A field study of adult witness interviewing practices in a Canadian police organization

Abstract

Purpose. The current study examined witness interviewing practices in a Canadian police organization. The effect of interviewer, interviewee, and interview characteristics on those practices was also examined. Method. Ninety witness interviews from a Canadian police organization were coded for the following interviewing practices: types of questions asked (i.e. open‐ended, probing, closed‐ended, clarification, multiple, leading, opinion/statement, and re‐asked), the number of interruptions, percentage of words spoken by interviewer, type of pre‐interview instructions (consequential vs. generic), and whether or not a free narrative was requested (and when requested during the interview). Characteristics pertaining to the interviewer (e.g. primary interviewer's age), interviewee (e.g. witness gender), and interview (e.g. crime type) were also coded. Results. Results showed that closed‐ended and probing questions were the most widely asked questions, and that open‐ended questions were asked relatively infrequently. It was also found that the 80–20 talking rule was violated in 89% of the interviews, interviewers rarely interrupted the witnesses, and free narratives were requested often. Overall, the effect of interviewer, interview, or interviewee characteristics on interviewing practices was minimal. Conclusions. The finding that scientifically prescribed interviewing practices are employed rarely by Canadian police officers highlights a need for increased professional interviewing training. The finding that practices are largely unaffected by personal and situational factors suggests that such training would be equally beneficial for all types of interviewers, interviewees, and contexts.

Witness Interview Training: a Field Evaluation

“…Trained investigators asked more open-ended questions and asked fewer leading questions than untrained interviewers. Despite these improvements, the percentage of openended questions asked by trained investigators is comparable to the percentages reported in other field studies of untrained interviewers where only approximately 6% of all questions asked began with tell, explain, or describe (see Myklebust & Alison, 2000;Snook & Keating, 2010;Wright & Alison, 2004). Unfortunately, we also found that closed yes/no questions and probing questions constituted the vast majority of interviews by trained and untrained interviewers.…”

“…The quality of criminal investigations, and the legal proceedings that follow, are linked inexorably to how well interviews with adult witnesses and victims (hereafter referred to as witnesses) are conducted because interviews are a major conduit through which probative evidence is obtained (Kebbell & Milne, 1998;Milne & Bull, 2003;Sanders, 1986). The fact that interviewersespecially untrained interviewers or trained interviewers who are not afforded supervision and feedbacktend to use a number of inappropriate behaviors (e.g., asking leading questions, see Griffiths, Milne, & Cherryman, 2011;Snook & Keating, 2010) leads naturally to concerns about the quality of the information that forms the basis of legal decisions. Fortunately, evidence-based interviewing techniques are available to police organizations (e.g., cognitive interviewing; Geiselman, Fisher, MacKinnon, & Holland, 1985), and there is evidence from laboratory settings that people can be trained to apply these techniques (Kohnken, Milne, Memon, & Bull, 1999;Memon, Meissner, & Fraser, 2010).…”

Let ’em Talk!

“…In comparison to studies of witness interviews, the results from the current study showed that the interviewers tended to express their opinions/statements about the events in question relatively frequently. For instance, we found nearly 7 times more opinions/statements being used than what Snook and Keating (2010) reported in their study of witness interviews. We postulate that relatively more opinions and statements were used because of the traditional confession culture in countries, such as Canada and the United States, where accusatorial interviewing approaches are ubiquitous.…”

Initial Testing Does Not Necessarily Affect Eyewitness Recall Assessed by Specific Questioning

“…Field studies exploring witness‐interviewing practices show that free narratives are often requested, but close‐ended and probing questions are the most widely asked (Snook & Keating, ). The use of specific questions in eyewitness memory has been criticized because it can imply power of suggestion and biases in memory (Evans & Fisher, ; Lipton, ).…”