An Examination of the Prevalence of Temporally Leading Questions in Child Witness Interviews
| Author | Martine B. Powell,Belinda L. Guadagno |
| Published date | 01 March 2014 |
| Date | 01 March 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1350/ijps.2014.16.1.324 |
| Subject Matter | Paper |
International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 16 Number 1
Page 16
International Journal of Police
Science and Management,
Vol. 16 No. 1, 2014, pp. 16–25.
DOI: 10.1350/ijps.2014.16.1.324
An examination of the prevalence of temporally
leading questions in child witness interviews
Belinda L. Guadagno‡ and Martine B. Powell†
‡(Corresponding author) School of Psychology, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Hwy,
Burwood, 3125, Victoria, Australia. Tel: +61 3 9244 6106; email: belinda.guadagno@deakin.edu.au
†School of Psychology, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood, 3125, Victoria, Australia
Submitted 28 October 2013, accepted 25 January 2014
Keywords: child witness, children’s memory, investigative interviewing, repeated
events
Belinda Guadagno is a lecturer in psychology
at the Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Mel-
bourne, Australia.
Martine Powell is Professor Forensic Psychol-
ogy at the Faculty of Health, Deakin University,
Melbourne, Australia. Both authors conduct
research primarily in the area of child witness tes-
timony and investigative interviewer training, par-
ticularly children’s memory for repeated events.
AbstrAct
Leading questions are generally defined as those
that raise details not provided by the witness.
Leading questions can raise content details (eg,
actions, objects, persons) or can refer to the time
when details occurred. The latter questions are
referred to as temporally leading. Study 1 com-
pared the incidence of content and temporally
leading questions in field interviews conducted by
police officers when eliciting accounts from children
about repeated, or a single episode of, abuse. Study
2 extended the analysis to use standardised mock
rather than field interviews, where there was a pre-
cise record of what events occurred. In both studies,
temporally leading questions were more frequent
than content-leading questions, but only in situ-
ations in which multiple occurrences of the event
were being discussed. The implications of these
results are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
When allegations of child abuse are reported,
alleged victims are usually interviewed by
police officers or child protection workers
who specialise in child abuse investigations.
The child’s statement during such interviews
is of crucial importance; it informs the inves-
tigative process by unearthing leads for inves-
tigators to explore, and (in many jurisdictions)
electronic recordings of the interview can be
used as the child’s evidence-in-chief if the
matter proceeds to court (Hoyano & Keenan,
2007). The accuracy of children’s statements
about abuse is determined in large part by
the quality of questions asked by the inter-
viewer (Sternberg et al., 1996). The consensus
is that interviewers should ask open-ended
questions (ie, that do not dictate what spe-
cific information needs to be reported), and
leading questions should be avoided. Leading
questions are generally defined as those that
presume certain information, suggest/imply
a particular answer or raise specific details
that have not previously been mentioned by
the child witness (Powell & Snow, 2007).
Rates of interviewers’ use of leading ques-
tions have varied considerably across previous
studies; from as low as 2 per cent to as high
as 59 per cent (Cederborg, Orbach, Stern-
eberg, & Lamb, 2000; Cyr, Dion, McDuff, &
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