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A Meta-Analysis of Viewing Time Measures of Sexual Interest in Children

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Abstract

Due to unobtrusiveness and ease of implementation, viewing time (VT) measures of sexual interest in children have sparked increasing research interest in forensic contexts over the last two decades. The current study presents two meta-analyses of VT measures adapted to assess pedophilic interest to determine their discrimination between sexual offenders against children (SOC) and non-SOC groups as well as convergent validity (associations with other measures of sexual interest in children). On average, VT measures showed moderate discrimination between criterion groups (fixed-effect d = 0.60, 95 % CI [0.51, 0.68], N = 2705, k = 14) and significant convergent validity with self-reports, penile plethysmography, Implicit Association Tests, and offence behavioral measures ranging from r = .18 to r = .38. VT measures, however, provided better discrimination for adults (fixed-effect d = 0.78, 95 % CI [0.64, 0.92]) than adolescent samples (fixed-effect d = 0.50, 95 % CI [0.40, 0.61]), Q between = 9.37, p = .002. Moreover, compared to absolute scores, using pedophilic difference scores within adult samples substantially increased VT measures’ validity (fixed-effect d = 1.03, 95 % CI [0.82, 1.25], N = 414, k = 7). Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and applied implications for forensic contexts.

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Notes

  1. As opposed to task-irrelevant indirect measures wherein the primary task is the classification of non-sexual stimuli features, such as color, and sexual stimuli are construed as interfering distractors (for review, see Schmidt et al., 2015).

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Acknowledgments

This project was funded in part by a grant from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research Banting Fellowship awarded to Kelly M. Babchishin.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Medical School Hamburg, Am Kaiserkai 1, 20457, Hamburg, Germany

    Alexander F. Schmidt

  2. Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Kelly M. Babchishin

  3. Institute of Forensic Psychiatry, Charité—University Medicine, Berlin, Germany

    Robert J. B. Lehmann

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Alexander F. Schmidt is coauthor of the Explicit and Implicit Sexual Interest Profile (EISIP; Banse, Schmidt, & Clarbour, 2010) and promotes its non-commercial use for research purposes. Kelly M. Babchishin and Robert J. B. Lehmann declare no conflicts of interest.

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This article is a secondary meta-analysis of data from research that has been published before. Hence, no human participants have been tested for the purpose of the present research.

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Schmidt, A.F., Babchishin, K.M. & Lehmann, R.J.B. A Meta-Analysis of Viewing Time Measures of Sexual Interest in Children. Arch Sex Behav 46, 287–300 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0806-3

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