Improving witness interviewing for the investigation of disappeared persons due to armed conflict

Investigating missing persons who are presumed dead in conflict contexts almost always involves witness interviews. Interviews can be critical both to locating burial sites and to positively identifying bodies that are located. Despite the importance of interviews, the authors have found that investigators in these contexts seldom have formal training on interviewing. This article highlights three principal problems that the authors have experienced relative to interviewing as part of missing persons investigations in armed conflict contexts: that interviewing is not treated as a professional activity; the tendency to overvalue technical tools in the search for burial sites; and a lack of awareness about cultural and contextual factors that impact interviews. The article concludes with five recommendations on how to improve witness interviewing.

Information Gathering in Investigative and Medical Interviewing: Drawing Parallels Across Contexts

Information gleaned from a patients' medical history is a core determinant of a medical diagnosis. Accurate and effective history-taking is, therefore, a foundational skill for medical practitioners and is introduced early in medical training. Recognizing and developing the skills of effective medical interviewing is an ongoing challenge for medical students and experienced clinicians alike. Important parallels exist between the information gathering skills required in medicine and health, and those required in investigative interviewing. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 19 experienced medical professionals from a range of specialty areas. They were asked about the role of the medical interview in their discipline, and about challenges they experience when gathering information from patients. Both theory-driven and grounded-theory approaches were used in combination to identify common themes. The interviews were rich with themes including approaches to introductory phases of the interview, eliciting a narrative account, and several topics that specifically paralleled issues in interviewing of vulnerable witnesses. We explore these themes through a lens of investigative interviewing by applying the knowledge of effective interviewing skills and structures to the data gained from the medical context. In general, themes indicated that there are numerous parallels to information gathering approaches in both contexts. As such, there may be scope for medical education to adopt some of the training techniques employed in the investigative interviewing field. Further, it is hoped that the present findings be used to spark an interdisciplinary conversation about communication from which both sides can learn.

Atuação de Psicólogos em Alegações de Violência Sexual: Boas Práticas nas Entrevistas de Crianças e Adolescentes

Resumo Discussões sobre o papel de profissionais da Psicologia na escuta de alegações de violência sexual contra crianças e adolescentes têm emergido em todo país. Escuta especializada, depoimento especial e perícia psicológica são procedimentos previstos na legislação brasileira em diferentes momentos de uma alegação de violência sexual, dentro do Sistema de Garantia de Direitos. Enquanto os dois primeiros podem contar com profissionais de outras áreas, a perícia psicológica é atribuição privativa dos psicólogos. Tendo em vista que a principal fonte de informações sobre os eventos alegados é a criança, este artigo de revisão narrativa tem como objetivo discutir a escuta do psicólogo/a sobre alegações de violência sexual nos contextos da escuta especializada, do depoimento especial e da perícia psicológica. O artigo também tem como objetivo apresentar diretrizes gerais para entrevistas com crianças e adolescentes, consideradas na literatura como boas práticas nesse campo de atuação. Considerando a entrevista como o ponto comum entre esses três procedimentos, recomenda-se o uso de questões abertas, preparação do local em que a entrevista será conduzida e o uso de protocolos empiricamente validados para obtenção do relato sobre o evento alegado. Observou-se que tanto na literatura especializada como na legislação brasileira ainda se faz necessário esclarecer a operacionalização de “escuta especializada”, pois pode dificultar a atuação efetiva dos profissionais que atuam em serviços de proteção e atendimento a crianças e adolescentes.

Comparing the effects of drawing and verbal recall techniques on children's memory accounts

The present study compared the amount and accuracy of information Taiwanese children reported about a staged event in verbal-only and drawing-assisted interviews. We also tested further whether verbosity was a valid indicator of the accuracy of children's memory reports (Koriat & Goldsmith, , ) in a non-Western sample. Eighty-four first-grade elementary school children participated in a staged event involving a novel interactive puppet show followed by a drawing activity (drawing of the target event or the school), and were subsequently given a 10-minute memory interview. They were randomly assigned to a verbal cued-recall interview condition or a drawing-assisted interview condition. We did not find significant differences in the amount and accuracy of details reported between the two interview conditions. Our findings also revealed that the quantity of children's reports was positively related to the number of correct details reported, indicating that the children in our study did not demonstrate a quantity-accuracy tradeoff.

In My Shoes - Validation of a computer assisted approach for interviewing children

Interviewing young children presents a challenge because they tend to provide incomplete accounts and are easily misled. Therefore there is a need for techniques to improve young children's recall, while maintaining accuracy and increasing completeness. The computer-assisted interview In My Shoes (IMS) is an aid that potentially offers a way for young children to provide accounts of their experiences. This study examined the validity of IMS, by comparing it with a forensic best practice interview approach using a real-life clinical situation to ensure high ecological validity. Children were randomly assigned to either method and both accuracy and completeness of statements made by 4- and 5-year-olds (N=54) regarding a video-documented health check-up were assessed. The In My Shoes interviews were as good as best practice interviews on all accuracy measures for both age groups, except for object accuracy that was better in the forensic interview condition. Events description completeness was similar in both interview conditions; however, IMS interviews generated more complete statements about people present at the visit. The findings suggest that the IMS approach yields comparable results to a best practice interview, and it can be used as an alternative aid in child interviews.

Divining Testimony? The Impact of Interviewing Props on Children's Reports of Touching

There is a long-held assumption that objects help bridge the gap between what children know and what they can (or are willing to) explain. In this review, we present research on the extent to which two types of objects used as props in investigative interviews of children, anatomical dolls and body (human figure) diagrams, actually help children report accurate information about autobiographical events. We explain why available research does not instill confidence that props are the best solution to interviewing challenges, and we consider practitioners' and policy-makers responses to this evidence. Finally, we discuss the types of developmental research that are necessary to advance the field of evidence-based interviewing of children.