Gavin E' Oxburgh

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Investigative Interviewing Can Negative Emotion
Affect the Quality?

• Gavin E. Oxburgh
• BSc (Hons), MSc
• Acknowledgements Dr James Ost, Dr Clare Wilson
  Dr Julie Cherryman

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Psychology
2
Research Background

• What were the emotional effects of interviewing a
  child victim prior to interviews with offenders?
• Were there gender differences in the use of
  emotional words by interviewers during child
  abuse enquiries?
• Would abuse type have any effect on the offender
  interview regarding emotional words used ?

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Research Background

• Numerous guidelines Acts on interviewing child
  witnesses (e.g. Memorandum of Good Practice
  Achieving Best Evidence, Vulnerable Witnesses
  (Scotland) Act 2004) but.
• Limited training on interviewing sex offenders
• No known research examining emotional effects on
  police officers who interview sex offenders per
  se
• Personal-professional dialectic??

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Research Hypotheses

• Officers who had previously interviewed victims
  would use more emotional words than those who had
  not interviewed the child victim.
• Emotional words used would vary as a function of
  the gender of the interviewer.
• Emotional words used would vary as a function of
  the type of offence

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Theoretical Model Used
Ekman (2003) 7 basic emotional states

• Sadness
• Anger
• Disgust
• Contempt
• Fear

• Surprise
• Happiness

POS
NEG
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Research Methodology

• Only Service Police and HD Forces in England
  Wales Utilised (N 45)
• Transcripts of child sex offender interviews
• Officers had to be regularly employed on child
  sexual abuse investigations
• Additional Information

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Participant Response Rate

• 50 transcripts made available for analysis of
  which 34 were deemed suitable (17 for each
  condition)
• However, 3 transcripts excluded due to small
  number of cases (intra extrafamilial abuse)
• 31 used for analyses
• 20 male and 11 female interviewers
• All interviewees were male

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Transcript Analyses
Contempt 26 (2) Anger 23 (1) Disgust 15
Sadness 0 Fear 0 Surprise 10
(10) Happiness 0 (1)
Total Utterances 75 (14)
Inter-Rater Reliability 90
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Transcript Analyses (cont)
Disgust Well, the whole thing is disgusting
isnt it? and you have had sex, not only with
your niece, but a 15 year-old girl. Anger Im
not here to answer your questions Contempt
You get off doing this do you? and Youre not
suggesting it was an accident?
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Results

• Did the number of Negative Emotional Utterances
  (NES) vary as a function of whether
• the officer had previously interviewed the
  victim?
• the gender of the interviewer?
• the type of offence?
• Analyses carried out using unrelated t-tests

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Results (cont)
(1) Previous interview with child victim Total
NES for officers who interviewed victims prior to
offender interviews (M .86, SD 1.40) compared
to total NES for officers who had not interviewed
victims prior to offender interviews (M 3.18,
SD 3.61). Significant effect in the opposite
direction to prediction (t(29)-2.323, plt.05)
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Results (cont)
(2) Gender of the interviewer (Male M 1.75
Female M 2.63) No significant effect
(t(29)-.788, pgt.05)
(3) Type of abuse (intra-, extrafamilial) (Intra
M 1.53 Extra M 3.38) No significant effect
(t(29)-.832,pgt.05)
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Tentative Conclusions

• Overall, low frequency of emotional utterances
  made, nevertheless
• Evidence of an effect of previously interviewing
  victim on negative emotional utterances made
  during offender interviews (e.g. less Disgust
  Contempt?)
• No significant evidence of gender differences
• No significant effect of abuse type

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Psychology
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Limitations of Study

• Only interview transcripts used for analysis
• Audio/video tapes would have been useful

• Unable to establish officers previous life
  experiences
• Effects of traumatising events
• Personal attitudes, views, expectations
  pre-conceived ideas towards child sex offenders
• Personality type

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Limitations of Study (cont)

• Small sample size
• Access to additional material required
• Gender of victim unknown in some cases
• Would number of utterances used vary as a
  function of the gender of victim?
• Emotional words uttered may not be representative
  of emotional feelings by officers
• Deliberate strategy to provoke?

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Current Research

• Study quality of interviews with offender
  cohort to establish if higher NES poor
  quality interview?

Effectiveness of an interview can only be
measured by the quantity quality of accurate
credible information that it provides about the
incident in question (Towards an Agreed
Statement of Principles Concerning Investigative
Interviewing)
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Current Research (cont)
But what is quality effectiveness and how
can it be measured?
Various studies Baldwin (1992) Stockdale
(1993) Williamson (1993) McGurk et al (1993)
Bull Cherryman (1995) Milne Bull (1999)
Cherryman (1999) Clarke Milne (2001) Lamb et
al (2002a) Lamb et al (2002b) Lamb et al
(2002c) Griffith Milne (2006) Wetherall et al
(2006) Most have looked at the effectiveness
of P.E.A.C.E and/or questioning techniques
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Current Research (cont)
None have looked at the use/effect of emotional
language, specifically negative emotional
language, during investigative interviews of
suspected sexual offenders Can negative emotion
affect the quality of investigative interviews?
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Psychology
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Current Research (cont)

• Need to study
• Social construction of interview (see Baldwin,
  1993) to look at
• Behaviour of interviewer (e.g. Clark Milne,
  2001)
• Behaviour/response of interviewee

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Any Questions?
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