The effects of an intensive training and feedback program on investigative interviews of children

In the present study, we assessed the effectiveness of an extensive training and feedback program with investigative interviewers of child victims of alleged abuse and neglect in a large Canadian city. Twelve investigative interviewers participated in a joint training initiative that lasted eight months and involved classroom components and extensive weekly verbal and written feedback. Interviewers were significantly more likely to use open-ended prompts and elicited more information from children with open-ended prompts following training. These differences were especially prominent following a subsequent ‘refresher’ training session. No negative effects of training were observed. Clear evidence was found of the benefits of an intensive training and feedback program across a wide variety of investigative interviews with children. Although previous research has found benefits of training with interviewers of child sexual assault victims, the current study extends these findings to a wide range of allegations and maltreatment contexts. The effects of an intensive training and feedback program on police and social workers’ investigative interviews of children In investigations involving child witnesses, the child’s statement against the accused is often critical. Preserving this key evidence poses challenges not typically encountered with adult witnesses; there are special developmental, linguistic, and interpersonal considerations that are unique to children. An accurate and detailed statement from a child victim can lead to swift and strong action taken on the child’s behalf; whereas an inconsistent or weak statement can lead to delays in prosecution and may place the child at further risk. The growing recognition of the need for special treatment of children in the criminal justice system has led to the development of broad, empirically-based recommendations on how to proceed with such victims/witnesses. Such recommendations are in large part made in academic circles, and are disseminated to law enforcement through the efforts of particularly motivated scholars. Some jurisdictions have developed a national strategy to deal with interviewing children and youth such as the Home Office in the UK (see Achieving best evidence in criminal proceedings: Guidance for vulnerable or intimidated witnesses, including children, 2000). Most other countries, including Canada, have more informal strategies and training schedules. Of the recommendations made to investigative interviewers, a reliance on open-ended rather than focused questions, is perhaps the most prolific (e.g., Dent & Stephenson, 1979; Lamb, Sternberg, & Esplin, 2000; Orbach & Lamb, 2000; Sternberg et al., 2001). Unfortunately, despite substantial evidence of the benefits of focusing on open-ended questions in investigative interviews, this seemingly simple recommendation is not often followed by forensic interviewers in the field (e.g., Davies, Westcott, & Horan, 2000). This discrepancy between the clear benefit of particular questioning techniques and their use in practice has raised the critical issue of how to convert this empirically-based knowledge (e.g., Leichtman & Ceci, 1995) into practice by investigative interviewers. In response, scholars have developed interviewing protocols and training programs that strive to make implementation of such evidence-based recommendations more effective. The logical basis for conducting training sessions with investigative interviewers is that providing knowledge to interviewers about recommended interviewing practices will result in interviewers who are able to conduct higher quality interviews. However, there is relatively little research investigating the merit of this assumption and, that which exists, is mixed. Further, there has been no thorough evaluation of an investigative interviewer training program on practice in English-speaking Canada. Warren and colleagues (1999) assessed the outcome of a 10-day training session in the US that involved measuring both knowledge gain and interviewer behaviour change. Although interviewer knowledge about the content of the training was significantly increased following training, this newly acquired knowledge did not translate into a change in interviewer practices (see also Freeman & Morris, 1999; Aldridge & Cameron, 1999). The finding of increased knowledge, but a lack of behaviour change is concerning and indicates that a simple knowledge assessment test following training is insufficient for determining training effectiveness. The most recent and promising research on the effectiveness of interviewer training has been conducted on the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) protocol. In brief, the NICHD protocol is a structured interview protocol that provides guidance for all aspects of an investigative interview. The recommendations center on transferring control to the child, focusing on open-ended questions, and providing a supportive interview environment (see Lamb, Hershkowitz, Orbach, & Esplin, 2008; Lamb, Orbach, Hershkowitz, Esplin, & Horowitz, 2007 for additional detail). In a review of the research on the NICHD protocol, Lamb and colleagues (2007) concluded that across a number of field studies, interviewers using the protocol used at least three times as many open-ended questions, and half as many suggestive and option-posing questions as interviewers not using the protocol. The researchers suggested that one of the reasons for this high level of success is that the NICHD training procedure involves feedback on post-training interviews (Lamb et al., 2007). One example of the work conducted on the effectiveness of the NICHD training is described by Orbach et al. (2000) who found significant behaviour change in a number of domains. The training in the Orbach et al. (2000) study was particularly extensive, involving a 3day seminar, monthly group sessions, transcript analyses, and role-play. In a comparison of interviews that implemented the NICHD protocol and those that did not, there were strong indications of improved quality of interviews in those who used the protocol. The authors attributed the success to the extensive training and feedback program. Similar prior research on the effectiveness of the post-training feedback has indicated that only under conditions of continued practice in the form of workshops that evaluated interviews (either their own or others) did interviewers perform better postthan pre-training (Lamb, Sternberg, Orbach, Hershkowitz, Horowitz, & Esplin, 2002). In a complementary study, Lamb, Sternberg, Orbach, Esplin, and Mitchell (2002) found that discontinuing supervision and feedback after training also decreased the quality of interviews, relative to interviewers who received continual supervision and feedback. Thus, it appears as though it is not just high-quality training sessions that are required to alter interviewer habits, but that regular monitoring is also required for maintaining improvements in interviewing skill. The nature and extent of this required monitoring is yet to be determined. Indeed, it is of obvious interest for resource-allocation to explore just how much training and feedback may be required in order to observe continued improvement in the quality of investigative interviews. In the present study, we examine the progress of investigative interview quality through an extensive training and feedback program, including a monitoring intervention part-way through the program to examine accumulated gains throughout training. Despite the strong indications of the success of the NICHD protocol, there is still plenty of work to be done to expand the understanding of the utility of interviewer training in a wider array of settings. For example, much of the current literature on training investigative interviews has been in contexts in which allegations of sexual assault were being investigated (e.g., Cyr & Lamb, 2009; Lamb et al., 2002; Lamb et al., 2009; Lamb, Sternberg, Orbach, Hershkowitz et al., 2002; Orbach et al., 2000; Stevenson, Leung, & Cheung, 1992). Lyon and Saywitz (2006) have argued that there is a need for research on child victims/witnesses to branch out into a number of areas that have thus far received relatively little attention. Among the areas into which these authors saw a need to expand was beyond cases of sexual abuse to cases involving other types of child maltreatment. As the authors point out, most child witnesses are victims of child maltreatment such as physical abuse and neglect or witnessing parental conflict, types of allegations that have been, to date, understudied. Such allegations may be less likely to have criminal implications, but rather may involve decisions that include disciplining or educating adults who act inappropriately or the removal of vulnerable children from potentially dangerous homes. Such allegations may also involve interview elements that are not as likely to be present in a case of alleged sexual abuse. For example, in cases of alleged neglect, interviewers may be more likely to need to ask questions about all aspects of a child’s life (e.g., health care, daily routines) and may have more difficulty targeting specific incidences of neglect for recall than in cases of alleged sexual abuse. Extending our understanding of interviewer training programs to a wider range of allegations, with varying interviewer mandates, involving child abuse beyond sexual abuse was a central aim of the present study. Specifically, we were interested in whether interview quality could be improved by using an investigative protocol similar to the NICHD protocol. The Present Study In the present study, an extensive training program based on the principles of the NICHD protocol was employed with child protection workers and police officers in English interviews of children in a large Canadian city. All investigations conducted by participating child protection