title: Factors That Underlie Success in Child Witness Interviewing Training
Creators: name: Lawrie, Melanie
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Child Witness
subject: interviews
subject: learning analytics

description: Research has established the knowledge and skills necessary for conducting effective interviews with children. Yet, most interviewing training programs do not enable successful long-term retention of best practices by interviewers. Training courses that do show retention of learned skills require significant amounts of time, money, and resources to complete. Some professional organisations do not have the means to undertake such costly trainings, despite the established benefits. The present studies sought to determine the learning aspects that contribute to effective interviewer training in a blended-learning design (i.e., including asynchronous self-paced online activities and synchronous face-to-face communication with trainers). This knowledge is critical to enable interview trainers to develop programs that are economical, producing the maximum benefit with the least resources (e.g., reductions in personnel time, expenses, air travel pollution, etc.). The current project is a series of four studies that establish how multiple factors including course activities, learners’ perceptions, course lengths, and learning analytics influence training outcomes. Prior to unpacking the foundational aspects of the ideal compact course, this project aimed to establish the potential efficacy of an abbreviated course. In Study 1, a compact version of an intensive vulnerable witness interviewing training (Benson &amp; Powell, 2015) was tested to determine if a more economical version of the course would maintain the effectiveness of the original training. Participants, from a single organisation that requested a brief course, completed the training course with pre- and post-training assessment points to determine behaviour change. The results showed that, despite reducing the training content and interactive exercises by more than half, participants still experienced the intended behavioural change. With the potential for a successful abbreviated course established, the costliest training activity (the ‘mock interview’) was then examined to determine the value of the activity from the participants’ perspective. Although mock interviews on their own have been demonstrated to positively affect interviewer behaviour, little is known about how learners perceive mock interviews that are embedded in a broader training program. If this intensive activity is perceived to have minimal value to participants, more cost-efficient ways to produce the same behavioural change could be pursued. In the second study, participants’ views of the mock interview were obtained. Course participants were requested to respond to short-answer questions about their experience with, and perceptions of, the mock interview. These responses were analysed to understand whether participants viewed the activity as useful enough to properly engage with the exercise, as previous studies suggest that role-play can feel unnatural (Nestel &amp; Tierney, 2007). The results showed that participants perceived the mock interview as helpful enough to engage with the activity and gain the behavioural benefits. The next step was to investigate what other factors impacted learning outcomes. The third study investigated the role of learner behaviours interacting with the online learning environment. Learner behaviours included length of time spent in the course, average spacing between modules, course visitation frequency, and engagement with learning activities such as quizzes and discussion board. Analyses indicated that the length of time spent in the course, in combination with time gaps between different content modules, marginally predicted participant behavioural change. No other factors were significant, suggesting that success in interview training in a blended learning environment is not well-explained by individual measures of learning analytics. An expected end goal for this project was to determine the learning elements that would be maximally effective in producing improvements in interview performance so that a ‘bare bones’ interviewer training course could be developed and tested. However, it was unclear from Study 3 the role that the learning activities played in producing positive change. As such, in the final study, change in interviewer performance was measured after professionals undertook training in a course that contained purely online learning activities. Participants with little previous interview experience, selected from a single organisation, underwent a behavioural comparison from pre- to post-training. Results demonstrated that the core learning exercises alone, without individualised interaction with a trainer, can create some limited change in participant behaviours. Such a course could be suitable for individuals who do not have the primary role in conducting interviews in their organisation, whilst those who hold key interview positions would be better served by undertaking more intensive learning coupled with opportunities for mock interviews. The intention of the present project was to create the foundation for a compact training program that could be made accessible to a variety of professionals with limited time and funding. Based on the findings from the four studies within the present project, it is concluded that a compact course containing mock interviews and spaced modules can produce beneficial outcomes, but these are limited. The results suggest that organisations will need to consider what level of training each of their staff requires and direct resources appropriately.