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Cybersecurity Research
  1. Gaps in the Literature

Gaps in the Literature

There a number of significant gaps in the literature on online offender recidivism. Researcher Christopher Valentine explains that sexual offense data are often skewed or show differential representation of raw data due to factors such as “changing attitudes” of young people about reporting, increased internet safety measures implemented across domains, education, and other factors that have evolved over time. 31 In other words, the social world has seen significant internet culture shifts that may increase or decrease protection, susceptibility, and internet footprint-tracking that may cause a shift in statistical data on the subject of online offender recidivism. This data availability may result in new longitudinal data analyses in subsequent years or simply increased validity in findings as sample sizes increase due to the ubiquity of internet technology. As a result, it is important to interpret existing data through a critical lens that places the numbers within a cultural context. Since data interpretation may pose a challenge to the validity of findings, it is crucial that research continue to test and re-test hypotheses so that the current data available to scholars mirrors cultural changes in internet use, abuse and reporting.

One confounding factor that leads to significant gaps in the literature are conflicting ideas of what constitutes online sexual victimization. Although topics such as creation and distribution of child pornography are widely seen as sexual victimization, concepts such as sexual cyberbullying are less neatly laid within the construct of online sexual victimization. 32 The present research will seek to fill this gap in the literature by clearly conceptualizing the acts considered the be online victimization. These acts include possession, production, and distribution of child pornography and the sexual exploitation of a minor including solicitation, molestation, rape, harassment, stalking, coercion, and trafficking. Due to limited data availability, cyber-bullying and other critical domains of sexual victimization may be excluded from the present study, but should be explored in future research.

Furthermore, the literature on sexual offense recidivism lacks specificity, although researchers contend that previous pathology, sexual deviance, and other personal histories may significantly contribute to re-offense. The present study seeks to fill in the gaps in the literature by analyzing a specific sub-group of offenders with a greater specificity of personal history factors chosen for analysis. This study will provide well-defined variables and thoroughly conceptualized sub-population of sexual offenders in order to increase the clarity of findings around the topic of offender recidivism.

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