Repeated questions in police interviews with young children alleging abuse

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• Repeated questions in police interviews with
  young children alleging abuse

Sarah Krähenbühl
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Presentation structure

• Background
• Procedure
• Police transcripts study
• Implications for interviewing
• Current and future research

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Background 1

• Experimental research
• Peterson, C. (2002) - long term memory interviews
  
• Orbach, Y. et al (2000) - value of interviewing
  protocols
• Quas, J., Schaaf, J. M. (2002) - repeated
  interviews and suggestibility
• Memon, A., Vartoukian, R. (1996) - repeated
  questions within interviews

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Background 2

• Police transcript studies
• Cederborg, A.-C et al (2000) - questions used to
  elicit information in investigative interviews
• Lamb, M. E., Fauchier, A. (2001) - relationship
  between question type and contradictions in
  interviews
• Hershkowitz, I. (2001) - effect of open-ended
  questions on childrens responses
• Warren, A. R. et al (1996) - are guidelines
  actually being followed in practice?

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Interviewing protocol recommendation
Background 3
Specific questions should not be repeated in the
same form children may interpret this as a
criticism of their earlier response and sometimes
change their response as a consequence

• Achieving Best Evidence, Home Office, 2001,
  section 2.122, p.45

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Repetition defined as
Transcript study
when an initial utterance is repeated either in
the same or a different form concerning the same
subject of response
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Procedure

• Stages identified
• Incidences of repetition - coded for

1. position in interview
2. number of repetition sets in stage
3. number of repetitions in set
4. consequence
5. style
6. purpose according to context

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Repetition coding
Procedure

• Neutral
• original misheard
• linguistic error
• language
• recording levels
• With motive
• identical
• open-ended to closed
• closed to open-ended
• gist
• answer suggested

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Purpose coding
Procedure

• to summarise or return to a previous section
• to clarify or verify
• when the interviewee has misheard
• to encourage elaboration
• first response irrelevant
• no response given to original
• leading
• ask again - default category

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Recorded information 1
Transcripts

• 95 transcripts, 28 males, 67 females
• 21 4-5 year olds
• 19 6-7 year olds
• 20 8-9 year olds
• 35 10-11 year olds

• Interview length
• 11 - 136 minutes, mean length 40 minutes
• (SD 19 minutes)
• alleged abuse varied
• all interviewers trained in interviewing protocol

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Recorded information 2
Transcripts
Age group 4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11
Professional opinion - abuse had occurred 76 95 79 89
of which went to court 38 83 93 97
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General results
Transcripts

• Repetition found
• 98 contained repetition
• free recall 86 in all age groups except in
  4-5-year olds (62)

Age/stage 4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11
Rapport 95 74 90 61
Free recall 46 35 44 23
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Questioning stage results 1
Transcripts
In the questioning stage 56 of all questions
were involved in repetition
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Questioning stage results 2
Transcripts
Age 4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11
Average number of questions involved in repetition 50 35 38 28
Stayed the same 32 24 28 26
Added to original 9 20 19 19
Novel or novel related 59 56 53 55
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General repetition results 1
Transcripts
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General repetition results 2
Transcripts
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Implications

• Interviewing protocols are not being followed in
  practice
• Repetition is common but is a practical
  necessity
• Repetition does result in changes in response
  but this is not necessarily negative
• Open-ended questions do not dominate
• Age is a factor in determining interview style

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Accuracy of responses in the transcripts cannot
be verified, therefore.
Current and future research

• to establish whether repetition style has an
  effect on accuracy and change in responses
• to establish whether the time/amount of
  utterances between repetition effects responses

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Thank-you
Thanks to Dr. H.Westcott of the Open University,
Dr. M.Blades, University of Sheffield, Mr. and
Mrs. Dodd, children and staff of Leek First,
Westwood and Woodcroft First Schools, Leek,
Staffordshire.