No abstract

A sample of 505 Internet sex offenders and 526 contact sex offenders were compared on a range of psychological measures relating to offense-supportive beliefs, empathic concern, interpersonal functioning, and emotional management. Internet offenders could be successfully discriminated from contact offenders on 7 out of 15 measures. Contact offenders were found to have significantly more victim empathy distortions and cognitive distortions than Internet offenders. Internet offenders were found to have significantly higher identification with fictional characters than contact offenders. Further analysis indicated that an increase in scores on scales of fantasy, underassertiveness, and motor impulsivity were predictive of an Internet offense type. An increase in scores of scales of locus of control, perspective taking, empathic concern, overassertiveness, victim empathy distortions, cognitive distortions, and cognitive impulsivity were found to be predictive of a contact offense type. These findings are discussed in the context of the etiology of sexual offending.

No abstract

No abstract

Objective To develop a conceptual framework for the construct of health numeracy based on patient perceptions. Design Cross-sectional; qualitative. Participants Interested participants (n=59) meeting eligibility criteria (age 40–74, English speaking) were assigned to one of 6 focus groups stratified by gender and educational level (low, medium, high). 53% were male and 47% were female. 61% were white non-Hispanic and 39% were of minority race or ethnicity. Setting Participants were randomly selected from 3 primary care sites associated with an academic medical center. The focus groups were held in May, 2004. Procedure Group discussions focused on how numbers are used in the health care setting. Data were presented from clinical trials to further explore how quantitative information is used in health communication and decision-making. Focus groups were audio and videotaped; verbatim transcripts were prepared and analyzed. A framework of health numeracy was developed to reflect the themes that emerged. Results Three broad conceptual domains for health numeracy were identified: primary numeric skills, applied health numeracy, and interpretive health numeracy. Across domains, results suggested that numeracy contains an emotional component; with both positive and negative affect reflected in patient numeracy statements. Conclusion Health numeracy is a multifaceted construct that includes applied and interpretive components and is influenced by patient affect.