ISSN : 2093-3843
The present study examined the accuracy with which police officers identified the types of questions asked during investigative interviews with alleged child abuse victims. Factors affecting their accuracy were also explored. One hundred and twenty Korean police officers were asked to classify 50 questions into one of five categories (invitations, facilitators, directives, option-posing and suggestive prompts). The overall accuracy rate was 65.6%; invitations were correctly classified most often (85.5%) whereas suggestive questions were least accurately identified (42.3%). Police officers tended to overestimate their use of invitations by incorrectly identifying directive questions as invitations. Suggestive questions were mistakenly identified as option-posing questions (22.2%), directive questions (15.1%), and even invitations (5.6%). Being trained to use the NICHD Protocol was the only factor significantly predicting higher accuracy.
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