@article{ref1,
title="Measuring offenders' belief in the possibility of desistance",
journal="International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology",
year="2016",
author="O'Sullivan, Kevin and Williams, Rochelle and Hong, Xiang Yan and Bright, David and Kemp, Richard",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="This article describes the use of a questionnaire to measure offenders' belief in the likelihood of their making a successful re-entry into society after having committed crime, a &quot;belief in redeemability&quot; (BIR) as described by Maruna and King. The 37 items for the scale were taken from statements by offenders about their prospects of making good. This set of items was tested with a pilot group of offenders recruited from clients on parole or on supervised bonds at community corrections offices in metropolitan Sydney, Australia, and their responses were coded to yield a score we called the &quot;BIR&quot; score. We found that scores displayed variance skewed toward an optimistic view, and we then used the items in a card sort task with a panel of graduate psychologists to explore whether the panel could identify underlying components of the broader BIR. There was a measure of agreement on three underlying components and these were further tested using five raters. We called the components that emerged the following: Belonging, Agency, and Optimism; Cronbach's alphas for these indicated acceptable internal consistency. The results are discussed in terms of their congruence with findings in the literature and their use in correctional practice.<br><br>© The Author(s) 2016.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0306-624X",
doi="10.1177/0306624X16678940",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306624X16678940"
}