The role of educational briefings in mitigating effects of experimental exposure to violent sexually explicit material: A meta‐analysis

Abstract

Conducting experiments on the impact of sexually explicit material (SEM) requires the investigator to expose a person to material that may “harm” the research participant. To maintain ethical conduct for such research, investigators use some type of educational briefing to mitigate any potential impact to consuming SEM. Ten studies specifically measuring the impact of educational briefings in mitigating impacts of SEM were located in a 1,500‐article database of research relating to SEM. All studies demonstrated the effectiveness of some type of educational de‐ or prebriefing in minimizing the impact of experimental exposure to sexually explicit materials (Mr = .29, N = 1002, range .03 to .68, where rs of 0 and up indicate complete mitigation). Educational briefings appear to mitigate the effects of experimental exposure to SEM, although long‐term consequences and the comparative effectiveness of different briefing techniques have yet to be assessed.