Two studies examined the immediate and longer-term impact of specialist training on sexual assault investigators’ use of best-practice questions and relationship evidence. Investigators completed mock suspect interviews immediately and 9–12 months following a 4-week specialist course that concentrated on the Whole Story approach to sexual offence investigations. The training had an immediate positive impact on investigators’ use of non-sexual grooming details, and a long-term positive impact on investigators’ use of relationship details. It also increased the use of open questions and decreased the use of specific questions, with performance sustained for open-depth questions and specific yes/no questions. Specialist training can improve investigators’ ability to adopt a narrative interviewing approach and ask about relationship details, yet skill erosion remains an issue that future training programs need to address. Incorporating relationship evidence into investigative interviews in an open-ended manner may be a key strategy for improving understandings about victim-offender dynamics in sexual offence cases, which could have implications for attrition and conviction rates.

两项研究检查了专业培训对性侵犯调查员使用最佳做法问题和关系证据的直接和长期影响。调查人员在为期4周的针对性犯罪调查的全过程方法的专科课程之后，立即和9-12个月完成了对可疑嫌疑人的模拟采访。培训对调查人员使用非性爱修饰细节具有直接的积极影响，对调查人员使用关系细节具有长期的积极影响。它还增加了对开放式问题的使用，并减少了对特定问题的使用，并保持了对开放式深度问题和特定是/否问题的表现。专家培训可以提高调查员采用叙述性访谈方法并询问人际关系细节的能力，然而，技能侵蚀仍然是未来培训计划需要解决的问题。以开放式的方式将关系证据纳入调查性访谈可能是提高对性犯罪案件中对受害者-犯罪人动态的了解的一项关键策略，这可能会影响减员率和定罪率。