University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33612, USA.
Behav Sci Law. 2010 Jan-Feb;28(1):84-105. doi: 10.1002/bsl.906.
With its ever-growing penetration of remote regions of the world, the Internet provides great opportunity for conducting research. Beyond clear advantages such as increased cost-effectiveness and efficiency in collecting large samples, Internet-based research has proven particularly useful in reaching hidden or marginalized populations who engage in illegal or deviant behaviors. However, this new medium for research raises important and complex legal, ethical, and methodological/technological issues that researchers must address, particularly when studying undetected criminal behaviors. The current paper chronicles various issues that were encountered in the implementation of an active Internet-based pilot research study of child pornography (CP) users. Moreover, this study was undertaken to address a critical gap in the existing research on CP offending, which has to date primarily focused on incarcerated or convicted samples. The Internet provides the optimal medium for studying community populations of CP users, given that it has become the primary market for CP distribution. This paper is designed to serve as a guide for researchers interested in conducting Internet-based research studies on criminal and sexually deviant populations, particularly CP offenders. Several recommendations are offered based on our own experiences in the implementation of this study.
随着互联网在世界偏远地区的不断普及，它为开展研究提供了巨大的机会。除了在收集大样本方面提高成本效益和效率等明显优势外，基于互联网的研究还被证明特别有助于接触从事非法或越轨行为的隐藏或边缘化人群。然而，这种新的研究媒介提出了重要而复杂的法律、伦理和方法/技术问题，研究人员必须解决这些问题，特别是在研究未被发现的犯罪行为时。本文记载了在实施一项关于儿童色情制品（CP）使用者的主动互联网试点研究中遇到的各种问题。此外，这项研究旨在解决 CP 犯罪现有研究中的一个关键空白，迄今为止，这些研究主要集中在被监禁或被定罪的样本上。鉴于互联网已成为 CP 分发的主要市场，它为研究 CP 用户的社区人群提供了最佳的研究媒介。本文旨在为有兴趣对犯罪和性越轨人群（特别是 CP 犯罪者）进行基于互联网的研究的研究人员提供指导。根据我们在实施这项研究中的经验，提出了一些建议。
