中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: Explored internal motivation to change sexual offense problems through group psychotherapy in a group of community sexual offenders. Internal motivation was represented by the stage of change, attitudes towards change, and total change readiness. Methods: The participants were 30 male sexual offenders, aged 24 to 73, mean age 40, and had been attending weekly group psychotherapy between year 2004 and 2010. They were tested with the Stages of Change Scale-Sexual Offense Version at 4 time points, which were before joining the group, and after 12, 24, and 36 attendances. Results: First, analysis showed that all offenders at least contemplated their sexual offense problem, 40% of the offenders reached the contemplation stage, about 20% reached the preparation stage, and the remaining 40% reached the action or maintenance stage. Some offenders retreated to earlier stages after 12 attendances and then sustained that stage without further regression or progression. Second, their 4 motivational attitudes to change and total change readiness did not significantly alter over time. Across the 4 time points the latter 3 stages of change attitudes were significantly stronger than the pre-contemplation stage (i.e., the contemplation stage was the strongest, the action stage the second strongest, and then the maintenance stage). Third, the offenders' motivation for change had a horizontal linear tendency, failing to validate the non-linear change tendency proposition of the Stages of Change (SOC) theory. Conclusions: The change readiness score had various patterns within the whole group of sexual offenders. The sexual offenders' motivation to change is discussed and suggestions from theoretical, practical and research perspectives offered along with some augmentations to the original SOC theory.