Structured protocols help interviewers follow best practices

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development created a structured guide to use when interviewing children. In a study of 100 children who had allegedly been sexually abused, interviewers who followed the protocol stuck with more open-ended questions and used fewer of the kinds of prompts that tend to lead to less accurate answers.

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: Lamb et al. (2009). Use of a structured investigative protocol enhances the quality of investigative interviews with alleged victims of child sexual abuse in Britain. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 23(4), 449-467. Get the data