Can Child Forensic Interviewers Accurately Review Their Own Adherence to Best-Practice Techniques?
摘要
Adhering to established best-practice interview techniques is challenging for child forensic interviewers. Previous research has demonstrated improvements in adherence if interviewers receive regular feedback from experts, and similar (albeit reduced) benefits when they receive feedback from peers (that is, other child interviewers). Self-assessment offers another source of feedback for interviewers that is easily accessible with minimal cost to organisations. The current study was the first to explore child interviewers’ ability to self-assess their field interviews. A sample of 56 child interviewers completed a self-assessment form reviewing their own performance in a recent interview. To allow comparisons between self- and peer-assessment, the sample also completed a separate assessment of a fictional peer’s transcript. The self- and peer-assessment transcripts were reviewed by experts in child interviewing; participants’ assessments were compared to the experts’ assessment to determine participants’ accuracy. Participants rated their interviews more harshly than experts; this was particularly true for stronger (rather than weaker) interviewers. Participants did not consider as many best-practice elements in their self-assessments as the experts did, but stronger interviewers provided more accurate qualitative comments than weaker interviewers about the best-practice elements they considered. Unlike their own interviews, participants tended to rate the peer interview as more closely aligning to best-practice than the expert did. Results suggest that self-assessments are completed more critically than peer-assessments and that qualitative self-assessment may be a viable source of feedback for stronger (but not weaker) interviewers.