Effectiveness of Descriptions in Missing Children Appeals: Exploration of Length, Type of Content and Confidence on Recall Accuracy

Abstract

When a child goes missing, it is commonplace to release details of the child in the hope that a member of the public can help to locate him or her. Despite their importance and daily usage, there remains a significant gap in understanding just how effective these appeals are in helping to locate missing children. This exploratory study utilized a two-stage approach and sought (1) to explore whether the length of the description and the type of content enclosed in the description influenced subsequent recall abilities, (2) to determine whether the length of time spent reading the mock appeal influences the subsequent recall ability, (3) to establish whether confidence in own recall ability is associated with overall recall ability, and (4) to determine whether descriptive length and content influences the subsequent recall ability following a 3-day break. Two hundred and twenty-three participants observed one of four mock missing children descriptions followed by a short word memory distraction task and a free-recall task. The second stage comprised of another free-recall task presented after a short 3-day delay. Two-way factorial ANOVAs found observing shorter descriptions have significantly greater recall accuracy than observing longer descriptions both immediately after observing the appeal and after a 3-day delay. Results also found that newsworthy descriptive content had a greater recall accuracy than non-newsworthy descriptive content after a 3-day delay. Additional analyses found that confidence in own accuracy and time spent observing the appeals was also significantly associated with recall accuracy. The findings demonstrate the necessity for improving missing children appeals.

Pathways to truth: using criteria-based content analysis in missing person cases

“…This should clearly be considered in real-world situations, rather than jumping to assume guilt, which could potentially lead to tunnel vision investigations. Delays were also explored by Hunt et al (2020), who found that participants in mock missing children descriptions were unable to accurately recall information following a short memory distraction and a three-day break. This was supported in a follow-up study conducted by Hunt et al (2021), in which participants involved in mock Child Rescue Alerts or Twitter appeals for missing children experienced a decrease in recall ability following a three-day break.…”

Applying the criminal narrative experience framework to missing children

“…The factors associated with going and being missing are wide‐ranging and complex, and may be due to numerous intentional or unintentional factors. For instance, a child may go missing due to mental health difficulties, suicidal ideations, being a victim of child sexual exploitation or county lines, becoming lost in travel, or following family or school related difficulties (Alys, Massey, & Tong, 2013; Biehal, Mitchell, & Wade, 2003; Hayden & Shalev‐Greene, 2016; Hunt, Ioannou & Synnott, 2019, 2020; James, Anderson, & Putt, 2008). Although research focus on missing persons has increased in recent years, the deeper psychological understanding of the circumstances and motivations behind why individuals go missing and the decisions made whilst missing remain undeveloped (Biehal et al, 2003; Hirschel & Lab, 1988).…”

Reporting missing children to the police: A qualitative exploration of the factors associated with contacting or not contacting the police

“…The number of individuals that the original missing child appeal could reach would, therefore, increase significantly in a short time frame compared to offline approaches such as door to door enquiries (Hunt et al, 2019). Whilst the wide usage and dissemination of publicity appeals ranges from newspaper notices to posters and websites to name a few (Drivsholm et al, 2017), researchers (e.g., Hunt et al, 2020;Juncu et al, 2020;Lampinen and Moore, 2016) have only recently begun exploring how effective these appeals are in being able to help locate a missing child. argue that whilst the ability to disseminate missing person appeals widely and quickly have a great deal of importance, there are a series of underlying stages which must be followed for a missing person appeal to be effective.…”