title: Officer attitudes towards adult male prisoners who self-harm: development of an attitudinal measure and investigation of sex differences.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of the current study was to explore attitudes towards self-harm in a sample of prison officers, with subsidiary aims of assessing if these attitudes alter as a function of the prisoner's behavior and the sex of the participant.
  
  
  METHODS
  One hundred and sixty-two officers (100 men and 62 women) completed a general measure of their attitudes towards prisoners and one designed to assess Attitudes towards Prisoners who Self-Harm (APSH). Participants rated their perceptions of two adult male prisoners depicted in vignettes. The vignettes depicted identical types of self-harm but varied the behavioral characteristics of the prisoners involved, with one depicted as "well-behaved" and the other as "disruptive".
  
  
  RESULTS
  Women were more likely than men to report positive attitudes towards self-harm and in particular were less likely than men to endorse negative myths regarding self-harm. The prisoner depicted as "disruptive" invoked increased negative attitudes than the "well-behaved" prisoner. This finding was consistent across sex.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The current study indicates that APSH are comprised of a number of components that were influenced by the sex of the participant and the behavioral characteristics of the prisoners depicted. The implications of these findings to practice are discussed.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire, UK. JLIreland1@uclan.ac.uk
authors: Jane L
authors: JL
authors: Ireland
authors: Karen
authors: K
authors: Quinn
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D011329:Prisoners; D016728:Self-Injurious Behavior; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D006113:United Kingdom