies

Qualitative Sampling Strategy: The sampling strategy will be a purposeful sampling of frontline staff (mental health employees) who have worked or currently work with child pornography sex offenders.

Methodology: 12 front-line staff will be studied in the course of this research. The participates will have to be employed with the Correctional Service of Canada institution in the Alberta region.

Sampling Criteria: Male and female adults who work within the mental health department with Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), ages 19 and older will be invited to participate. The participants will be interviewed face-to-face and their information will be anonymous. Based on Lawn, Delany, Pulvirenti, Smith, & McMillans (2015) qualitative research study they used workers from a range of professional disciplines (2 psychiatrists, 3 nurses, 3 occupational therapists, and 2 social workers). Within the Correctional Service of Canada, mental health department there is psychologists, social workers, mental health nurses, and social workers. This will provide a range of professional disciplines. Within the Lawn, Delany, Pulvirenti, Smith, & McMillan (2015) they used staff participants who were currently employed for 5 years or more to establish a degree of experience. I believe this would be a good restriction within my study to have the current staff within the mental health department in CSC to have multiple years within the department to have a degree of experience and involvement with non-contact sex offenders.

Theoretical Saturation: In terms of saturation, since I am researching an area that has not been researched before, I am not looking for data saturation (Lawn, Delany, Pulvirenti, Smith, & McMillan, 2015).

Sources of Data: Participants would be recruited by internal email within the institution and by word of mouth from front-line staff who participated in the study. Another way for recruitment will be through conversations with the managers and chiefs of the mental health department within the Alberta region. Access to interview the front-line staff within the mental health department will be in the institution and the offender’s file information will be located in their electronic file in the institution’s management system. Consent forms will be reviewed at the beginning of the research study. In the consent, it will detail how their identity will not be review when the study is published. Within the consent process, the individual will be able to ask questions and state their consents and they can withdraw their consent throughout any part of the research study.

References

Lawn, S., Delany, T., Pulvirenti, M., Smith, A., & McMillan, J. (2015). A qualitative study examining the presence and consequences of moral framings in patients’ and mental health workers’ experiences of community treatment orders. BMC Psychiatry, 15, 1–17. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1186/s12…