Interviewing children and adults: the effect of question format on the tendency to speculate

Abstract

In formal interviews it is important that interviewees indicate when they do not know the answer, rather than speculate. In this study we investigated whether question format affected the tendency to speculate. One hundred and twenty-eight 5-to 9-year-olds, and 23 adults, were told two short stories, and were then asked questions about the stories. Half of the questions were answerable based on the information provided; the other half were not answerable. Within these categories, half of the questions were closed questions (i.e. only required a yes/no response), and half were wh-questions (i.e. requested particular details to be provided). All participants performed at ceiling with the answerable questions. With the unanswerable questions, there was an effect of format. The majority of children and adults correctly indicated that they did not know the answer when asked unanswerable wh-questions. However, the majority of children, and just over one-®fth of adults, provided a response (i.e.`yes' or`no') to the closed unanswerable questions. The implications for interviews, particularly within a forensic context, are discussed.

Adults' Responses to Question Types About a Participatory Mock Crime

“…Thus, our results for misleading questions are similar to what others have found (e.g., Waterman et al. 2001). Perhaps under free report conditions (i.e., participants can decide whether or not to answer; Koriat and Goldsmith 1994), wh‐ questions yield more accurate responses than option‐posing questions when questions contain erroneous or impossible information, but are comparable in performance when questions are non‐misleading.…”

Children's clarification requests in interviews: Testing the effects of age, question characteristics, and brief intervention strategies

“…In fact, when examining whether children requested clarification to any tricky or simple questions, child age was the only significant predictor. This is consistent with related research demonstrating that children's “don't know” responses increase with age (Waterman et al, 2000, 2001, 2004). This may have been because older children were more adept at monitoring their comprehension, or because they felt more socially comfortable requesting clarification from an adult interviewer.…”

Helping children correctly say “I don't know” to unanswerable questions.

“…For both answerable and unanswerable questions, the results for age and question format were very similar to Experiment 1, and in line with previous research (e.g., Waterman et al, 2001Waterman et al, , 2004.…”