Guidelines to Improve the Quality of Professionals' Contemporaneous Notes of Investigative Interviews

摘要

Introduction Children are crucial witnesses in cases of suspected child abuse. To ensure that children's evidence is both accurate and admissible in court, investigative interviewers need to adhere to best-practice interview guidelines.Such guidelines instruct that children tell their own accounts, at their own pace, with minimal prompting. A 'free narrative account' using non-focused, open-ended questioning is the method recommended in contemporary interview protocols (Powell & Lancaster, 2003; Powell & Snow, 2007).