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The use and efficacy of question type and an attentive interviewing style in adult rape interviews

Webster, William, Oxburgh, Gavin E. and Dando, Coral J. (2020) The use and efficacy of question type and an attentive interviewing style in adult rape interviews. Psychology, Crime & Law. pp. 1-22. ISSN 1477-2744

Item Type: Article

Abstract

Police interviewers find the investigation of sexual crimes ‘technically difficult’ and ‘stressful’ to conduct by having to make sense of very powerful and painful emotions. In addition, such interviews often contain inappropriate as opposed to appropriate questions and interviewers often find it difficult to be ‘attentive’ to the specific needs of victims. Through the analysis of interviews with adult rape victims (N = 25) in England, we wanted to establish whether the ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’ of investigation relevant information (IRI) obtained would be impacted as a function of different question typologies (e.g. appropriate versus inappropriate), and overall interviewer attentiveness. We hypothesised that: (i) more inappropriate questions would be asked compared to appropriate questions; (ii) responses to appropriate questions would contain more items of IRI than responses to inappropriate questions; (iii) attentive interviews would contain more appropriate questions than non-attentive interviews, and; (iv) attentive interviews would contain more IRI than non-attentive interviews. Results found that interviewers asked significantly more appropriate questions that elicited significantly more items of IRI. However, there were no significant differences in the number of appropriate questions asked or the impact on the amount of IRI obtained between interviews as a function of interviewer attentiveness. Implications for practice are discussed.

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More Information

Additional Information: ** From Crossref journal articles via Jisc Publications Router ** History: epub 26-11-2020; issued 26-11-2020.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Pathology and Forensic Medicine, Law, General Psychology
SWORD Depositor: Publication Router
Depositing User: Publication Router

Identifiers

Item ID: 12841
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316x.2020.1849694
ISSN: 1477-2744
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/12841
Official URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/106831...

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for William Webster: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8840-5288
ORCID for Gavin E. Oxburgh: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4830-1673

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 14 Dec 2020 17:01
Last Modified: 05 Sep 2021 02:38

Contributors

Author: William Webster ORCID iD
Author: Gavin E. Oxburgh ORCID iD
Author: Coral J. Dando

University Divisions

Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing > School of Psychology

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