The treatment outcome study by Nicholaichuk, Gordon, Gu, and Wong (2000) used a novel method for identifying a comparison group of untreated sex offenders (i.e., drawing from existing criminal history records). A potential problem with their approach is that older records would be expected to include a disproportionate numbers of recidivists. Such an artifact is identified in Nicholaichuk et al.'s (2000) study; nevertheless, their data continue to suggest a small, positive effect for treatment even after eliminating the cases in which bias is most likely.
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