Most Similar is Different: Response Bias in Lineups

Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting

Marwitz

1987

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The present research sought to determine whether the construction of multiple-choice alternatives based around a critical target answer would facilitate the selection of the target answer. Subjects were given a multiple-choice test consisting of 60 questions, each having four alternatives. Twenty of the 60 questions were the critical questions and were constructed to have no correct answer (i.e., asked nonsense) but appeared legitimate. One of the alternatives for the critical questions was the critical \ alternative, around which the other three distractor alternatives were derived. This was accomplished by systematically substituting each of the critical alternative's three components with another plausible component. This procedure produced a set of alternatives where the critical alternative was more similar to the other alternatives than they were to each other (i.e., it was the most prototypic). The results of two experiments using ranking and proportion scores showed a response bias effect: subjects selected the critical alternatives more often than would be expected by chance. Further analyses revealed that in lower ability subjects the effect disappeared when the critical alternatives were embedded in sets of distractors which had randomly ordered components. High ability subjects selected the critical alternatives more often than chance regardless of the distractors' component arrangement. The results suggest that test-makers should avoid constructing distractor alternatives around a correct alternative because the information provided in the set of alternatives may influence test-takers to select the target answer without any knowledge of the information being assessed.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

The Effect of Constructing Multiple-Choice Distractor Items around a Single Target Alternative

Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting

Marwitz

1987

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Bias in Photospreads of Faces: A Comparison of Two Lineup Construction Methods

Marwitz

Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting

1988

Recent research suggests that the current method of lineup construction produces biased or suggestive lineups. Earlier studies used face composite stimuli to assemple the lineups. The present study uses more realistic materials, actual face photographs. Ten pairs of subjects constructed photospread lineups using the traditional method of selecting lineup members who are similar in appearance to the suspect. Another ten pairs of subjects constructed lineups using an alternative construction method. The lineups were then given to a separate group of subjects who had never seen the photographs before and were asked to try to select the face that was the basis for each lineup. The results showed that traditional lineup constuction method produced bias towards the target/suspect. The alternative construction method produced less bias, but not significantly less than the traditional method. These results have implications for law enforcement personnel concerned with the construction and presentation of lineups.

Bias in Police Lineups and its Reduction by an Alternative Construction Procedure

Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting

Slot

Kalsher

1991

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The present research examined whether eyewitness identification lineups produced by law enforcement personnel are biased or suggestive. Experienced police officers were asked to construct two six-face photographic lineups, first using their usual (traditional) method, and second using an alternative method. The primary basis of the traditional method is that foils are selected based on their similarity to the target. The alternative method includes foils that are not only similar to the target but also similar to other foil faces in the lineup. Both types of lineups were shown to subjects who had not seen the faces before (mock witnesses) and were asked to guess the respective targets. The results showed that mock witnesses selected the targets significantly more often than expected by chance (1/6 probability) when embedded in the traditional lineups, thus demonstrating that these lineups were suggestive. Mock witnesses did not select alternative-method targets more often than expected by chance. These results indicate that foil selection procedures incorporating foil-to-foil similarily produce fairer lineups than those exclusively based on target similarity. Implications for forensic lineup construction procedures and for future research are discussed.