The association between investigative interviewers' knowledge of question type and adherence to best‐practice interviewing

Abstract

It is well established that not all investigative interviewers adhere to 'best-practice' interview guidelines (i.e., the use of open-ended questions) when interviewing child witnesses about abuse. However, little research has examined the sub skills associated with open question usage. In this article, we examined the association between investigative interviewers' ability to identify various types of questions and adherence to open-ended questions in a standardized mock interview. Study 1, incorporating 27 trainee police interviewers, revealed positive associations between open-ended question usage and two tasks; a recognition task where trainees used a structured protocol to guide their response and a recall task where they generated examples of open-ended questions from memory. In Study 2, incorporating a more heterogeneous sample of 40 professionals and a different training format and range of tests, positive relationships between interviewers' identification of questions and adherence to best-practice interviewing was consistently revealed. A measure of interviewer knowledge about what constitutes best-practice investigative (as opposed to knowledge of question types) showed no association with interviewer performance. The implications of these findings for interviewer training programs are discussed.

Changes in Interviewers' Use of Supportive Techniques during the Revised Protocol Training

“…Recent studies have begun to highlight the benefits of having interviewer trainees code and objectively evaluate their own interviews (Cederborg, Alm, Lima da Silva Nises, & Lamb, ; Stolzenberg & Lyon, ). Guided self‐evaluation not only reduces the professional dependence of investigators on mentors and supervisors, but fosters the skilled identification of successful interventions (Powell, Benson, Sharman, & Guadagno, ; Yii, Powell, & Guadagno, ) as well as the ability to critically evaluate adherence to best practice guidelines (Cederborg, Alm, & Lima da Silva Nises, & Lamb, ; Myklebust & Bjørklund, ; Orbach et al, ; Price & Roberts, ) and is greatly appreciated by trainees (Powell & Wright, ). Such training often involves teaching interviewers to code their own interviews systematically using scientific procedures and formal coding schemes (Cederborg et al, ; Warren et al, ; Yi et al, ).…”

A test of three refresher modalities on child forensic interviewers’ posttraining performance.

“…The computer-assisted self-assessment activities in this study were based on prior research that has shown them to be effective (Benson & Powell, 2015a;Brubacher et al, 2015;Powell, Cavezza, et al, 2010;Yii et al, 2014). Some key components of this prior body of work, however, could not be included.…”

The origin, experimental basis, and application of the standard interview method: An information‐gathering framework

“…When interviewers have a good grasp of the different types of open‐ended questions that best elicit narrative detail, they are more likely to demonstrate effective interviewing (Yii, Powell, & Guadagno, 2014). The questions that best facilitate narrative (story) detail fall into three categories.…”