Therapeutic engagement and treatment progress: Developing and testing an in-treatment measure of client engagement among sex offenders in a group program

Group-based cognitive-behavioral programs represent an ‘industry standard’ in sexual offender treatment (McGrath, McGrath, Hoke & Vojtisek, 1998; McGrath, Cumming, Burchard, Zeoli & Ellerby, 2010). Their goal is to target those factors that are both empirically related to recidivism (Beggs, 2010) and potentially amenable to change, such as personal beliefs and attitudes, social and emotional functioning, and sexual deviance (Craissati & Beech, 2003). There is considerable evidence supporting the effectiveness of such programs in reducing reoffending (see Kim, Benekos & Merlo, 2016), and this has been taken as support for these targets as having a causal role in offending.