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Research has repeatedly shown that accusatory questions posed during an investigative interview are indicative of biased beliefs about suspect guilt. Linguistic research has shown that the verbs used in utterances can be indicative of biased beliefs about another person. In the present study we examined question type and the verbs used in question formulation using non-police participants to explore the influence of guilt presumption on interview questions. In Study1 we used the Linguistic Category Model (LCM; Semin and Fiedler European Review of Social Psychology, 2, 1-30, 1991 (See CR33)) and in Study 2, the Question-Answer Paradigm (QAP; Semin et al. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 834-841, 1995 (See CR34)) to analyse verb abstraction and positive/ negative valence of the formulated interview questions. We also explored whether interviewers' guilt presumptions changed over the course of the interview as well as their motivations for creating the questions they chose to ask (Study 2). We found that participants who presumed guilt were more likely to formulate accusatory questions and use a higher verb abstraction with negative valence (Study 1 and 2). Interviewers asked more questions to gather additional information overall; however, the number of questions was negligible for trying to find support for alternative scenarios or to falsify existing guilt beliefs (Study 2). Interviewers who presumed guilt were also less likely to change their views during the interview and were more likely to report using behavioural cues to solidify their guilt presumptions (Study 2). The overall findings are in line with previous research in both guilt presumptive interviewing and linguistically biased language; however, we expanded on previous research by allowing participants to come to their own conclusions regarding guilt, as well as formulating their own questions for the suspect. Finally, we conclude that there are extensive limitations for using the LCM in applied interview settings and these are discussed., Author(s): Nicole M. Adams-Quackenbush [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Aldert Vrij [sup.3] , Robert Horselenberg [sup.2] , Liam P. Satchell [sup.4] , Peter van Koppen [sup.2] [sup.5] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.6374.6, [...]

People interact more readily with someone who they think they have something in common with. We hypothesized that participants would become less reluctant to respond to intimate questions when these questions were administered by an interviewer who possessed an incidental similarity with the participant. Male and female confederates approached male and female passersby respectively for their participation in a survey on sexual behavior in which the questions became increasingly intimate. At the beginning of the survey, the interviewer pointed out (similarity condition) or not (no similarity condition) that he/she shared the same birthday as the participant. It was found that the participants in the similarity condition responded to more questions., Author(s): Nicolas Gueguen[sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Institut de Management de Bretagne-Sud (IMABS), Universite de Bretagne-Sud UFR DSEG, rue de la loi, 56000, Vannes, France Interviewer characteristics or behaviors have previously [...]

This study investigated the effects of a pregroup motivational intervention for domestic abuse perpetrators. Men presenting for treatment at a community domestic violence agency (N = 108) were assigned to receive either a two-session intake using the techniques of motivational interviewing (MI) or a structured intake (SI) control. All participants were then referred to a cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) program in groups homogeneous with respect to intake condition. The motivational intake led to more constructive in-session behavior during the early phase of group CBT, greater compliance with group CBT homework assignments, higher late session therapist ratings of the working alliance, and more help seeking outside of the domestic violence program. No significant effects of intake condition were found on session attendance, self-reports of readiness to change abusive behavior, or client reports of the working alliance. Partner reports of abusive behavior outcomes during the 6 months after group CBT revealed a marginal effect favoring the MI condition on physical assault. The findings suggest that motivational interviewing can increase receptivity to partner violence interventions. Keywords: partner violence; abuse; motivation; change; outcome

A rapidly growing Latino population challenges the U.S. mental health system. Despite a high service need, significant disparities in access to care have resulted in patterns of low utilization and frequent dropout. Furthermore, natural ambivalence as individuals access a traditionally underutilized source of support may further compromise the effective therapeutic engagement of Latinos. Thus, practitioners and researchers seek to identify means by which to enhance service delivery for this historically underserved population. Following the demonstrated efficacy of motivational interviewing with highly ambivalent client populations and drawing on the authors' clinical experiences with monolingual Spanish-speaking Latinos in a community mental health setting, this article describes the application of motivational interviewing principles to 3 Latino cultural values and offers clinical practice recommendations to help create a client-centered and culturally congruent therapeutic milieu. Keywords: Latino mental health, therapeutic alliance, motivational interviewing, cultural values, engagement

Objective: This study compared the effectiveness of two types of instructor feedback (relative to no feedback) on investigative interviewers' ability to adhere to open-ended questions in simulated practice interviews about child abuse. Method: In one condition, feedback was provided at the end of each practice interview. In the other, the instructor stopped the interviewer at various stages during the practice interviews to provide feedback. The relative effect of these conditions was examined by measuring interviewers' performance in a standardized mock interview paradigm immediately prior to, immediately after, and 12 weeks after the practice and feedback sessions. Results: Prior to and 12 weeks after the practice sessions were administered, there was no significant difference in participants' adherence to open-ended questions irrespective of the nature of the feedback, or whether feedback was received. At the immediate post-practice assessment interval, however, the participants who received feedback during the practice interviews performed better (M proportion of open-ended questions = .85, SD = .13) than the other participants (post-interview feedback M = .67, SD =. 18, p < .001; no feedback M = .56, SD =. 16, p < .001). This heightened use of open-ended questions was associated with a greater tendency among the interviewees to provide abuse-related details in response to open-ended questions (M = .91, SD =. 11) compared to the other participants (post-interview feedback M = .77, SD =. 15, p < .05; no feedback M = .69, SD =. 16, p = .001). Conclusions: Different types of feedback can be differentially effective in training child abuse investigators to adhere to open-ended questions. The benefits of any training program, however, are likely to be short-lived without ongoing practice. Practice implications: A single study compared the relative effectiveness of two types of instructor feedback (relative to no feedback) on investigative interviewers' ability to adhere to open-ended questions in simulated practice interviews about child abuse. This research is relevant to trainers of investigative interviewers because there is currently large variability in the type of feedback employed in training programs. This study is one of the first to empirically demonstrate that different types of feedback may be differentially effective in improving the performance of investigative interviewers. Keywords: Investigative interviewing; Training; Child sexual abuse

Researching sensitive topics is critical to understanding women's lives. However, this research often carries the risk of retraumatization and exploitation. This article examines the development of a sensitive-topic interview protocol that sought to minimize harm and to gain reliable and valid data by using principles from feminist methods and theory, and restorative justice. The development of the protocol is examined and its effectiveness is explored in a postinterview survey of family members of capital offenders. The data indicate that the methods minimized harm and that the protocol resulted in a robust understanding of the participants' lived experience from their perspectives. Keywords: feminist methods; qualitative methods; sensitive topics

In a comparison of interview procedures that aimed to assist retrieval strategies in children's event recall, 72 children aged 4-6 years were questioned about a witnessed event. Context reinstatement and brief narrative elaboration (an abbreviated version of K.J. Saywitz and L. Snyder's [1996] procedure) produced similar levels of correct recall, and both elicited more correct recall than did a control condition, with no increase in errors. Combining these procedures did not further improve performance. The superiority of narrative elaboration over the control group was evident in free recall and did not depend on explicit prompting with cue cards. These findings suggest that incorporating brief narrative elaboration training in investigative interviews with children may, like context reinstatement, be a valuable mnemonic aid.

Research presented concerns memory in children and if children recall an event differently or with greater detail when they are interviewed by a computer or by a human. Findings suggests that memory accuracy and detail was consistent in the two different interview conditions, and how this result may challenge the current benefits placed on computer interviewing is addressed.

Studies show that children do not discriminate in reporting daily events whether to an adult supervisor or to a computer-based interview program. The studies used comparisons of children's responses to a computer program, a computer program in the presence of an adult supervisor and a conventional verbal interview.

This study experimentally manipulated various rating strategies to test effects on interdimensional variance, reliability, and validity of interview ratings. Undergraduate research participants (N = 180) rated 60 interview transcripts under 3 experimental conditions that represented different rating strategies. Interdimensional variance was higher, internal consistency reliability was lower, and interrater reliability was higher in the rating condition that gave raters the least opportunity to form and use general impressions of interviewees. Rating strategy had no discernible effects on validity. To interpret these results, the authors argued that the rating strategies used in this study differed in the degree to which they allowed raters to form idiosyncratic general impressions of interviewees. These idiosyncratic halo effects explain why rating strategies that raise internal consistency reliability simultaneously lower interrater reliability.

Women who undertake a one-off interview with a man can feel vulnerable, as they have no prior knowledge of their interviewee against which they can judge whether or not to feel threatened. In particular, a woman interviewer can find it difficult to maintain a rapport with a male interviewee when sex is the main topic of the discussion. It is wise for women interviewers to exercise a level of caution which makes them feel safe, even if both male and female observers regard this as being excessively cautious.

The importance of question-answer paradigm in seeking the information about interpersonal events was explored through a model on how linguistic behavior is involve in formulating questions. Linguistic behavior is shown to mold the answer of a respondent which, in turn, molds the judgments of the interviewers. If the questions are indicators of bias, then unconsidered responding to such questions can have unconfirming results.

The influence of the interaction during an interviewer's request for views on subsequent data showed that there is a link between statements made during the introduction and the differences in data quality and substantive responses. The introduction shows the potential attitude of the respondents.

In Experiment 1, a staged event was carried out that involved a private encounter between an unfamiliar man and 2 children. The results showed that questioning techniques based on principles from cognitive psychology significantly increased the number of correct facts recalled by both 7- to 8-year-olds and 10- to 11-year-olds over that gained with standard interview procedures and without affecting the number of incorrect items generated. These results were replicated in Experiment 2 with a different staged event and with 8- to 9-year-olds and 11- to 12-year-olds. Experiment 2 also assessed the impact of a prior practice cognitive interview, and practice was found to be effective for both age groups. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Many interviewers must handle the competing demands of assessment and recruitment when conducting interviews. Both interviewers and applicants in a college placement setting provided their perceptions of each other and the interview process. The present study explored possible mediators and moderators of the relationship of interviewers' preinterview impressions of applicants to their postinterview impressions of the same applicants, as well as the effects on recruiting success. Consistent with a process model of the interview (Dipboye, 1982), preinterview impressions were positively related to postinterview impressions. Several other predictions were not supported, however, and suggestions are made for modifications in the process model and directions for future research. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

High or low 'openers' (i.e., persons who are more or less adept at eliciting self-disclosures) interviewed partners who themselves differed on the opener dimension to test the hypothesis that interview outcomes depend on both the interviewer's and the interviewee's standing on this attribute. As expected, high-opener interviewers were the more proficient at eliciting self-disclosures only when questioning low-opener interviewees, and socially unskilled, low-opener interviewers were quite successful at inducing high-(but not low-) opener interviewers to talk about themselves. Supplementary data suggested that socially skilled, high-opener interviewees had a salutary influence on low-opener interviewers, relaxing these otherwise tense interrogators, who then took greater interest in their partners, thereby persuading them to self-disclose. A practical implication of these findings is discussed.

This study investigates the effect of gender on responses to questions about sex role orientations. Literature on gender effects in survey interviews, job interviews and counseling studies, and experiments leads to hypotheses that male interviewers will elicit more response effects than female interviewers, especially from females; that female respondents will show desirability effects more than males; and that respondents, especially female respondents, will disclose liberal orientations more to female than to male interviewers. Findings show that male interviewers do not elicit more response effects, especially among females, and there seem to be desirability effects operating instead of conformity effects, especially for female interviewers. Females, and low-power, highly educated males exhibit more liberal responses to female interviewers. This study demonstrates that in areas where interviewer-respondent question content is related to salient dimensions, response effects are observed and constitute potentially damaging sources of error.

Perceived interviewer identity was studied by engaging undergraduate students in an interview where one interviewer deliberately manifested heterosexual traits while the other manifested homosexuality. Participants' attitudes were shown to be more negative around the obviously-heterosexual interviewer than around the obviously-gay one. The students were more negative about homosexuality when interviewed by a perceived heterosexual than a perceived homosexual. Since male participants were more negative about homosexuality, male homosexuality may be more anxiety arousing for male students., Americans report more positive attitudes about African American (Finkel, Guterbock, & Borg, 1991), Mexican American (Reese, Danielson, Shoemaker, Chang, & Hsu, 1986), and feminist (Kane & Macaulay, 1993) issues when [...]

Quantitative and content analyses were performed to test the hypothesis that the lack-of-fit model (Heilman, 1983) could provide the needed theoretical framework for organizational obesity discrimination. A computer morphing program allowed for the same stimulus applicant to be used in both the average-weight and the overweight conditions. Results of the quantitative analysis show that undergraduate participants perceived overweight (vs. average-weight) applicants as having more negative work-related attributes, but did not discriminate against them in the hiring process. A content analysis provided some evidence for the lack-of-fit model (Heilman, 1983) as an explanatory model for obesity discrimination.

The study assesses whether a structured interview can have incremental validity in the prediction of job performance beyond a battery of cognitive ability tests and whether future-oriented (e.g., situational) or past-oriented (e.g., behavior description) questions have higher validity. A 30-item structured interview, with 15 future and 15 past questions, and a battery of nine tests were correlated with job performance in a sample of 70 pulp mill employees. All measures exhibited high variance and high reliability. Uncorrected validities were .50 for the interview and .46 for the tests, and the interview had incremental validity beyond the tests. The validity for past questions (.51 ) was higher than for future questions (.39), but not significantly higher. However, past questions showed incremental validity beyond future questions (but not vice versa), and both question types had incremental validity beyond the tests.

This study assessed whether moderately obese individuals, especially women, would be discriminated against in a mock employment interview. Potential confounding factors were controlled by having 320 Ss rate videotapes of a job interview that used the same professional actors appearing as normal weight or made up to appear overweight by the use of theatrical prostheses. Results suggested that bias against hiring overweight job applicants does exist, especially for female applicants. Bias was most pronounced when applicants were rated by Ss who were satisfied with their bodies and for whom perceptions of their bodies were central to self-concept. The decision not to hire an obese applicant was, however, only partially mediated by personality attributions. Implications and limitations of these results are discussed.

70 female college students volunteered to be interviewed by a female interviewer on a highly intimate topic, sexual behavior. Half of the subjects were randomly assigned to a group interviewed over the telephone and half to a group interviewed in a face-to-face situation. Responses were rated on the basis of two scales, a 5-point Extent of Self-disclosure Scale and a 5-point Impression Scale. One-way analysis of variance suggested that the measures of self-disclosure were reliable and showed convergent validity. Self-disclosure was not influenced by the communication medium. Suggestions for research using different communication situations, different measures of self-disclosure and different intimate topics are given.

We evaluated the importance of interviewer and subject effects on cocaine and marijuana use disclosure in a sample of over 3,000 male juvenile arrestees. Analyses evaluated the viability of Social Attribution and Conditional Social Attribution models of interviewer effects. The viability of alternative models was investigated in the context of comparative analyses excluding and including statistical adjustments for the clustering of responses by interviewers. Interviewer effects were more salient in models predicting marijuana disclosure than in models predicting cocaine disclosure. Logistic regression analyses provided support for Social Attribution and Conditional Social Attribution models of interviewer effects. Models suggested large interviewer cluster effects. Cluster adjustment altered interpretation of effects for both cocaine and marijuana. Subject race/ethnicity effects were salient in models predicting disclosure for both drugs, but were especially large in models predicting cocaine disclosure.

The present studies were designed to test whether people are 'polite' to computers. Among people, an interviewer who directly asks about him- or herself will receive more positive and less varied responses than if the same question is posed by a third party. Two studies were designed to determine if the same phenomenon occurs in human-computer interaction. In the first study (N = 30), participants performed a task with a text-based computer and were then interviewed about the performance of that computer on I of 3 loci: (a) the same computer, (b) a paper-and-pencil questionnaire, or (c) a different (but identical) text-based computer. Consistent with the politeness prediction, same-computer participants evaluated the computer more positively and more homogeneously than did either paper-and-pencil or different-computer participants. Study 2 (N = 30) replicated the results with voice-based computers. Implications for computer-based interviewing are discussed.