Mental health articles

Factors contributing to the risk of abuse or risk to offend: This type of research
should move beyond a focus on factors within the family related to greater risk of
abuse, and instead focus on sociocultural factors related to risk. Studies can be at
both the macro and micro level. Macro-level studies can assess factors at a societal
level that covary with differences in fluctuations of identified abuse. Studies such as
these can also take into account the backlash and how it has affected the reporting
and identification of abuse. The obvious caveat to this research is that it is limited by
the biases of child protective services in identifying abuse. Micro-level studies can
also consider sociocultural factors by capturing their effect upon the individual. For
example, factors such as hostility towards women can be measured at the level of the
individual, but stand as proxies for stereotypical and sociocultural messages. Studies
such as these can be designed to identify factors that predict greater risk of abuse as
well as greater risk to offend. Factors that place primarily males at risk to offend as
extremes of socialized behaviors (i.e., for sport, as a conquest, and as a result of
entitlement) should also be considered. How do these offenders differ from other
normative populations of males and other sexual offender groups?