Applying the criminal narrative experience framework to missing children

Abstract

Over 320,000 missing persons are estimated to go missing annually in United Kingdom due to a variety of intentional and unintentional factors. This article aims to investigate whether the criminal narrative experience framework can be applied to missing persons to acquire a deeper insight into the psychological differences between missing children. Sixty‐one previously missing persons completed a missing experience survey, narrative roles questionnaire, and emotions questionnaire. Data were content analysed and subjected to a non‐metric, multi‐dimensional scaling procedure in the form of smallest space analysis. The results identified four distinct behavioural themes as follows: depressed throwaway victim, distressed pushaway revenger, calm runaway professional and elated fallaway hero. Following a stringent criterion, 88.50% of the sample could be differentiated into one dominant behavioural theme with the remaining 11.50% identified as a hybrid theme. Due to the exploratory nature of the study, additional exploration of the applicability of the framework is required.