ABSTRACT

Police interviewers find the investigation of sexual crimes ‘technically difficult’ and ‘stressful’ to conduct by having to make sense of very powerful and painful emotions. In addition, such interviews often contain inappropriate as opposed to appropriate questions and interviewers often find it difficult to be ‘attentive’ to the specific needs of victims. Through the analysis of interviews with adult rape victims (N = 25) in England, we wanted to establish whether the ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’ of investigation relevant information (IRI) obtained would be impacted as a function of different question typologies (e.g. appropriate versus inappropriate), and overall interviewer attentiveness. We hypothesised that: (i) more inappropriate questions would be asked compared to appropriate questions; (ii) responses to appropriate questions would contain more items of IRI than responses to inappropriate questions; (iii) attentive interviews would contain more appropriate questions than non-attentive interviews, and; (iv) attentive interviews would contain more IRI than non-attentive interviews. Results found that interviewers asked significantly more appropriate questions that elicited significantly more items of IRI. However, there were no significant differences in the number of appropriate questions asked or the impact on the amount of IRI obtained between interviews as a function of interviewer attentiveness. Implications for practice are discussed.

摘要

警方采访人员发现，对性犯罪的调查在技术上“困难重重”且“压力重重”，因为必须理解非常强烈和痛苦的情绪。此外，此类面谈通常包含不适当的问题，而不是适当的问题，面谈者通常发现很难“关注”受害者的具体需求。通过对英格兰成年强奸受害者 ( N  = 25)的访谈分析，我们想确定所获得的调查相关信息 (IRI) 的“数量”和“质量”是否会因不同问题类型（例如适当与不适当），以及面试官的整体注意力. 我们假设：(i)与适当的问题相比，会提出更多不适当的问题；(ii) 对适当问题的回答将包含比对不适当问题的回答更多的 IRI 项目；(iii)专心访谈比非专心访谈包含更合适的问题，并且；(iv)专心访谈比非专心访谈包含更多 IRI 。结果发现面试官提出的问题明显更合适引发更多 IRI 项目的问题。然而，作为面试官注意力的函数，在提出的适当问题的数量或对面试之间获得的 IRI 数量的影响方面没有显着差异。讨论了对实践的影响。