Makiko NAKA 1, Yukinori FUTAKUCHI2 and Toshikazu KOYAMA 21 Hokkaido University, 2 Hokkaido Child Guidance CenterKey words: Investigative interviewing, training, evaluation

Introduction

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A training program on investigative interviewing with children: Three-day training and its effect on the interview

Home Office (1992). Memorandum of Good Practice: On video recorded interviews with child witnesses for criminal proceedings. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.Home Office (2000). Achieving the best evidence in criminal proceedings: Guidance for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses, including children. Home Office Communication Directorate.Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Esplin, P. W., & Horowitz, D. (2007) A structured forensic interview protocol improves the quality and informativeness of investigative interviews with children: A review of research using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol. Child Abuse and Neglect, 31, 1201-1231.Naka, M. (2006). Memory talk and testimony in children. In Mazuka et al (Eds.) Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics. Pp. 123-129. Cambridge University Press.

In 2010, Prevention of Child Abuse Act (Kodomo Gyakutai Boshi Ho) was issued in Japan. Since then, people are more aware of neglect, physical, psychological and sexual abuse against children. The number of reference to Child Guidance Center, where social workers and psychologists work to protect children, was 17725 in 2000 increased to 42662 in 2008 (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2009). However, all the cases are not necessarily investigated by police. On contrary, according to Police Report (2009), only 307 cases were investigated in 2008. Even if a case went to court, children’s testimonies are not well heard. Judges typically say that “ (in the child’s testimony) there are no concrete or clear feature description to identify (the defendant) a perpetrator among others.” (Hiroshima, 2005) and“.. there is an ambiguity in the child’s testimony, and there is no objective evidence. It is unrealistic and irrational for a perpetrator to commit a crime in such a place that people would see.” (Chiba, 2005).A cause that children’s voice does not reach to court is limited quality of children’s report. In Japan there are no legislations or formal guidelines for investigative/forensic interviews, which situation is far behind compared to other countries such as U.K., U.S., Israel, Australia, and Korea. In order to improve the situation, we translated Memorandum of Good Practice (Home Office, 1992) and the NICHD protocol (Lamb, Orbach, Hershkowitz, Esplin, & Horowitz, 2007), and started to train the professionals in 2007. In 2008, with support of Japan Science and Technology Agency, we started a Hokkaido University Forensic Interview Support Team (FIST) and started to train professionals regularly. This poster presents the training program we use and its evaluation based on the change in interviews before and after the training.So far we trained 47, 132, and 70 professionals in 2008, 2009, and 2010, respectively. Here, we describe the evaluation based on the results we obtained from a group we conducted training in January 2010.

Participants. Thirty-six social workers and psychologists working at Child Guidance Center in the West area of Japan attended the training.Program. Three-day program was conducted. The training took place in January, 2009. It included lectures, group work, role-plays and the reviews, and discussions. See table 1 for the details of the program. The first author conducted the training with the help from two experienced trainers and five assistants. We used Japanese translated version of NICHD protocol and tits outline that shows the 20 elements in the protocol.Evaluation procedures. Two weeks before the training takes place, trainees receive a package, in which a DVD of one-minute film clip, an IC recorder, and instruction, and envelope to return the materials were enclosed. Trainees were asked to read the instruction closely, and then follow the instruction. DVD Namely, a trainee first asks one child or adult to play a role of an interviewee. Then the trainee asks explains the task and asks for the informed consent (phase 0), have some conversation to build a rapport (phase 1), and then asks the interviewee to watch the DVD while the trainee stays outside the room. After the child/adult finishes the DVD, the trainee conducts an interview on the content of the DVD (phase 2). Interview was recorded and sent back to FIST. After the training, trainees were again given a package with a different DVD and were asked to conduct another interview with a child/adult and send it back.

Two trainers did not hand in the pre-training interview and one trainee did not hand in the post-training interview. Therefore the results are based on 30 pre-interviews and 31 post-interviews. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed quantitatively. We examined whether there was any change in the number of utterances, and the amount of information (number of characters).A 2 role (interviewer, interviewee) x timing (before, after) x 3 phase (0, 1, 2) ANOVA was conducted on the number of utterances. The interaction of before-after x phase was significant [ F (2,124) = 3.17, p < .05]. As shown in Figure 1, the number of utterances in phase 1 (rapport) decreased whereas it increased in phase 2 (interview) after the training, suggesting the interviewer built the rapport more efficiently and focused on the content of DVD after the interview.A 2 role (interviewer, interviewee) x timing (before, after) x 3 phase (0, 1, 2) ANOVA was conducted on the number of characters. The main effect of timing, phase, and role were significant [ F (1, 62) = 40.09, p < .01; F (2, 62) = 14.01, p < .01; F (2, 124) = 5.64, p < .01]. The interactions of role x phase and triple interactions were significant [ F (2, 124) = 41.31, p < .01; F (2, 62) = 7.46, p < .001]. The triple interaction is shown in Figure 2. It shows that after the training, interviewer gives more information in the beginning and then let the interviewee talk more.Preliminary analyses of type of utterances in interviewer suggest that they become to use more facilitation (and then, etc.) but the number of invitation (tell me) is still small (Figure 3). Further training is necessary.

Methods

Results and Discussion

References