Interviewing Young Children about Body Touch and Handling

Abstract

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Recounting the same events again and again: children's consistency across multiple interviews

“…Thus, if something is routinely recalled, it seems to be reliably accurate. This difference in accuracy depending upon frequency of recall was also noted by Steward et al (1996).…”

“…Since the same questions are asked in each interview in this study, it is not surprising that children's recall is much more consistent than in the interviews of Fivush and Hudson, among others (Fivush and Hamond, 1990;Fivush and Shukat, 1995;Hudson, 1990;Hudson and Fivush, 1991) in which questions often differed substantially between interviews. Less straightforward are differences with Steward et al (1996) and Salmon and Pipe (1997), who used the same questions when re-interviewing. Steward et al found that only half the details in each later interview had been mentioned previously and only a quarter was present in all three interviews.…”

“…These percentages were higher when props were also usedÐbut still only 45% and 53% for younger and older children, respectively. Parallel to Steward et al (1996), information that was consistently mentioned by the children across interviews was highly accurate. Overall, even though both Salmon and Pipe (1997) and Steward et al (1996) found that repeated information was almost always accurate, they nevertheless reported that children provided a considerable amount of different information in subsequent interviews.…”

“…Likewise, Fivush, Hudson, and their colleagues found that in the free-ranging interviews they studied, new information was mostly accurate (Fivush and Hamond, 1990;Fivush and Shukat, 1995;Hudson, 1990;Hudson and Fivush, 1991). However, very different conclusions were reached by Steward et al (1996) and Salmon and Pipe (1997). Steward and her colleagues found that only about 60% of new information reported in either the 1-to 6-month repeated interviews was accurate, while Salmon and Pipe found that only about half of new information was accurate, with younger children having poorer accuracy rates than older children.…”

“…In two other studies, investigators looked at the consistency of children's recall of medical or quasi-medical events. In a study of preschoolers' recall of pediatric exams, Steward et al (1996) interviewed children shortly afterwards as well as 1 and 6 months later. At 1 month, only 51% of information was the same as in the ®rst interview, and at 6 months, only 52% was present in at least one of the previous interviews (but only 25% was present in both).…”