Establishing and Maintaining Rapport in Investigative Interviews of Traumatized Victims: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

The study aim was to explore the factors considered important and useful in facilitating safety and building rapport in police investigative interviews with traumatized interviewees. We conducted 21 semi-structured interviews of police investigators involved in investigative interviewing of victims after the Utøya massacre on 22 July 2011 in Norway. Using a thematic analysis based on a reflexive hermeneutic-phenomenological epistemology, four themes emerged: (1) Preparation through planning, reflection, and openness: balancing knowing and being receptive; (2) Using first impressions, casual conversation and communicating expectations to make the interviewee comfortable; (3) Getting closer to the experience of the interviewee through engagement, adaptation, and understanding; and (4) Handling negative feelings and being receptive in the interview relationship. We discuss the findings in relation to current theory and research on investigative interviewing and highlight the importance of working on an emotional level to facilitate rapport when interviewing traumatized interviewees.3

Rapport building and witness memory: Actions may ‘speak’ louder than words

“…The rationale for this research was twofold. First, the empirical literature is dominated by post-hoc investigations of rapport building (e.g., presence, absence, and likely impact) by accessing recordings or transcripts of real life interviews with witnesses and persons of interest [11,22,25,26,28,36,37], with relatively little attention paid to the impact of rapport behaviours on episodic memory performance. Second, because of the limited nature of experimental work that does consider episodic memory (e.g., verbal and behavioural techniques are often not separated), the locus of effect for rapport is far from clear and the results are somewhat contradictory (e.g., [16,18,20,[38][39][40]).…”

“…Forensic interviews with witnesses are widely acknowledged as being socially and cognitively demanding and, in such contexts, effective communication is important. Here, key assumptions are centred on arguments that rapport has the potential to relieve some of the social demands of an interview, with a view to increasing capacity for cognitive processes such as episodic remembering [21][22][23][24][25][26]. Further, it has been argued that a comfortable witness may be more compliant [20,27].…”

“…Rapport is often variously and abstractly described across domains, such as being a "harmonious, empathetic, or sympathetic relation or connection" [31], "a smooth, positive interpersonal interaction" ([32], p. 208), or "a relationship marked by conformity" ( [33], p. 51). A focused review of the forensic rapport literature also reveals a large research focus on i) mapping the presence and/or absence of rapportbuilding techniques and their likely impact on interview outcomes (e.g., [25,26,34]), or ii) developing and applying models of rapport and interpersonal communication using real-life interview data (e.g., [11,28,[35][36][37]). Some focus has been placed on experimentally manipulating the presence/absence of various rapport behaviours in witness interview settings, although this research base is currently small and limited [14,15].…”

Exploring investigative interviewing: A Dubai perspective

“…Participants in the present study also highlighted the importance of active listening in helping them identify signs of distress. Research on police interviews after potentially traumatic events has shown that some police investigators are conscious of how distress can influence the interview process (Risan, Binder, & Milne, 2017). Participants also reported that they noticed that some interviewees' statements are disorganised.…”

Trauma-exposed young victims: possibilities and constraints for providing trauma support within the investigative interview

“…I en klinisk setting er rapport tradisjonelt blitt beskrevet som viktigheten av å etablere en terapeutisk allianse (Webster, 2019, s. 14). I avhørsforskningen og -litteraturen har blant annet Risan et al (2018), Risan og Madsen (2019) samt Collins og Carthy (2019) referert til Tickle-Degnen og Rosenthal (1990) sitt teoretiske rammeverk. Tickle-Degnen og Rosenthal (1990) beskriver rapport som bestående av tre nonverbale komponenter, nemlig gjensidig «oppmerksomhet», «positivitet» og «koordinering».…”