Pause for effect: A 10-s interviewer wait time gives children time to respond to open-ended prompts

Rezmer, Brooke E.; Trager, Lisa A.; Catlin, Mary; Poole, Debra Ann

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104824

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Summary of conclusions from the real data example. Relating back to the original research question, these results show that pauses that are longer than what is typical of adult dialogue are important to give children time to respond, as discussed by Rezmer et al (2020). The predicted (average) maximum pause duration for each age can be obtained using the model equation (e.g., for children age 4 in the control condition: pause ϭ 6.74 ϩ 1.02 ‫ء‬ [4 -6.76] ϭ 3.92 s); however, because some children had maximum pauses outside of this range, the practical implication of these results is that longer interviewer wait times are recommended when interviewing children.…”

Section: Real Data Examplementioning

confidence: 59%

“…Data for this example came from an analysis of interview recordings (Rezmer, Trager, Catlin, & Poole, 2020) from a child eyewitness testimony study (Dickinson & Poole, 2017). Children ( N = 105, ages 4–8 years, M = 6.76, although one child turned 9 by the interview day) described a target event in one of two interview conditions (which we call the experimental and control conditions for this example).…”

Section: Example Analyses Of Developmental Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Child eyewitness researchers often bin age: Prevalence of the practice and recommendations for analyzing developmental trends.

Bainter¹,

Tibbe²,

Goodman³

et al. 2020

Law and Human Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective: Effective practices for eliciting and analyzing children's eyewitness reports rely on accurate conclusions about age differences in how children retain information and respond to memory probes. Binning, which is the practice of categorizing continuous variables into discrete groups, can lower studies' power to detect age differences and, in some situations, produce significant but spurious effects. In this article, we (a) describe a systematic review that estimated the frequency of binning age in child eyewitness studies, (b) analyze real and simulated data to illustrate how binning can distort conclusions about age and covariate effects, and (c) demonstrate best practices for analyzing and reporting age trends. Hypotheses: We expected that researchers would frequently bin age and that we would replicate the negative consequences of binning in the demonstration data sets. Method: For the systematic review, we retrieved 58 articles describing child eyewitness studies and determined whether researchers binned age for one randomly selected analysis per article. We then compared alternative ways of analyzing actual and simulated data sets. Results: Researchers binned age for 64% of the analyses (88% of analyses involving experimental manipulations vs. 35% of the nonexperimental analyses, ϭ .55, p Ͻ .01). A significant age trend in the real data example was nonsignificant when age was treated as categorical, and in the simulated data sets we demonstrate how this practice may lead to detecting a spurious effect. Conclusions: Treating age as a continuous variable maximizes power to detect real differences without inflating the frequency of spurious results, thereby ensuring that policies regarding child eyewitnesses reflect developmental changes in children's needs and abilities. Public Significance StatementResearchers who study children's eyewitness testimony frequently look for developmental trends by comparing children's performance across discrete age groups. Statistical approaches that treat age as a continuous variable are more likely to return accurate conclusions about children's strengths and weaknesses as witnesses, however, and should be the usual way of analyzing developmental trends. An online supplement illustrates this approach through example code and annotated output from SPSS and R.

show abstract

Section: Real Data Examplementioning

confidence: 59%

Section: Example Analyses Of Developmental Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child eyewitness researchers often bin age: Prevalence of the practice and recommendations for analyzing developmental trends.

Bainter¹,

Tibbe²,

Goodman³

et al. 2020

Law and Human Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Several scholars have emphasized the productiveness of pauses and silent moments in interviews with children (e.g. Brooke et al, 2020); nevertheless, such voids in the conversation can be emotionally challenging for the interviewer as well as the interviewee. Therefore, pauses and silence are often interrupted by follow-up questions, or by the interviewee.…”

Section: The Two Stepsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drawing a River: Utilizing the Power of Metaphors in Interviews With Children and Young People

Warming,

Fjordside,

Cortsen

et al. 2023

Qual Health Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the field of qualitative health research on children, scholars have called for the inclusion of children’s perspectives. Still, health care research on children appears to be characterized by an exclusionary approach that stems from a conception of disability and sickness as equivalent to a lack of agency. This article responds to the call to include children’s perspectives. It presents the Double-view (Dovi)-river interview, which is a drawing- and metaphor-based interview method that enables ambiguous and multi-layered life course narratives. Based on two steps – (1) a life course interview conducted while drawing a river of the child’s life and (2) revisiting and unfolding the child’s stories – the method allows for an arts-based, joint exploration of life experiences. Inspired by childhood studies as well as a poststructuralist epistemology, the article discusses and proposes ways to challenge power relations between the adult interviewer and the child interviewee. It is argued that the method can also challenge the predominant deficit view and the dichotomous understanding of children’s experiences of their life and capabilities that characterize much health care practice and health research, by focusing both on challenges and opportunities. Doing so enables a more nuanced and appreciative approach to children. We draw on empirical examples from a study with children with disabilities. However, we suggest that the method’s potential for enabling articulation of the complex and ambiguous can inspire qualitative research and health care practice more broadly.

show abstract

“…The open‐ended prompts are the most effective question type in eliciting accurate information (Lamb & Fauchier, 2001), while leading and option‐posing questions are highly risky, particularly with younger children and those with intellectual disability (Brown et al., 2017; Henry & Gudjonsson, 1999, 2007). Recently research has focused on providing children with a short (10 s) pause after open‐ended questions to give them an opportunity to respond comfortably to the questions and improve the quality of their answers (Rezmer et al., 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relative impact of different ‘resistant behavioural responses’ on interrogative suggestibility in children: The powerful contribution of ‘direct explanation’ replies to unanswerable questions

Gudjónsson

Vagni

Maiorano

et al. 2021

Journal Invest Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The aim of this study was to investigate the different types of resistant behavioural responses to unanswerable questions, their respective individual contribution to the overall variance in resistance efficacy, and their differential protective effect on repeated questioning, interrogative pressure, and delayed suggestibility. The participants were 360 children aged between 7 and 17 years, 180 of whom were suspected victims of sexual abuse and 180 matched peers for age, sex and IQ. All children completed the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 2. Delayed suggestibility was measured after a 1‐week delay. The findings show that ‘don't know’, ‘direct explanation’, and ‘no’ answers are unrelated response styles that have individual effects on resistance to misleading questions. ‘Direct explanation’ answers are most stable and robust and increase incrementally with age in children, whilst ‘no’ answers decline. The findings suggest that ‘Don't know’, ‘direct explanation’, and ‘no’ answers are driven by different cognitive and social processes.

show abstract

Pause for effect: A 10-s interviewer wait time gives children time to respond to open-ended prompts

Cited by 7 publications

References 14 publications

Child eyewitness researchers often bin age: Prevalence of the practice and recommendations for analyzing developmental trends.

Child eyewitness researchers often bin age: Prevalence of the practice and recommendations for analyzing developmental trends.

Drawing a River: Utilizing the Power of Metaphors in Interviews With Children and Young People

The relative impact of different ‘resistant behavioural responses’ on interrogative suggestibility in children: The powerful contribution of ‘direct explanation’ replies to unanswerable questions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About