Eliciting Information in Official Finnish Asylum Interviews

Previous research has indicated that asylum interviewers--contrary to recommendations--use more closed than open questions to elicit information. In the current study, we investigated how information is elicited in asylum interviews by analyzing question-answer pairs in 105 official Finnish asylum interview transcripts. We developed a new coding framework for analyzing the content and characteristics of the answers and used previously collected data on the questions. As predicted, we found that open questions elicited more new information and new key aspects of the asylum claims than other question types. We further extend on previous research by showing that the free recall phases only elicited half of all key aspects of the claims and that mis-matched answers and difficult or unanswerable questions were alarmingly common. Interviewers would benefit from more training in asking open questions, creating and maintaining rapport, resolving misunderstandings, and increasing the efficacy of the free recall phase.