Overconfidence, sexual health awareness and sexual health risk among young female users of sexual health clinics

This study explored the patterning of young people’s sexual health competence, and how this relates to sexual health outcomes. A survey of 381 young people attending two sexual health clinics in Northern Ireland was carried out between 2009 and 2010. Latent profile analysis of self-rated decision making, self-rated sexual health knowledge, and knowledge of sexually transmitted disease questionnaire scores was used to determine typologies of sexual health competence. Analysis revealed three categories of sexual health competence and explored their association with other behaviours and social characteristics. Young people’s subjective opinion of their sexual health competency, when not matched with a corresponding knowledge of sexual health, could place people at an increased risk of poor sexual health outcomes. Greater levels of peer pressure to have sex and early sexual debut were associated with poorer sexual health knowledge. This finding warrants further investigation, as the importance of self-perceived competence for sexual health screening and education programmes are considerable.

Harmful transgressions qua moral transgressions: A deflationary view

One important issue in moral psychology concerns the proper characterization of the folk understanding of the relationship between harmful transgressions and moral transgressions. Psychologist Elliot Turiel and associates have claimed with a broad range of supporting evidence that harmful transgressions are understood as transgressions that are authority independent and general in scope, which, according to them, characterizes these transgressions as moral transgressions. Recently, many researchers questioned the position advocated by the Turiel tradition with some new evidence. We entered this debate proposing an original, deflationary view in which perceptions of basic-rights violation and injustice are fundamental for the folk understanding of harmful transgressions as moral transgressions in Turiel’s sense. In this article, we elaborate and refine our deflationary view, while reviewing the debate, addressing various criticisms raised against our perspective, showing how our perspective explains the existent evidence, and suggesting new lines of inquiry.

Ethnic Segregation, Moral Panics and Social Class: A Comparative Study of the Experiences and Perspectives of Working Class and Middle Class Children in Belfast

This paper begins by describing the moral panics that have tended to emerge sporadically in Northern Ireland over the last few years with regard to young people’s involvement in sectarian violence in Belfast. Within this, while these young people have been cast in the traditional role of folk devils, the paper will show how younger children also tend to be explicitly identified and named in an ambiguous way through such moral panics; playing a deviant role as participators, and sometimes instigators, of sectarian violence but also carrying the symbolic responsibility of representing Belfast’s future. It will be shown that it is because of this ambiguous position that it is adults rather than the children themselves that tend to be held responsible for their actions; either as rioters using the children as political pawns or as parents guilty of neglect. With this as a starting point the paper then explores the perspectives and experiences of two groups of 10-11 year old children living in Belfast and the impact of these moral panics on them. One group of children, living in affluent middle class areas were found to be appropriating and re-working these broader moral panics into more general discourses of derision that tended to pathologize working class children and communities more generally. For the other group of children, living in economically deprived areas with high levels of sectarian tensions and violence, their experiences of such violence and their participation in it are discussed. It will be shown that for these children, the broader moral panics that exist tend to have the effect of reinforcing the processes that tend to segregate and exclude them.

Gaining ethical approvals to undertake sexual health research with young people in the UK: Applying a 'Children's Rights Based Approach'

This paper (co-written with Dr Maria Lohan, Dr Carmel Kelly & Professor Laura Lundy) will describe the ethical review process to undertake health research in the UK, and explain an approach that can help researchers deal with ethical and methodological dilemmas in their research. Ethical review is necessary to ensure researchers and participants are protected, yet the requirement to ‘pass’ numerous committees may be challenging particularly for health researchers who work with vulnerable groups and sensitive topics. The inclusion of these groups/topics is crucial if health researchers are to understand health disparities and implement appropriate interventions with health benefits for vulnerable populations. It is proposed that to overcome ethical and methodological challenges and pitfalls, researchers must implement strategies that advocate for, and increase the participation of, vulnerable populations in health research. A ‘children’s rights based approach’ using participatory methodology will be described that draws on the jurisprudence of international law, (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989) and provides a framework that may empower ethics committees to carry out their function confidently. The role of the researcher, framed within the context of doctoral level study, will be reviewed in terms of the investment required and benefits of utilising this approach. It will be argued that adopting this approach with vulnerable groups, not only guarantees their meaningful participation in the research process and permits their voices to be heard, but also offers ethics committees an internationally agreed upon legal framework, ratified by their governing States, from which to fulfil their obligations and resolve their ethical dilemmas. Increasing the representation and participation of vulnerable groups in health research can inform the development of health policy and practice based on ‘insider knowledge’ that better engages with and more adequately reflects their specific needs. This is likely to yield numerous health, social and economic benefits for all of society through the delivery of more equitable, effective and sustainable services.

Understanding Desistance from Sexual Offending: A Thematic Review of Research Findings

Although there is a substantial body of work on desistance from crime in general, comparatively little is known about desistance from sexual crime. The broad aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the research methodology and preliminary findings from a recent empirical study on desistance from sexual offending conducted by the authors. Such findings have potentially important implications for policy and practice concerning sex offender risk assessment, treatment and management.

“How Can a Woman Who Has Been Raped Be Believed?”: Andrea Dworkin, Sexual Violence and the Ethics of Belief

In June 2000, Andrea Dworkin, an American feminist activist and author, published an account of being raped in a Paris hotel room a year earlier. The story was met with widespread disbelief, including from feminist readers. This article explores the reasons for this disbelief, asking how and why narratives of rape are granted – or denied – truth status by their readers. The article argues for understanding the conferral of belief as a narrative transaction involving the actions of both narrator and reader. It posits that Dworkin was widely seen as an unreliable narrator but argues that for ideologically charged narratives such as rape narratives judgements of reliability and belief inevitably draw upon the normative standpoint of the reader. I suggest that there are opposing criteria for establishing the truth of rape narratives; a ‘factual’ or legal model, which sees rape narratives as requiring scrutiny, and an ‘experiential’ model, located within certain strands of feminist politics, which emphasises the ethical importance of believing women’s narratives. The article finishes with a consideration of the place of belief within an ethics of reading and reception of rape narratives.

Exploring the Influence of Reporting Delay on Criminal Justice Outcomes: Comparing Child and Adult Reporters of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Delay between disclosure and reporting child sexual abuse is common and has significant implications for the prosecution of such offenses. While we might expect the relationship to be a linear one with longer delay reducing the likelihood of prosecution, the present study confirms a more complex interaction. Utilizing data from 2,079 police records in Northern Ireland, the study investigated the impact of reporting delay on pretrial criminal justice outcomes for child and adult reporters of child sexual abuse. While teenagers were found to be the group most disadvantaged by reporting delay, increased delay actually appeared advantageous for some groups, notably adult females reporting offenses that occurred when they were 0 to 6 years old. Conversely, adult males reporting child sexual abuse did not appear to benefit from increased delay, suggesting both an adult and gender bias within decision-making processes. The implications for future research are discussed. 

Can Consent Training End Sexual Violence On Campus?: Students, Consent and Sexual Ethics

The ongoing, potentially worsening problem of sexual violence and harassment on university campuses has emerged in the last few years as an area of concern. Female students have been identified as one of the most likely groups to experience sexual violence and this violence is exacerbated by contemporary student cultures around alcohol consumption and gendered and sexual norms. University campuses have also become central to prevention efforts in many countries due to their relatively accessible populations and an ability to implement social policies at an institutional level.
Many of these measures are based around promoting or educating students about sexual consent, and particularly notions of affirmative consent, expressed as ‘Yes means Yes’. However, there exists little research around sexual ethics with students exploring whether consent is in fact the best way to tackle cultural problems of sexual violence on campus. This paper makes use of existing literature on sexual ethics and focus group research undertaken with Australian university students to argue for an approach to the problem of sexual ethics on campus that is broader than simply focusing on training programs in sexual consent. It identifies a number of limitations to the consent framework and argues that prevention efforts need to more seriously engage with broader cultural norms around heterosexuality and gendered relationships.