Judges’ delivery of ground rules to child witnesses in Australian courts

Earhart, Becky; Brubacher, Sonja P.; Powell, Martine B.; Westera, Nina; Goodman‐Delahunty, Jane

doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.08.005

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Saywitz and Camparo’s (2014) narrative elaboration interview outlines a procedure for giving interviewees feedback on signaling incomprehension, but suggests that the interviewer can omit the instruction if the child seems well-engaged, or if the interviewer is pressed for time or worried that the child will be less productive if too much time is spent on interview instructions. Research examining IDU (and other) instructions in court have similarly found that judges and attorneys rarely if ever provide practice questions (Ahern et al, 2015; Earhart et al, 2017). However, without practice questions, the interviewer is unable to assess how the child expresses incomprehension.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s Signaling of Incomprehension: The Diagnosticity of Practice Questions During Interview Instructions

Henderson

Lyon

2020

Child Maltreat

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Forensic interviewers are routinely advised to instruct children that they should indicate when they do not understand a question. This study examined whether administering the instruction with a practice question may help interviewers identify the means by which individual children signal incomprehension. We examined 446 interviews with children questioned about abuse, including 252 interviews in which interviewers administered the instruction with a practice question (4- to 13-year-old children; M age = 7.7). Older children more often explicitly referred to incomprehension when answering the practice question and throughout the interviews, whereas younger children simply requested repetition or gave “don’t know” responses, and individual children’s responses to the practice questions predicted their responses later in the interviews. Similarly, older children were more likely to seek confirmation of their understanding of interviewers’ questions and to request specification. The results highlight the need for interviewers to test and closely monitor younger children’s responses for ambiguous signs of incomprehension.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s Signaling of Incomprehension: The Diagnosticity of Practice Questions During Interview Instructions

Henderson

Lyon

2020

Child Maltreat

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“…Field studies provide important insight into how ground rules are used in real-world contexts. Yet, only a handful of studies have examined the use of ground rules in real legal settings (Ahern, Stolzenberg & Lyon, 2015;Earhart, Brubacher, Powell, Westera, & Goodman-Delahunty, 2017;Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014;Teoh & Lamb, 2010). In one study, Teoh and Lamb (2010) assessed 75 interviews using the NICHD protocol with children alleging maltreatment in Malaysia.…”

Section: Use Of Ground Rules In Real-world Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other legal contexts see similar exclusion of practice. Prosecutors and judges seldom present and even less often practice ground rules with children in courtroom settings (Ahern et al, 2015; Earhart et al, 2017). Although children tend to accurately respond to practice questions, younger children struggle more with the concepts than older children (Dickinson et al, 2015).…”

Section: Use Of Ground Rules In Real-world Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Setting the Ground Rules: Use and Practice of Ground Rules in Child Forensic Interviews

et al. 2020

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Most child forensic interviewing protocols recommend that interviewers administer a series of ground rules to emphasize concepts that are important to accurately answering interview questions. Limited research has examined whether interviewers follow ground rules recommendations in real-world forensic interviews. In this study, we examined how often highly trained interviewers presented and practiced each of the recommended ground rules. We also examined whether children accurately responded to practice questions. We coded transcripts from 241 forensic interviews of 4- to 12-year-old children conducted by interviewers in the United States who were largely trained using the Ten Step Investigative Interview. Results demonstrated that interviewers routinely presented and practiced the ground rules, but this significantly varied by children’s age. Additionally, children often accurately responded to practice questions, but younger children were less accurate than older children. Taken together, results highlight that interviewers may deviate from ground rules recommendations based on the characteristics of the child, which has implications for both future research and practice.

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“…For those that did (16 interviews), and as part of the model, this is simply stated. Further, research studies agree ground rules that are just listed and not practiced tend to be less effective than when the child is given an opportunity to practice them (Brubacher et al, 2015;Earhart et al, 2017). Here there is a mismatch with current evidence-based recommendations and what is happening in practice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Investigative Interviews with Children in New Zealand

Park

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<p><strong>Child witnesses can give informative and reliable testimony when they are interviewed appropriately. Interviews in New Zealand follow the Specialist Child Interviewing Model which is consistent with international evidence-based practice. This study examined investigative interviews with children in New Zealand through interviewers’ adherence to preparatory and structural components of the model, their interviewing strategy, and how interviewers responded when children demonstrated difficulty. Interviewers (n = 24) demonstrated good adherence to preparatory components of the model and typically responded well when children expressed difficulty in answering questions. The practice interview was generally brief and comprised largely of invitations, with limited variety in questioning strategies and associated pairing of invitations, with more focused questions. When eliciting the child’s account, interviewers relied predominantly on direct questions rather than invitations to obtain information. On average, interviewers posed three direct or option posing questions in a row before introducing an invitation style prompt, indicating a departure from recommended practice. Training and development resources could focus on the practice narrative interview, to increase the depth and breadth of questioning used with children. This would thereby better achieve its intended function as a precursor to the questioning strategies adopted during the substantive phase. Further, increasing the emphasis on pairing as an important aspect of good interviewing practice may minimise interviewers’ use of direct questions and increase the frequency of invitations (open and cued) to promote best-practice.</strong></p>

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Judges’ delivery of ground rules to child witnesses in Australian courts

Cited by 7 publications

References 19 publications

Children’s Signaling of Incomprehension: The Diagnosticity of Practice Questions During Interview Instructions

Children’s Signaling of Incomprehension: The Diagnosticity of Practice Questions During Interview Instructions

Setting the Ground Rules: Use and Practice of Ground Rules in Child Forensic Interviews

Evaluating Investigative Interviews with Children in New Zealand

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