Has the Quality of Investigative Intervi
REV
Has the Quality of Investigative Interviews with Children Improved with Changes in
Guidance? An Exploratory Study
The Criminal Justice Act (1991) introduced new procedures for the gaining and giving
of evidence by child complainants of abuse in England and Wales. In future, children
were to be interviewed on camera by specialist police officers and social workers and
these recordings would form the basis of their evidence in chief at any subsequent
trial or hearing. This innovation sprang from concerns as to the ability of children to
give their best evidence in open court and in the physical presence of the accused
(Home Office, 2002).
In 1999, under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act, pre-recorded video
interviews became one of a range of Special Measures potentially available to
vulnerable witnesses of all ages aimed at improving the “completeness, coherence and
accuracy” of their evidence (Ministry of Justice, 2011). A necessary adjunct to the
original legislation was the publication of guidelines, setting out how interviews were
to be conducted, which would be simultaneously investigative and evidential. The
style of interview needed to be sensitive to children’s concerns and developmental
level, but also consistent with the rules of evidence so as to be acceptable to the
courts. As far as possible, the child should describe any abuse in their own words and
the use of suggestive techniques and leading questions should be actively
discouraged.
The Memorandum of Good Practice (Home Office, 1992) was drafted by a
psychologist (Ray Bull) and a lawyer (Diane Birch) and rapidly established itself as
the core document for the training and guidance of interviewers (see Bull, 1996 for
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fuller details). It emphasised a phased approach involving four distinct phases. The
first involved rapport building in which the ground rules for the interview are also
introduced. These rules include the importance of telling the truth and of informing
the interviewer if they do not understand a question or do not know the answer.
Following completion of this phase, the interviewer moves on to the free narrative
phase, where the focus of the interview is raised through an indirect prompt, such as:
‘Do you know why you are here today?’ Explicitly raising the particular allegation
with the child is actively discouraged due to concerns over the admissibility of any
evidence obtained. The child is encouraged through active listening, to provide as
much free narrative as possible relating to the issue of concern. When the child
completes their spontaneous account, the third, questioning phase begins, with an
initial emphasis on the use of open questions.
Specific or closed (‘either/or’)
questions are reserved for later in the interview, as open questions are known to yield
more informative and reliable information than other forms of question. In the final
closure phase, the interviewer summarises what the child has said, using their own
words before offering reassurance and thanks (see Association of Chiefs of Police
Officers, 2010 for further discussion of interview structure). The Memorandum was
used by the police and social services in England and Wales for interviewing both
child victims and witnesses for the next decade and its principles were widely copied
in other countries (Lamb et al., 2008).
Research on Compliance with ‘Memorandum’ Requirements
The use of video recording meant that a complete and permanent record was available
of any interview conducted under the new legislation, which lent itself to research on
the degree to which the guidelines were being implemented in practice. A number of
2
studies were completed subsequently on samples of suitably anonymised transcripts
of Memorandum interviews and these studies revealed a sometimes alarming
discrepancy between what the Memorandum required and actual practice, The first
such study conducted by Davies, Wilson, Mitchell and Milsom (1995) examined the
content of some 40 interviews conducted by police officers with child sexual abuse
complainants during the first two years of the original legislation. Rapport was
generally well conducted, but contrary to the guidance, in 25% of cases the alleged
offence was explicitly mentioned in this phase. All four phases of the interview were
clearly present in just 30% of interviews, with the free narrative and closure phases
being most often omitted. In the questioning phase, only 30% began with an open
question and closed or specific questions predominated during most interviews.
Rapport and closure rarely included all the recommended points being raised with the
child.
Sternberg, Lamb, Davies and Westcott (2001) examined the content of 119
Memorandum interviews provided by 13 different police forces in England and Wales,
conducted with alleged victims of sexual abuse, aged 4 to 13 years, between 1994 and
1997. The same problems of adherence to guidelines persisted. In the Rapport phase,
virtually all the interviewers emphasised the importance of telling the truth and
around half mentioned that they should ask if they did not understand a question, but
other ground rules were frequently omitted. Just over half the interviewers began the
investigative phase with an open question, but afterward, specific or closed questions
predominated: just 8% of the questions posed by interviewers were judged to be open.
The same sample of transcripts was also examined by Westcott and Kynan (2006)
who reported some improvement in quality relative to the early sample studied by
3
Davies et al (1995). The different phases of the interview were generally present and
in the recommended order; the free narrative phase was most often omitted. They
confirmed that both the rapport and closure phases failed to include all the
components recommended by the Memorandum.
A fresh sample of 100 forensic interviews of alleged sexual abuse victims aged 4-13
years, conducted by police officers in a constabulary in the British Midlands was
examined by Lamb et al. (2009). Half the interviews were conducted under
Memorandum guidelines between 1999 and 2001, while the remainder followed
training with a new interview protocol developed by the National Institute of Child
Health and Development (NICHD) in the US. The principles of the NICHD protocol
are similar to those of the Memorandum, but the protocol encourages the child to
initially practice remembering a non-offence-related incident from their lives to
understand and internalise the requirements of an investigative interview before
embarking on any account of abuse. Interviewers actively practice the use of semiscripted open-ended questions (see Lamb et al., 2008 for further detail). Compared to
the Protocol, the Memorandum transcripts showed proportionately fewer open-ended
questions and more closed and leading questions. Information judged to be central to
the investigation was more frequently elicited by the safer, open questions used in the
Protocol, while the Memorandum interviews was more likely to yield the same
information through other, less safe, forms of question.
‘Achieving Best Evidence’
By the turn of the new century, research and practice had revealed the need for
significant revisions to the Memorandum. For instance, it was perceived as
encouraging a ‘one size fits all’ approach, underplaying the importance of the age and
4
level of intellectual development of the child in deciding on style of interview (Davies
& Westcott, 1999). These concerns coincided with the government initiative to extend
the availability of Special Measures, including video interviewing, to all vulnerable
witnesses and thus offered the opportunity to develop revised and comprehensive
guidelines on interviewing and on safeguarding witnesses at court. Achieving Best
Evidence in Criminal Proceedings (or ABE) superseded the Memorandum (Home
Office, 2002); through successive revisions (Home Office, 2007; Ministry of Justice,
2011), it remains the official guidance designed for all personnel who deal with
vulnerable witnesses, not just police officers and social workers, but all court
professionals.
As regard interviewing style, while the new guidance acknowledged that other types
of interview might be appropriate in certain circumstances (including the Cognitive
Interview), its main emphasis remained on the phased approach advocated by the
Memorandum. However, it followed the NICHD protocol in emphasising the value of
open questions and including some scripted elements, particularly for the ground-rule
and closure phases. In order to attempt greater compliance with its recommendations,
the new guidance was accompanied with a training pack emphasizing its distinctive
features and uses with different groups of vulnerable witnesses (Welsh Assembly
Government, 2004).
The most recent version of ABE, revised in the light of the Coroners and Justices Act,
2009 (Ministry of Justice, 2011), gives additional guidance designed to provide a
more supportive environment for the child and introduces a distinction between the
traditional role of the interview-to elicit the witness’s account- and additional
questions concerning case-specific information to assist in police investigations.
5
To date, no published research has specifically evaluated the impact of ABE on
investigative interviewing and whether it has had any positive impact on the conduct
of interviews seen by the courts. The current exploratory study compares samples of
investigative interviews with child witnesses conducted prior to and subsequent to the
implementation of ABE guidelines. It investigates whether the progressive
developments in the investigative interviewing of child witnesses recommended by
the ABE have led to changes or improvements in aspects of interviewing practice
relative to interviews conducted under the Memorandum.
Method
Interview Samples
In this study, 25 transcripts from investigative interviews of alleged child abuse
victims and witnesses from 10 Police Constabularies throughout England were
examined. Of these interviews 13 were conducted between 1993 and 1998 in
accordance with the Memorandum and the remainder between 2002 and 2009 under
ABE guidelines. The transcripts had all figured in proceedings conducted in the
Family Courts in relation to child custody matters. Ethical approval was granted on
the basis that all of the interviews were thoroughly redacted by the second
investigator. This included the removal of all personal identifiers and any reference to
dates, individuals or places. This procedure ensured that ethical requirements were
upheld and also that the first researcher was blind to the guidelines under which each
interview took place. The Memorandum sample consisted of interviews with three
males and ten females (average age 9.9 years; SD = 2.7) with a range between four
and 14 years, while the ABE sample was made up of four males and eight females
6
(average age 10.4 years; SD = 3.2) and ranged between five and 16 years. The
average age of the combined data set was 10.2 years (SD = 2.9).
Procedure
An interview analysis form was constructed, detailing the four recommended phases
of the interview, common to both the MOGP and ABE guidelines, together with the
relevant components of these phases. The first investigator then documented whether
each phase and its component parts were present and whether the phases occurred in
the recommended order.
In addition, in the free narrative phase, the word count was recorded and the relevant
content analysed, using a technique initially developed by Yuille and Cutshall (1989)
to measure the amount of forensically relevant information about the accused, other
individuals, objects and relevant events spontaneously mentioned by the child. Within
the questioning phase, analyses were conducted on the types of question employed.
Following Lamb et al. (2008, 2009), five categories of question were identified: openended prompts; specific questions; closed questions; option-posing questions, and
leading questions and suggestions. As a check on rater reliability, a sample of four
transcripts was independently coded by another investigator who was provided only
with the coding form, together with an explanation of each utterance type and the four
phase approach. The two raters showed 79% agreement on the categorisation of
interview utterances and 88% agreement for the four phased approach interview
analysis.
Results
In order to compare interviews conducted under the Memorandum and the ABE, the
completed rating forms were assigned by interview type and statistical comparisons
conducted on the selected performance indicators. In addition, where permissible, the
7
data were collapsed across interview type and correlations run to establish any
relationships with age of the child or date of the interview. Major findings are
described below, while a complete analysis is reported in Hill (2011).
Presence of the Four Interview Phases
Among the 13 Memorandum interviews, only three interviews contained all four
interview phases and only two did so in the recommended order. A Questioning phase
was present in all interviews and Free Narrative in all but one. However, Closure
(present in four interviews) and Rapport (seven) were frequently omitted. The ABE
provides a checklist of the phases and an explanation as to the desirability of
following the recommended sequence. In this sample, however, there was little sign of
any positive change: only three of the 12 interviews were judged to contain all four
phases, of which two did so in the recommended order. Questioning again figured in
all interviews, and Free Narrative was present in only eight. As before, Rapport
(present in eight) and Closure (five) were again frequently omitted. Irrespective of the
type of guidance employed, more complete and ordered interviews were associated
with older children, F(3,21) = 3.908, p < 0.05.
Ground Rules
Both the Memorandum and ABE guidance require interviewers to cover the same
ground rules with the child in the Rapport phase, but the latter provides an explicit
checklist, as well as a suggested script to enable the interviewer to cover these points.
Scrutiny of the transcripts showed that the ABE interviews included a median of three
ground rules, but the corresponding figure for the Memorandum interviews was zero
(eight of the 13 interviews failed to mention a single ground rule to the child). An
analysis of ground rules completed confirmed a significant difference in proportion
8
between the two sets of interviews, t (23) = -2.598, p < 0.05, suggesting the new
guidance had had a positive impact.
A key feature of the Rapport phase- evaluating whether the child understands the
differences between truth and a lie-was amended in the ABE. The Memorandum had
been inexplicit as to how this understanding should be assessed: the technique most
frequently employed involved a simple misstatement (for example: ‘I’m wearing
white socks. If I said I was wearing blue socks would that be the truth or a lie?’). The
new guidance offers age-appropriate story scenarios, involving deliberate attempts to
deceive, with negative consequences for the person lied against. Nearly all the
transcripts in both sets of transcripts examined truth and lies (the sole exception was a
four year-old child in the Memorandum series). The new Guidance appeared to have
been effective in changing interviewer behaviour: only one of the Memorandum
interviews used a story scenario compared to nine (75%) of the ABE interviews. By
contrast, seven (54%) of the Memorandum interviews used the ‘misstatement’
approach compared to just three (25%) of the ABE interviews.
Free Narrative
In attempting to elicit free narrative, both sets of guidance advise the use of prompts
to ensure children raise the matter of concern spontaneously and warn against raising
the specific allegation directly with the child. The recommended approach was judged
to have been achieved in eight (62%) of the Memorandum interviews and eight (67%)
of the ABE interviews. In one of the Memorandum interviews, the interviewer raised
the allegation directly with the child and in another ABE interview, the interviewer
raised the matter by reference to what another child had said, both tactics specifically
cautioned against in the Guidance. No free narrative was present in one of the
9
Memorandum interviews and two of the ABE interviews; all involved children aged
between four and six years. Where free narrative was provided, children showed wide
differences in the amount of forensically relevant information given: from five to 252
items for the Memorandum interviews and between six and 136 for the ABE; there
was no statistically difference between the two samples in this respect.
Questioning Phase
The ABE guidance differs from the Memorandum in placing a general emphasis upon
the value of using open-ended questions, but does not assume that interviewers will be
able to move consistently from open, through specific, finally to closed questions (the
so-called ‘funnel’ approach). Results from the question-type analysis were
disappointing in this respect: 7.4% of questions asked were open on average in the
Memorandum interviews compared to 8.1% in the ABE, an improvement which does
not approach significance. The most common forms of question remain specific
(Memorandum: 40.1%; ABE 41.9%) and closed (Memorandum: 45.5%; ABE 42.5%),
but interviewers generally avoided leading or suggestive questions (Memorandum:
3.1%; ABE 4.5%). Analysis of question form and the year in which the interview was
conducted showed no significant relationship, suggesting that within this sample, style
of questioning in interviews appears not to have changed significantly since the
introduction of the process. Additionally, in two of the Memorandum, but none of the
ABE interviews, the interviewer consistently implied a negative character to the
accused, a strategy which is specifically cautioned against in both sets of guidance.
Closure Phase
While there are no differences in the general guidance on the closure phase between
the Memorandum and ABE guidance, the latter explicitly codifies the issues to be
10
covered and stresses the value of summarising what the child has said, using their
own words and terms, and asking whether they have anything further to add. Both sets
of interviews generally included a request for further information (Memorandum: 11
or 85%; ABE: ten or 83%) but far fewer included an appropriate summary
(Memorandum: four or 31%; ABE: five or 42%), or encouraged the child to ask any
residual questions about the process (Memorandum: three or 23%; ABE: one or 8%).
Discussion
This study provides a first snapshot of the impact of Achieving Best Evidence
on interview practice with children since the new guidance was introduced in 2002.
On the basis of the developments in guidance, together with the introduction of new
training materials (Welsh Assembly Government, 2004), it was predicted that ABE
interviews would be superior to those conducted in accordance with the
Memorandum guidelines. However, if these samples are representative of
investigative interviews in general, then while improvements may have occurred,
these appear specific and limited. Many of the problems highlighted in earlier
research on the Memorandum, remain unresolved.
Most interviews examined here still failed to include all four phases of the interview
and this omission was particularly marked with younger witnesses. Relative to the
Memorandum sample, there was no marked improvement in the ABE interviews,
despite the explicit and prescriptive guidance offered in successive editions of the
guidance (Hone Office, 2002; 2007; Ministry of Justice, 2011) and echo those found
by Davies et al. (1995) among the first sample of interviews conducted under the new
legislation.
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The rapport phase of the Memorandum and ABE interviews rarely contained all of the
recommended components, a weakness which had been noted earlier ( Davies et al.,
1995; Westcott & Kynan, 2006), However, the ABE sample did show a significant
improvement in the proportion of recommended ground rules imparted to the child,
suggesting that the inclusion of an explicit checklist and scripting had been effective
in increasing compliance by interviewers with this particular recommendation.
Likewise, the findings regarding truth and lies were also encouraging, with a major
swing away from the misstatement approach of the Memorandum, toward story
scenarios emphasising the negative impact on others of lying, as endorsed in the ABE.
However, a minority of ABE interviews still persisted in using the misstatement
approach, which could have a negative impact on the perceived credibility of the
child’s testimony (Westcott & Kynan, 2006).
In contrast to earlier reports (Davies et al., 1995; Westcott & Kynan, 2006), the
eliciting of free narrative in a manner compatible with legal and guidance
requirements was generally well achieved in both the Memorandum and ABE
samples. There were, however, two glaring mistakes-raising the allegation directly
with the child and citing the allegation of another child-which might have resulted in
the interview being withdrawn at trial. Where the child did not spontaneously mention
the source of concern at interview, effective methods included initiating discussion of
particular family or neighbourhood groups the child knew or where this was
unsuccessful, asking the child which individuals within the given group the child
liked or disliked and their reasons for this. While mentioning an earlier statement
made by the child is permissible under the guidance, there is a concern that this will
be represented at trial as the child recalling their earlier allegation, rather than their
initial memory of the events.
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When the invitation for free narrative was delivered, most children responded
positively. The only failures occurred among the youngest children. Recent research
suggests that while some children of this age are developmentally capable of extended
free narrative, many are not and give more information in response to specific but
non-leading questions (Hershkowitz et al., 2012). Where children did respond
positively, the amount of information spontaneously volunteered varied greatly in
both the Memorandum and ABE interviews. Given the weight attached by the
guidance and the courts to free narrative, further research should examine what
aspects of the interview, apart from the age of the child, predict the amount of free
narrative volunteered.
Despite the recommendation in the Memorandum and even more emphatically in the
ABE, few open questions were asked by interviewers in the questioning phase. This
failure to use invitational prompts had also been reported by Davies et al. (1995) and
Sternberg et al. (2001). There was no significant rise in the proportion of open
questions from the MOGP to the ABE interviews. Instead, this phase was dominated
by specific and closed questions, consistent with earlier published analyses (Davies et
al., 1995; Lamb et al., 2009; Sternberg et al., 2001; Westcott & Kynan, 2006).
However, leading questions formed a gratifyingly small proportion of the total
questionings posed.
Turning to closure, this phase was adjudged to be incompletely conducted in over half
of both the Memorandum and ABE interviews. It is possible that some of the closure
components may have been completed off camera (Westcott and Kynan, 2006).
However, the current findings do replicate earlier research in suggesting this phase is
less effectively achieved in investigative interviewing (Davies et al., 2005; Westcott &
Kynan, 2006). The absence of a closure component has implications for the perceived
13
credibility of the child witness, their future well-being and a lost opportunity to
identify gaps and clarify inconsistencies (Westcott & Kynan, 2006).
In summary, while the successive versions of the ABE appear to have improved some
aspects of investigative intervening, other shortcomings are a source of continuing
concern. Short-term training programmes appear to have little demonstrable impact
on interviewer behaviour: even when interviewers can articulate how they should
conduct an interview, research suggests they fail to put this knowledge into practice
(Aldridge & Cameron, 1999). The reasons for this are still unclear but deserve further
research. What seems to be required is longer-term support and training through
continuing expert supervision and constructive feedback on performance (Aldridge &
Wood, 2000; Davies et al., 1998; Powell, 2008).
This research complements earlier studies in demonstrating the continuing gulf
between the recommendations of the existing guidance and the actual performance of
interviewers, a gulf which will be raised at court whenever a recorded interview forms
a central feature in family or criminal proceedings (Davis et al., 1999). The existing
study cannot pretend to be anything other than indicative: it employs a small sample
of the several thousands of such interviews with children conducted each year (Her
Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2012). Additionally, the sample is not a crosssection of interviews, but rather, a minority which were actually used in the civil
courts. The significance of this unique feature of this study is also difficult to
interpret: these interviews could be considerably better or even worse quality than
average, in that the defence may have raised issues over their conduct. The study
necessarily used anonymised transcripts and readily quantifiable indices. It cannot
identify more elusive factors which make for a successful interview, including non-
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verbal content-the behaviour of interviewer and child- and the impact this may have
on the quality of evidence elicited.
These limitations highlight the need for systematic research that investigates the
implementation of the recommended ABE guidelines and the associated training
needs. This should ensure that child witnesses are supported and interviewed in the
most appropriate manner by skilled interviewers, increasing well-being for the child,
enabling them to provide their best evidence, and ensuring that the ends of justice are
met.
15
References
Aldridge, J., and Cameron, S. (1999). ‘Interviewing Child Witnesses: Questioning
Techniques and the Role of Training’. Applied Developmental Science, 3/2:136- -147.
Aldridge, M., and Wood, J. (2000). ‘Interviewing Child Witnesses within
‘Memorandum’ Guidelines’. Children & Society, 14/3: 168- -181
Association of Chief Police Officers (2010). Advice on the Structure of Visually
Recorded Witness Interviews. London: National Strategic Steering Group on
Investigative Interviewing, ACPO.
Bull, R. (1996). ‘Good practice for Video Recorded Interviews with Child Witnesses
for use in Criminal Proceedings’. in G. Davies, S. Lloyd-Bostock, M. McMurran and
C. Wilson, eds., Psychology, Law and Criminal Justice, 100- -117. Berlin: de
Gruyter.
Davies, G. M. and Westcott, H. (1999). Interviewing Child Witnesses under the
'Memorandum of Good Practice': A Research Review. Police Research Series, no.115.
London: Home Office.
Davies, G., Wilson, C., Mitchell, R., and Milsom, J. (1995). Videotaping Children’s
Evidence: An Evaluation. London: Home Office.
Davis, G., Hoyano, L., Keenan, C., Maitland, L., and Morgan, R. (1999). An
Assessment of the Admissibility and Sufficiency of Evidence in Child Abuse
Prosecutions. London: Home Office.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. (2012). Joint Inspection Report on the
Experience of Young Victims and Witnesses in the Criminal Justice System. London:
Criminal Justice Joint Inspection.
Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M.E., Orbach, Y., Katz, C., and Horowitz, D. (2012 ). ‘The
Development of Communicative and Narrative Skills Among Preschoolers: Lessons
from Forensic Interviews about Child Abuse’, Child Development, 83/2: 611- -622.
Hill, E. (2011). Advances in Legal and Investigative Procedures. Unpublished thesis
for the Degree of ForenPsyD. University of Birmingham, Centre for Forensic and
Criminological Psychology.
Home Office (1992). Memorandum of Good Practice for Video Recorded Interviews
with Child Witnesses for Criminal Proceedings. London: Her Majesty’s Stationary
Office.
Home Office (2002). Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings: Guidance
for Vulnerable or Intimidated witnesses, including Children. London: Home Office.
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Home Office (2007). Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings: Guidance on
Interviewing Victims and Witnesses and using Special Measures. London: Home
Office
Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., and Esplin, P. W. (2008). Tell Me What
Happened: Structured Investigative Interviews with Child Victims and Witnesses.
Chichester: Wiley.
Lamb, M.E., Orbach, Y., Sternberg, K.J., Aldridge, J., Pearson, J., Stewart, H.L.,
Esplin, P.W., and Bowler, L. (2009) ‘Use of a Structured Investigative Protocol
Enhances the Quality of Investigative Interviews With Alleged Victims of Child
Sexual Abuse in Britain’. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23/4:449- -467.
Ministry of Justice (2011). Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings:
Guidance on Interviewing Victims and Witnesses, and Guidance on using Special
Measures. London: Ministry of Justice.
Powell, M. B. (2008). ‘Designing Effective Training Programs for Investigative
Interviewers of Children’. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: 20/2, 189- -208.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Davies, G. M., and Westcott, H. L. (2001). ‘The
Memorandum of Good Practice’: Theory versus Application’. Child Abuse and
Neglect, 25/5: 669- -681.
Welsh Assembly Government (2004). Training Pack: Achieving Best Evidence in
Criminal Proceedings for Vulnerable and Intimidated Witnesses including Children.
Cardiff: Welsh Assembly.
Westcott, H. L., and Kynan, S. (2006). ‘Interviewer Practice in Investigative
Interviews for Suspected Child Sexual Abuse’, Psychology, Crime & Law, 12/4:367-382.
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Norwell, MA: Kluwer.
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18
Has the Quality of Investigative Interviews with Children Improved with Changes in
Guidance? An Exploratory Study
The Criminal Justice Act (1991) introduced new procedures for the gaining and giving
of evidence by child complainants of abuse in England and Wales. In future, children
were to be interviewed on camera by specialist police officers and social workers and
these recordings would form the basis of their evidence in chief at any subsequent
trial or hearing. This innovation sprang from concerns as to the ability of children to
give their best evidence in open court and in the physical presence of the accused
(Home Office, 2002).
In 1999, under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act, pre-recorded video
interviews became one of a range of Special Measures potentially available to
vulnerable witnesses of all ages aimed at improving the “completeness, coherence and
accuracy” of their evidence (Ministry of Justice, 2011). A necessary adjunct to the
original legislation was the publication of guidelines, setting out how interviews were
to be conducted, which would be simultaneously investigative and evidential. The
style of interview needed to be sensitive to children’s concerns and developmental
level, but also consistent with the rules of evidence so as to be acceptable to the
courts. As far as possible, the child should describe any abuse in their own words and
the use of suggestive techniques and leading questions should be actively
discouraged.
The Memorandum of Good Practice (Home Office, 1992) was drafted by a
psychologist (Ray Bull) and a lawyer (Diane Birch) and rapidly established itself as
the core document for the training and guidance of interviewers (see Bull, 1996 for
1
fuller details). It emphasised a phased approach involving four distinct phases. The
first involved rapport building in which the ground rules for the interview are also
introduced. These rules include the importance of telling the truth and of informing
the interviewer if they do not understand a question or do not know the answer.
Following completion of this phase, the interviewer moves on to the free narrative
phase, where the focus of the interview is raised through an indirect prompt, such as:
‘Do you know why you are here today?’ Explicitly raising the particular allegation
with the child is actively discouraged due to concerns over the admissibility of any
evidence obtained. The child is encouraged through active listening, to provide as
much free narrative as possible relating to the issue of concern. When the child
completes their spontaneous account, the third, questioning phase begins, with an
initial emphasis on the use of open questions.
Specific or closed (‘either/or’)
questions are reserved for later in the interview, as open questions are known to yield
more informative and reliable information than other forms of question. In the final
closure phase, the interviewer summarises what the child has said, using their own
words before offering reassurance and thanks (see Association of Chiefs of Police
Officers, 2010 for further discussion of interview structure). The Memorandum was
used by the police and social services in England and Wales for interviewing both
child victims and witnesses for the next decade and its principles were widely copied
in other countries (Lamb et al., 2008).
Research on Compliance with ‘Memorandum’ Requirements
The use of video recording meant that a complete and permanent record was available
of any interview conducted under the new legislation, which lent itself to research on
the degree to which the guidelines were being implemented in practice. A number of
2
studies were completed subsequently on samples of suitably anonymised transcripts
of Memorandum interviews and these studies revealed a sometimes alarming
discrepancy between what the Memorandum required and actual practice, The first
such study conducted by Davies, Wilson, Mitchell and Milsom (1995) examined the
content of some 40 interviews conducted by police officers with child sexual abuse
complainants during the first two years of the original legislation. Rapport was
generally well conducted, but contrary to the guidance, in 25% of cases the alleged
offence was explicitly mentioned in this phase. All four phases of the interview were
clearly present in just 30% of interviews, with the free narrative and closure phases
being most often omitted. In the questioning phase, only 30% began with an open
question and closed or specific questions predominated during most interviews.
Rapport and closure rarely included all the recommended points being raised with the
child.
Sternberg, Lamb, Davies and Westcott (2001) examined the content of 119
Memorandum interviews provided by 13 different police forces in England and Wales,
conducted with alleged victims of sexual abuse, aged 4 to 13 years, between 1994 and
1997. The same problems of adherence to guidelines persisted. In the Rapport phase,
virtually all the interviewers emphasised the importance of telling the truth and
around half mentioned that they should ask if they did not understand a question, but
other ground rules were frequently omitted. Just over half the interviewers began the
investigative phase with an open question, but afterward, specific or closed questions
predominated: just 8% of the questions posed by interviewers were judged to be open.
The same sample of transcripts was also examined by Westcott and Kynan (2006)
who reported some improvement in quality relative to the early sample studied by
3
Davies et al (1995). The different phases of the interview were generally present and
in the recommended order; the free narrative phase was most often omitted. They
confirmed that both the rapport and closure phases failed to include all the
components recommended by the Memorandum.
A fresh sample of 100 forensic interviews of alleged sexual abuse victims aged 4-13
years, conducted by police officers in a constabulary in the British Midlands was
examined by Lamb et al. (2009). Half the interviews were conducted under
Memorandum guidelines between 1999 and 2001, while the remainder followed
training with a new interview protocol developed by the National Institute of Child
Health and Development (NICHD) in the US. The principles of the NICHD protocol
are similar to those of the Memorandum, but the protocol encourages the child to
initially practice remembering a non-offence-related incident from their lives to
understand and internalise the requirements of an investigative interview before
embarking on any account of abuse. Interviewers actively practice the use of semiscripted open-ended questions (see Lamb et al., 2008 for further detail). Compared to
the Protocol, the Memorandum transcripts showed proportionately fewer open-ended
questions and more closed and leading questions. Information judged to be central to
the investigation was more frequently elicited by the safer, open questions used in the
Protocol, while the Memorandum interviews was more likely to yield the same
information through other, less safe, forms of question.
‘Achieving Best Evidence’
By the turn of the new century, research and practice had revealed the need for
significant revisions to the Memorandum. For instance, it was perceived as
encouraging a ‘one size fits all’ approach, underplaying the importance of the age and
4
level of intellectual development of the child in deciding on style of interview (Davies
& Westcott, 1999). These concerns coincided with the government initiative to extend
the availability of Special Measures, including video interviewing, to all vulnerable
witnesses and thus offered the opportunity to develop revised and comprehensive
guidelines on interviewing and on safeguarding witnesses at court. Achieving Best
Evidence in Criminal Proceedings (or ABE) superseded the Memorandum (Home
Office, 2002); through successive revisions (Home Office, 2007; Ministry of Justice,
2011), it remains the official guidance designed for all personnel who deal with
vulnerable witnesses, not just police officers and social workers, but all court
professionals.
As regard interviewing style, while the new guidance acknowledged that other types
of interview might be appropriate in certain circumstances (including the Cognitive
Interview), its main emphasis remained on the phased approach advocated by the
Memorandum. However, it followed the NICHD protocol in emphasising the value of
open questions and including some scripted elements, particularly for the ground-rule
and closure phases. In order to attempt greater compliance with its recommendations,
the new guidance was accompanied with a training pack emphasizing its distinctive
features and uses with different groups of vulnerable witnesses (Welsh Assembly
Government, 2004).
The most recent version of ABE, revised in the light of the Coroners and Justices Act,
2009 (Ministry of Justice, 2011), gives additional guidance designed to provide a
more supportive environment for the child and introduces a distinction between the
traditional role of the interview-to elicit the witness’s account- and additional
questions concerning case-specific information to assist in police investigations.
5
To date, no published research has specifically evaluated the impact of ABE on
investigative interviewing and whether it has had any positive impact on the conduct
of interviews seen by the courts. The current exploratory study compares samples of
investigative interviews with child witnesses conducted prior to and subsequent to the
implementation of ABE guidelines. It investigates whether the progressive
developments in the investigative interviewing of child witnesses recommended by
the ABE have led to changes or improvements in aspects of interviewing practice
relative to interviews conducted under the Memorandum.
Method
Interview Samples
In this study, 25 transcripts from investigative interviews of alleged child abuse
victims and witnesses from 10 Police Constabularies throughout England were
examined. Of these interviews 13 were conducted between 1993 and 1998 in
accordance with the Memorandum and the remainder between 2002 and 2009 under
ABE guidelines. The transcripts had all figured in proceedings conducted in the
Family Courts in relation to child custody matters. Ethical approval was granted on
the basis that all of the interviews were thoroughly redacted by the second
investigator. This included the removal of all personal identifiers and any reference to
dates, individuals or places. This procedure ensured that ethical requirements were
upheld and also that the first researcher was blind to the guidelines under which each
interview took place. The Memorandum sample consisted of interviews with three
males and ten females (average age 9.9 years; SD = 2.7) with a range between four
and 14 years, while the ABE sample was made up of four males and eight females
6
(average age 10.4 years; SD = 3.2) and ranged between five and 16 years. The
average age of the combined data set was 10.2 years (SD = 2.9).
Procedure
An interview analysis form was constructed, detailing the four recommended phases
of the interview, common to both the MOGP and ABE guidelines, together with the
relevant components of these phases. The first investigator then documented whether
each phase and its component parts were present and whether the phases occurred in
the recommended order.
In addition, in the free narrative phase, the word count was recorded and the relevant
content analysed, using a technique initially developed by Yuille and Cutshall (1989)
to measure the amount of forensically relevant information about the accused, other
individuals, objects and relevant events spontaneously mentioned by the child. Within
the questioning phase, analyses were conducted on the types of question employed.
Following Lamb et al. (2008, 2009), five categories of question were identified: openended prompts; specific questions; closed questions; option-posing questions, and
leading questions and suggestions. As a check on rater reliability, a sample of four
transcripts was independently coded by another investigator who was provided only
with the coding form, together with an explanation of each utterance type and the four
phase approach. The two raters showed 79% agreement on the categorisation of
interview utterances and 88% agreement for the four phased approach interview
analysis.
Results
In order to compare interviews conducted under the Memorandum and the ABE, the
completed rating forms were assigned by interview type and statistical comparisons
conducted on the selected performance indicators. In addition, where permissible, the
7
data were collapsed across interview type and correlations run to establish any
relationships with age of the child or date of the interview. Major findings are
described below, while a complete analysis is reported in Hill (2011).
Presence of the Four Interview Phases
Among the 13 Memorandum interviews, only three interviews contained all four
interview phases and only two did so in the recommended order. A Questioning phase
was present in all interviews and Free Narrative in all but one. However, Closure
(present in four interviews) and Rapport (seven) were frequently omitted. The ABE
provides a checklist of the phases and an explanation as to the desirability of
following the recommended sequence. In this sample, however, there was little sign of
any positive change: only three of the 12 interviews were judged to contain all four
phases, of which two did so in the recommended order. Questioning again figured in
all interviews, and Free Narrative was present in only eight. As before, Rapport
(present in eight) and Closure (five) were again frequently omitted. Irrespective of the
type of guidance employed, more complete and ordered interviews were associated
with older children, F(3,21) = 3.908, p < 0.05.
Ground Rules
Both the Memorandum and ABE guidance require interviewers to cover the same
ground rules with the child in the Rapport phase, but the latter provides an explicit
checklist, as well as a suggested script to enable the interviewer to cover these points.
Scrutiny of the transcripts showed that the ABE interviews included a median of three
ground rules, but the corresponding figure for the Memorandum interviews was zero
(eight of the 13 interviews failed to mention a single ground rule to the child). An
analysis of ground rules completed confirmed a significant difference in proportion
8
between the two sets of interviews, t (23) = -2.598, p < 0.05, suggesting the new
guidance had had a positive impact.
A key feature of the Rapport phase- evaluating whether the child understands the
differences between truth and a lie-was amended in the ABE. The Memorandum had
been inexplicit as to how this understanding should be assessed: the technique most
frequently employed involved a simple misstatement (for example: ‘I’m wearing
white socks. If I said I was wearing blue socks would that be the truth or a lie?’). The
new guidance offers age-appropriate story scenarios, involving deliberate attempts to
deceive, with negative consequences for the person lied against. Nearly all the
transcripts in both sets of transcripts examined truth and lies (the sole exception was a
four year-old child in the Memorandum series). The new Guidance appeared to have
been effective in changing interviewer behaviour: only one of the Memorandum
interviews used a story scenario compared to nine (75%) of the ABE interviews. By
contrast, seven (54%) of the Memorandum interviews used the ‘misstatement’
approach compared to just three (25%) of the ABE interviews.
Free Narrative
In attempting to elicit free narrative, both sets of guidance advise the use of prompts
to ensure children raise the matter of concern spontaneously and warn against raising
the specific allegation directly with the child. The recommended approach was judged
to have been achieved in eight (62%) of the Memorandum interviews and eight (67%)
of the ABE interviews. In one of the Memorandum interviews, the interviewer raised
the allegation directly with the child and in another ABE interview, the interviewer
raised the matter by reference to what another child had said, both tactics specifically
cautioned against in the Guidance. No free narrative was present in one of the
9
Memorandum interviews and two of the ABE interviews; all involved children aged
between four and six years. Where free narrative was provided, children showed wide
differences in the amount of forensically relevant information given: from five to 252
items for the Memorandum interviews and between six and 136 for the ABE; there
was no statistically difference between the two samples in this respect.
Questioning Phase
The ABE guidance differs from the Memorandum in placing a general emphasis upon
the value of using open-ended questions, but does not assume that interviewers will be
able to move consistently from open, through specific, finally to closed questions (the
so-called ‘funnel’ approach). Results from the question-type analysis were
disappointing in this respect: 7.4% of questions asked were open on average in the
Memorandum interviews compared to 8.1% in the ABE, an improvement which does
not approach significance. The most common forms of question remain specific
(Memorandum: 40.1%; ABE 41.9%) and closed (Memorandum: 45.5%; ABE 42.5%),
but interviewers generally avoided leading or suggestive questions (Memorandum:
3.1%; ABE 4.5%). Analysis of question form and the year in which the interview was
conducted showed no significant relationship, suggesting that within this sample, style
of questioning in interviews appears not to have changed significantly since the
introduction of the process. Additionally, in two of the Memorandum, but none of the
ABE interviews, the interviewer consistently implied a negative character to the
accused, a strategy which is specifically cautioned against in both sets of guidance.
Closure Phase
While there are no differences in the general guidance on the closure phase between
the Memorandum and ABE guidance, the latter explicitly codifies the issues to be
10
covered and stresses the value of summarising what the child has said, using their
own words and terms, and asking whether they have anything further to add. Both sets
of interviews generally included a request for further information (Memorandum: 11
or 85%; ABE: ten or 83%) but far fewer included an appropriate summary
(Memorandum: four or 31%; ABE: five or 42%), or encouraged the child to ask any
residual questions about the process (Memorandum: three or 23%; ABE: one or 8%).
Discussion
This study provides a first snapshot of the impact of Achieving Best Evidence
on interview practice with children since the new guidance was introduced in 2002.
On the basis of the developments in guidance, together with the introduction of new
training materials (Welsh Assembly Government, 2004), it was predicted that ABE
interviews would be superior to those conducted in accordance with the
Memorandum guidelines. However, if these samples are representative of
investigative interviews in general, then while improvements may have occurred,
these appear specific and limited. Many of the problems highlighted in earlier
research on the Memorandum, remain unresolved.
Most interviews examined here still failed to include all four phases of the interview
and this omission was particularly marked with younger witnesses. Relative to the
Memorandum sample, there was no marked improvement in the ABE interviews,
despite the explicit and prescriptive guidance offered in successive editions of the
guidance (Hone Office, 2002; 2007; Ministry of Justice, 2011) and echo those found
by Davies et al. (1995) among the first sample of interviews conducted under the new
legislation.
11
The rapport phase of the Memorandum and ABE interviews rarely contained all of the
recommended components, a weakness which had been noted earlier ( Davies et al.,
1995; Westcott & Kynan, 2006), However, the ABE sample did show a significant
improvement in the proportion of recommended ground rules imparted to the child,
suggesting that the inclusion of an explicit checklist and scripting had been effective
in increasing compliance by interviewers with this particular recommendation.
Likewise, the findings regarding truth and lies were also encouraging, with a major
swing away from the misstatement approach of the Memorandum, toward story
scenarios emphasising the negative impact on others of lying, as endorsed in the ABE.
However, a minority of ABE interviews still persisted in using the misstatement
approach, which could have a negative impact on the perceived credibility of the
child’s testimony (Westcott & Kynan, 2006).
In contrast to earlier reports (Davies et al., 1995; Westcott & Kynan, 2006), the
eliciting of free narrative in a manner compatible with legal and guidance
requirements was generally well achieved in both the Memorandum and ABE
samples. There were, however, two glaring mistakes-raising the allegation directly
with the child and citing the allegation of another child-which might have resulted in
the interview being withdrawn at trial. Where the child did not spontaneously mention
the source of concern at interview, effective methods included initiating discussion of
particular family or neighbourhood groups the child knew or where this was
unsuccessful, asking the child which individuals within the given group the child
liked or disliked and their reasons for this. While mentioning an earlier statement
made by the child is permissible under the guidance, there is a concern that this will
be represented at trial as the child recalling their earlier allegation, rather than their
initial memory of the events.
12
When the invitation for free narrative was delivered, most children responded
positively. The only failures occurred among the youngest children. Recent research
suggests that while some children of this age are developmentally capable of extended
free narrative, many are not and give more information in response to specific but
non-leading questions (Hershkowitz et al., 2012). Where children did respond
positively, the amount of information spontaneously volunteered varied greatly in
both the Memorandum and ABE interviews. Given the weight attached by the
guidance and the courts to free narrative, further research should examine what
aspects of the interview, apart from the age of the child, predict the amount of free
narrative volunteered.
Despite the recommendation in the Memorandum and even more emphatically in the
ABE, few open questions were asked by interviewers in the questioning phase. This
failure to use invitational prompts had also been reported by Davies et al. (1995) and
Sternberg et al. (2001). There was no significant rise in the proportion of open
questions from the MOGP to the ABE interviews. Instead, this phase was dominated
by specific and closed questions, consistent with earlier published analyses (Davies et
al., 1995; Lamb et al., 2009; Sternberg et al., 2001; Westcott & Kynan, 2006).
However, leading questions formed a gratifyingly small proportion of the total
questionings posed.
Turning to closure, this phase was adjudged to be incompletely conducted in over half
of both the Memorandum and ABE interviews. It is possible that some of the closure
components may have been completed off camera (Westcott and Kynan, 2006).
However, the current findings do replicate earlier research in suggesting this phase is
less effectively achieved in investigative interviewing (Davies et al., 2005; Westcott &
Kynan, 2006). The absence of a closure component has implications for the perceived
13
credibility of the child witness, their future well-being and a lost opportunity to
identify gaps and clarify inconsistencies (Westcott & Kynan, 2006).
In summary, while the successive versions of the ABE appear to have improved some
aspects of investigative intervening, other shortcomings are a source of continuing
concern. Short-term training programmes appear to have little demonstrable impact
on interviewer behaviour: even when interviewers can articulate how they should
conduct an interview, research suggests they fail to put this knowledge into practice
(Aldridge & Cameron, 1999). The reasons for this are still unclear but deserve further
research. What seems to be required is longer-term support and training through
continuing expert supervision and constructive feedback on performance (Aldridge &
Wood, 2000; Davies et al., 1998; Powell, 2008).
This research complements earlier studies in demonstrating the continuing gulf
between the recommendations of the existing guidance and the actual performance of
interviewers, a gulf which will be raised at court whenever a recorded interview forms
a central feature in family or criminal proceedings (Davis et al., 1999). The existing
study cannot pretend to be anything other than indicative: it employs a small sample
of the several thousands of such interviews with children conducted each year (Her
Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2012). Additionally, the sample is not a crosssection of interviews, but rather, a minority which were actually used in the civil
courts. The significance of this unique feature of this study is also difficult to
interpret: these interviews could be considerably better or even worse quality than
average, in that the defence may have raised issues over their conduct. The study
necessarily used anonymised transcripts and readily quantifiable indices. It cannot
identify more elusive factors which make for a successful interview, including non-
14
verbal content-the behaviour of interviewer and child- and the impact this may have
on the quality of evidence elicited.
These limitations highlight the need for systematic research that investigates the
implementation of the recommended ABE guidelines and the associated training
needs. This should ensure that child witnesses are supported and interviewed in the
most appropriate manner by skilled interviewers, increasing well-being for the child,
enabling them to provide their best evidence, and ensuring that the ends of justice are
met.
15
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