Assessing the accuracy of young children's reports: Lessons from the investigation of child sexual abuse

Poole, Debra Ann; Lindsay, D. Stephen

doi:10.1016/s0962-1849(98)80019-x

Cited by 94 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…Younger children tend to remember less information and to provide briefer accounts of their experiences than older children do (Baker-Ward, Gordon, Ornstein, Larus, & Clubb, 1993;Lamb, Hershkowitz, Sternberg, Boat & Everson, 1996;Ornstein et al, 1992;Sternberg et al, 1996). In addition, as noted earlier, young children are more likely than older children both to respond erroneously to suggestive questions about their experiences as well as to select erroneous options when responding to forced-choice questions Bruck et al, 1995;Goodman & Aman, 1990;Oates & Shrimpton, 1991;Poole & Lindsay, 1998;Walker et al, 1996). On the other hand, although young children tend to remember less information and provide briefer accounts of their experiences than older children do (Baker-Ward et al, 1993;Lamb, Hershkowitz, Sternberg, Boat et al, 1996;Ornstein et al, 1992;Sternberg et al, 1996), their reports are no less accurate (Goodman & Reed, 1986;Johnson & Foley, 1984;Marin, Holmes, Guth, & Kovac, 1979;Oates & Shrimpton, 1991).…”

Section: Is the Protocol Suitable For Interviews With Young Children?mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Interviewers are also routinely advised to avoid the 'yes/no' questions which are especially likely to elicit erroneous information from young children, the misleading questions that may lead children to respond affirmatively to questions about non-experienced events (e.g., "Did it hurt when he forced himself on you? "), or the suggestive questions to which children often acquiesce (e.g., Brady, Poole, Warren, & Jones, 1999;Bruck, Ceci, Francouer, & Renick, 1995;Cassel, Roebers, & Bjorklund, 1996;Ceci & Huffman, 1997;Dent & Stephenson, 1979;Goodman & Aman, 1990;Oates & Shrimpton, 1991;Poole & Lindsay, 1998;Robinson & Briggs, 1997;Walker, Lunning, & Eilts, 1996). The cited studies showed that the risky recognition questions were even riskier when addressed to children aged 6 and under, and thus that forensic investigators needed to make special efforts to maximize the amounts of information elicited from such children using open-ended prompts.…”

Section: The Background: Basic Research On Interviewing and Child Devmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A structured forensic interview protocol improves the quality and informativeness of investigative interviews with children: A review of research using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol

Lamb

Orbach

Hershkowitz

et al. 2007

Child Abuse & Neglect

519

439

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Objective-To show how the results of research on children's memory, communicative skills, social knowledge, and social tendencies can be translated into guidelines that improve the quality of forensic interviews of children.Method-We review studies designed to evaluate children's capacities as witnesses, explain the development of the structured NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol, and discuss studies designed to assess whether use of the Protocol enhances the quality of investigative interviews.Results-Controlled studies have repeatedly shown that the quality of interviewing reliably and dramatically improves when interviewers employ the NICHD Protocol. No other technique has been proven to be similarly effective.Conclusions-Use of the structured NICHD Protocol improves the quality of information obtained from alleged victims by investigators, thereby increasing the likelihood that interventions will be appropriate. IntroductionWhereas Kempe and his colleagues (1962) helped launch scholarly interest in physical child abuse with their landmark paper nearly 50 years ago, professional (and popular) interest in child sexual abuse came much later. It was prompted in part by dramatic increases in the numbers of reported cases, and by awareness that many cases of abuse might go unrecognized Correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed to Michael E. Lamb, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RQ, UK. E-mail: mel37@cam.ac.uk. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptChild Abuse Negl. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2008 January 9. Published in final edited form as:Child Abuse Negl. 2007 ; 31(11-12): 1201-1231. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript because the victims were the only possible sources of information and were seldom given the appropriate opportunities to describe their experiences to those who might have been able to help them. Indeed, because alleged victims are often the only available sources of information, considerable efforts have been made to understand how children's testimony can be made as useful and accurate as possible. Since 1990, furthermore, highly publicized cases in the United States (California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Florida), Norway (Bergen), New Zealand (Christchurch), and the UK (Cleveland, Newcastle), among others, have drawn attention to the counterproductive ways in which alleged victims of sexual abuse are sometimes interviewed. In many such cases, inappr...

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Section: Is the Protocol Suitable For Interviews With Young Children?mentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: The Background: Basic Research On Interviewing and Child Devmentioning

confidence: 99%

A structured forensic interview protocol improves the quality and informativeness of investigative interviews with children: A review of research using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol

Lamb

Orbach

Hershkowitz

et al. 2007

Child Abuse & Neglect

519

439

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While traditional assessment methods continue to be used as indicators of abuse, none are conclusive in their utility to reliably diagnose CSA (Berliner & Conte, 1993;Lamb, 1994;Goodman, Emery, & Haugarrd 1998). This point was eloquently expressed by Poole and Lindsay (1998)…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diagnosing child sex abuse: A research challenge.

Duffy¹,

Keenan²,

Dillenburger³

2006

International Journal of Behavioral Consultation and Therapy

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Child sex abuse increasingly is recognised as a societal problem that can no longer be ignored. In this paper definitions, prevalence, trends, assessment, and available diagnostic procedures are described and critically evaluated. It is argued that the lack of reliable diagnostic procedures remains one of the main difficulties in dealing effectively with the detrimental effects of CSA on the child or adult. The research challenge to find effective alternative procedures is outlined.

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“…Because physical evidence is rarely available in such cases, researchers and helping professionals have tried to identify other characteristics that distinguish between true and false allegations. Two approaches have evolved for exploring which case features might be relevant when evaluating claims of sexual abuse: the indicator and the assessment approaches (Berliner & Conte, 1993;Poole & Lindsay, 1998).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient coding of eyewitness narratives: A comparison of syntactic unit and word count procedures

Dickinson

Poole

2000

Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers

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Researchers rely on two types of coding systems to evaluate eyewitness narratives. Features-ofevents checklists offer coding simplicity but are impractical when target events are complex. Vnits-ofinformation (VOl) systems score all information reported, regardless of event complexity,but are difficult to implement. To test whether simpler systems would alter conclusions about memory performance, transcripts from children (3-8 years of age) who participated in an eyewitness study, originally coded using a VOl system called syntactic units (SV), were recoded using two word count procedures. Correlations between SV, modified word count, and raw word count values were high, and the proportion of information that was inaccurate was comparable across systems. Considering their high interrater reliability, procedural simplicity, and convergence with SV coding, word count procedures are efficient alternatives to VOl coding.

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Assessing the accuracy of young children's reports: Lessons from the investigation of child sexual abuse

Cited by 94 publications

References 93 publications

A structured forensic interview protocol improves the quality and informativeness of investigative interviews with children: A review of research using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol

A structured forensic interview protocol improves the quality and informativeness of investigative interviews with children: A review of research using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol

Diagnosing child sex abuse: A research challenge.

Efficient coding of eyewitness narratives: A comparison of syntactic unit and word count procedures

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