Criminology Research Council grant ; (4/04-05)
Increased rates of child abuse reporting over recent years have resulted in closer attention being paid to the interviewing techniques employed by police and human services staff to elicit children's accounts of alleged abuse incidents. Serious and pervasive problems with such accounts have been identified in the literature on investigative interviewing with child witnesses. This study provided empirical evidence of the importance of using open-ended interviewing techniques for child witnesses in sexual assault cases to assist in eliciting responses with so-called 'story grammar content', which considers the setting, initiating event, internal response, plan, attempt, direct consequences, and resolution of an incident when interviewing children. The research examined the content of 51 de-identified transcripts of police interviews with children aged three to 16 years (with a mean age of eight years). It was found that twothirds of the 9,881 questions were specific and one-third of children's responses showed 'story grammar' content. The two-thirds of specific questions elicited as much content as the one-third open-ended ones. The results showed the importance of eliciting 'story grammar' from children using open-ended, as opposed to specific, questions. It was concluded that current interviewing procedures potentially undermine the ability of children to provide coherent and credible reports of abusive events. Improving the narrative coherence of children's reports of abusive events can potentially be achieved by increasing interviewers' use of openended questions. Recommendations for interviewer training and further research were also outlined.