Abstract

The LOOK is a viewing time measure that seeks to assess sexual interest patterns and is currently in development at Brigham Young University. This instrument is intended to aid current efforts to prevent child sexual abuse by identifying deviant sexual interests. A recently presented study on a similar viewing time measure has raised concerns regarding individuals' ability to falsify sexual interest patterns on average. This study seeks to extend this falsification research to the LOOK in order to assess if falsification of this measure is possible by means of speed or pretense. Participants were exclusively heterosexual non-pedophilic males and females. Sexual interest patterns for 151 females and 150 males were used. These individuals were distributed into either a control group or one of four possible falsification conditions for each gender. The study used Fischer's Chi-square scoring procedure to examine the significance of differences between the averaged patterns of sexual interest obtained from falsification groups and average expected interest patterns of control groups. Results of this study found that 4 of 8 falsification groups were able to significantly falsify sexual interest patterns on average. It appears that, on average, everyone in the pretense groups were capable of falsifying results. Men and women were able to emulate response patterns of the opposite gender regardless of whether given information about the basic mechanism of visual response time instruments. It is concluded that while the LOOK seems to possess a degree of sensitivity toward falsification efforts, improvements are still needed in order to increase its ability to detect test-taker's efforts to falsify results on average.

Degree

PhD

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Counseling Psychology and Special Education

Rights

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