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Children's Responses to Open-ended Utterances in Investigative Interviews

NCJ Number
187989
Journal
Legal and Criminological Psychology Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2001 Pages: 49-63
Author(s)
Irit Hershkowitz
Date Published
February 2001
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Interviews of 50 children ages 4 to 13 years in Israel during 1995 sought information about incidents of child sexual abuse that they had allegedly experienced and used an unusually high number of open-ended prompts to determine the effectiveness of different types of open-ended inquiries.
Abstract
The interviewers were experienced youth investigators and included two males and four females. The children included 40 females and 10 males. The alleged crimes included anal or genital penetration, fondling under or over the clothes, and sexual exposure. The research checked the transcripts of the audiotape recordings of the interviews to ensure their completeness and accuracy and to classify the interviewers’ utterances and analyze the children’s responses. Results revealed that the open-ended prompts yielded significantly longer and more detailed responses than did focused prompts. The main invitation, which initiated the children’s narratives, elicited the longest and most detailed responses. In addition, invitations remained superior to focused questions throughout the interview. Moreover, the effectiveness of invitations did not vary depending on whether they followed focused or open-ended prompts. Furthermore, no age differences existed regarding the effectiveness of any types of invitations. Tables and 52 references (Author abstract modified)