Interviewing Indigenous adults reporting historical child sexual abuse: The effect of question types on eliciting descriptive answers and details

Background: International evidence-based best practice for police interviewers of vulnerable groups, such as Indigenous populations, recommends encouraging interviewees to give a full uninterrupted account, followed by open-ended questions, to optimise memory and avoid contaminating information. However, most research examining the applicability of interview strategies on information gain has been conducted in western cultures.

Objective: There is currently little extant quantitative research on questioning in police interviews with Indigenous complainants. The primary objective of this research was to examine whether international standards for interviewing vulnerable groups for legal purposes are transferable to an Indigenous population.

Participants and Setting: Police interviews with complainants reporting historical childhood sexual abuse [HCSA] as adults in a northern Canadian territory with an Indigenous population (N = 45 interviews) were examined.
Methods: Interviews were coded for types of questions, answers, and investigation-relevant details reported. Frequency distributions were calculated for each dependent variable, and further inferential statistics were conducted using t-test, chi square, and one-way ANOVA analyses, to examine the possible effect of question types on the elicitation of certain answer and detail types.

Results: Results showed a statistically significant difference in the mean number of overall details elicited (d = .29), with questions classed as productive eliciting more details compared to unproductive questions. Specifically, open-ended questions elicited the most details, including both overall details and abuse relevant details.

Conclusions: Although these results should be considered exploratory, the international guidance on interviewing vulnerable groups was found to be applicable to this Indigenous population.