Evaluation & Research

To help evaluate our services, we routinely seek feedback from service users and their networks via interviews and questionnaires. The feedback is used to help frame recommendations for the development of our services.  The flexibility of our organisation enables us to continually consider and implement service improvements in ways that are young person centred.

In 2006, G-map carried out a recidivist study based on a sample of 120 young people who had received an intervention from G-map for their sexual behaviour. The follow-up period for this study was between 2 and 15 years. The study showed that 92.5% of the young people who received a G-map intervention did not, according to the Police National Computer, commit a subsequent sexual offence.  To put this figure into context, Gerhold, Browne and Beckett (2007) completed a systematic review of adolescent sexual recidivism following intervention for sexually problematic behaviours. They found, based on 12 studies containing a total of 1315 juvenile sexual abusers, that the mean base rate for adolescent sexual recidivism was 14%. These studies had a follow-up period of between 1 and 10 years.

G-map has been involved in research related to young people with sexually harmful behaviours in the areas of:

• Attachment
• Typologies
• Assessment, including use of psychometrics and the Stroop task
• Ascertaining whether young people with intellectual disabilities form a distinct subgroup
• Outcomes for young people following therapy.

Research where G-map has been the forerunner includes:

• The development of the AIM2 initial assessment model for young people who display sexually harmful behaviour
• The comparative utility of two initial assessment models in predicting sexual re-offending in a sample of UK adolescents with intellectual disabilities.

Currently our research priorities focus on:

• The utility and predictive validity of the AIM2 initial assessment model
• The development of an AIM3 initial assessment model
• Evaluating the Good Lives approach for use with our client group
• Comparing the resilience of young people who have sexually offended with those who have non-sexually offended and non-offending controls
• Application for a further recidivist study.

Please contact us for more information or to discuss how you could contribute to our research projects.