Rapport building has been identified as an effective tool when interviewing victims and witnesses of events that may be sensitive in nature. The objective of this study was to examine the rapport-building process within a virtual interviewing context. Participants (
N
= 94) were shown a sexual education video and then questioned about the content of the video in a live virtual interview using either a rapport (e.g., empathy, personalization, smiling) or no-rapport (e.g., flat tone, no smiling, no personalization) approach. Results showed that perceived rapport was much higher in the rapport condition compared to the no-rapport condition (
d
= 1.47). Participants in the rapport condition also provided substantially more dialog (
d
= 0.85) and reported more accurate details (
d
= 0.42) in the substantive phase of the interview than those in the no-rapport condition. Implications of this study for investigative interviews conducted virtually will be discussed.
Substantial resources have been dedicated to designing and implementing training courses that focus on enhancing the interviewing skills of police officers. Laboratory research studies and real-world assessments of the effectiveness of interview training courses, however, have found notably mixed results. In this article, empirical studies ( N = 30) that have assessed the effectiveness of police interview and interrogation training courses were systematically reviewed. We found a wide variation in terms of the type, length, and content of the training courses, the performance criteria used to assess the training effectiveness, and the impact of the training courses on interviewing performance. Overall, the studies found that basic interviewing skills can be developed to a certain level through even short evidence-based training courses. More cognitively demanding skills, such as question selection and meaningful rapport-building, showed less of an improvement post training. The courses that included multiple training sessions showed the most consistent impact on interviewing behavior. This review also indicated a need for more systematic research on training effectiveness with more uniform and longer-term measures of effectiveness. Our findings should help guide future research on this specific topic and inform the training strategies of law enforcement and other investigatory organizations.
Technology‐mediated interviews are a promising supplement to in‐person interviews for questioning eyewitnesses. We sought to develop and test a virtual self‐administered memory‐elicitation procedure—The virtual memory assistance tool (VMAT). The VMAT is a web‐based memory retrieval tool designed around the principles of the Cognitive Interview. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants (N = 135, N = 127) watched a target video and then received either VMAT or Control instructions, reporting their memory either by Typing into a textbox or Speaking into their device's microphone. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants (N = 89, N = 78) watched a target video and then received either VMAT or Control instructions presented in either Audio or Video format. Our findings suggest that a virtual tool for memory elicitation seems effective independent of Interview Procedures, Response Modalities, and Instruction Modalities and across differing target stimuli (mock‐crime vs. content of a sexual nature).
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