Forensic Interviewing of Children Best Practices Forensic Interview Protocols • Please review the Popular Forensic Interviewing Protocols content page in Canvas. • You should be able to … • describe the general consensus amongst professionals as to what techniques are considered “best practice” • explain the major similarities and differences between the interview protocols • identify challenges/questions/concerns pertaining to certain interviewing techniques Best Practice • There are certain elements of a forensic interview that are considered best practice. These elements are often research based and agreed upon as important to improving the likelihood of obtaining an accurate and complete report from a child. • There are situations where some elements are not included in an interview but the interview would still be considered “good”. For example, if a child comes into the room and tells about being hurt it is okay to allow the child to continue talking. If this happens, it may not be required that the interviewer engage the child in narrative practice. • Interview preparation • Rapport Building - introduction - instructions - truth/lie - narrative practice • Discussion of relevant experiences (i.e., Topic of Concern) - use of open invitations to elicit a free narrative - detail gathering - considering alternate explanations • Closure - respectful end to the conversation Forensic Interview Protocols: Similarities best practice Forensic Interview Protocols: Differences • How and when interview instructions and truth-lie discussions are conducted • How to transition to the topic of concern • Use of anatomical diagrams • Use of anatomical dolls • Certain protocol options (e.g., exploring family relationships, questioning children about other forms of maltreatment) Interview Preparation • Interview preparation - Regardless of what information (if any) is available to interviewers, protocols advise an interviewer to prepare before meeting with a child. - Be sure room is prepared for your interview and you have all materials you might need. 1. Rapport The purpose of rapport building is to establish a working relationship with the child and to provide a foundation for the interview process. Rapport building typically includes the following: • Introduce Self & Setting • Instructions/Ground Rules • Tell the Truth • Narrative Practice/Episodic Memory The Rapport building phase should take approximately 8 minutes. Research shows that interviewers who engage the child as described gather more details in the next phase of the interviewer (i.e., when talking about potentially abusive experiences). Introduction • Self: The interviewer should introduce himself/herself to the child as someone who talks with children. Importantly, the interviewer’s job is to listen and ask questions because they don’t know the child or the child’s ex.

1. Forensic Interviewing of Children
Best Practices
Forensic Interview Protocols
• Please review the Popular Forensic Interviewing Protocols
content page in Canvas.
• You should be able to …
• describe the general consensus amongst professionals
as to what techniques are considered “best practice”
• explain the major similarities and differences between
the interview protocols
• identify challenges/questions/concerns pertaining to
certain interviewing techniques
Best Practice
• There are certain elements of a forensic interview that are
considered best practice. These elements are often
research based and agreed upon as important to
improving the likelihood of obtaining an accurate and
complete report from a child.
• There are situations where some elements are not

2. included in an interview but the interview would still be
considered “good”. For example, if a child comes into the
room and tells about being hurt it is okay to allow the child
to continue talking. If this happens, it may not be required
that the interviewer engage the child in narrative practice.
• Interview preparation
• Rapport Building
- introduction - instructions - truth/lie - narrative practice
• Discussion of relevant experiences (i.e., Topic of Concern)
- use of open invitations to elicit a free narrative - detail
gathering -
considering alternate explanations
• Closure
- respectful end to the conversation
Forensic Interview Protocols:
Similarities
best
practice
Forensic Interview Protocols:
Differences
• How and when interview instructions and truth-lie

3. discussions are conducted
• How to transition to the topic of concern
• Use of anatomical diagrams
• Use of anatomical dolls
• Certain protocol options (e.g., exploring family
relationships, questioning children about other forms of
maltreatment)
Interview Preparation
• Interview preparation
- Regardless of what information (if any) is
available to interviewers, protocols advise an
interviewer to prepare before meeting with a
child.
- Be sure room is prepared for your interview and
you have all materials you might need.
1. Rapport
The purpose of rapport building is to establish a working
relationship with
the child and to provide a foundation for the interview process.
Rapport
building typically includes the following:
• Introduce Self & Setting

4. • Instructions/Ground Rules
• Tell the Truth
• Narrative Practice/Episodic Memory
The Rapport building phase should take approximately 8
minutes.
Research shows that interviewers who engage the child as
described
gather more details in the next phase of the interviewer (i.e.,
when talking
about potentially abusive experiences).
Introduction
• Self: The interviewer should introduce himself/herself
to the child as someone who talks with children.
Importantly, the interviewer’s job is to listen and ask
questions because they don’t know the child or the
child’s experiences.
• Setting: The interviewer should explain certain parts of
the room including that the interviewer is recording the
conversation in case they forget something the child
said. It is also important to mention that only people
with special permission are able to view the tape.
Introduction
NICHD example introduction,

5. textbook appendix p. 431.
Instructions/Ground Rules
The interviewer should explain …
• the child might not know an answer.
• the child might not understand a question.
• the interviewer might make a mistake.
The interviewer can do this by providing
instructions to the child and practice with the
concepts.
“Don’t Know, Don’t Understand,
& That’s Not Right”
NICHD example instructions.
Tell the Truth
• Please review the video posted in Canvas about truth-lie
discussions
• Know that truth-lie discussions are often included BUT young
children may not understand the questions they are asked.
Further, truth-lie discussion do not predict honesty. Children
who are older are better able to differentiate between truths
and lies but are also better liars.

6. • Note: It is important you remember that children can provide
inaccurate information for different reasons. Lying is a concern
but typically is not an interviewers greatest challenge. Also
important to remember is that humans are not very good at
detecting lies.
Tell the Truth
• Please review the video posted in Canvas about truth-lie
discussions
- “It is very important that you only tell me the truth today.
The truth is what really happened.”
- “Do you promise you will tell the truth today?”
- Research shows that asking a child to promise to tell the
truth does predict honesty. Though, it is NOT a filter. In
lab studies, some children still tell lies even after they
promise to tell the truth.
Narrative Practice
• The conversation style of a forensic interview is one
where the child is the informant and the adult is
unknowing. This is not a typical conversational
arrangement for children and so, some children need
practice informing the adult about his/her experience.
• Narrative practice allows for the interviewer and child
to talk about specific experiences he/she has had

7. and the interviewer is unaware. The experiences
talked about in narrative practice should not be
abuse related.
Narrative Practice
• The interviewer should use open prompts to encourage
the child to provide a free narrative (i.e., a description of
the experience in his or her own words).
• The interviewer should encourage the child to focus on a
specific experience versus a general script for events
(e.g., tell me about your soccer game yesterday versus tell
me about what you do at soccer).
• Narrative practice allows: the child to practice being an
informant, the interviewer to practice asking
developmentally appropriate questions, and encourages
rapport
2. Substantive Phase
• Transition to Topic of Concern
- Open invitation to provide a free narrative
- Explore details using developmentally
appropriate questions
- Consider alternate possibilities for a child’s
statement (i.e., test alternate hypotheses)

8. 2. Substantive Phase
The purpose of the substantive phase of the
forensic interview is to provide the child the
opportunity to talk about the experience/s of
interest. Interviewers attempt to gather information
about the alleged/suspected abuse in a way that
promotes accuracy and completeness. The
interviewer should allow the child to describe his or
her experiences in his or her own words. The
interviewer can ask age appropriate questions that
probe for additional details.
Question Types
• Open invitations promote free recall memories
• e.g., tell me what happened
• free recall memory reports are more likely to be
accurate than recognition memory
• free recall memory reports tend to be brief and often
lack the amount of details needed to defend cases in
Court
• interviewers often need to follow up/probe for additional
details using more specific/direct questions
Question Types
• more specific/direct questions vary in helpfulness
• some allow the interviewer to be more focused but still

9. encourage the child to tap into recall (versus recognition
memory).
• e.g., Tell me more about (something the child already
said); Wh- questions that are age appropriate
• Some direct questions limit the amount of details a child is
likely to add into their response
• e.g., option posting questions
Question Types
Note: Standard terminology for question types may
vary but the general concepts are similar
Tentative guide for
age appropriate
question types —
please remember
sentence structure
and context are
also important to
consider
Alternate Hypotheses
• interviewers should consider the plausible and possible
reasons for a child’s statements (e.g., the child may have
been misunderstood, the injury may have been
accidentals, the child is being abused, etc.)
• the interviewer should then collect evidence (e.g.,

10. additional statements from the child, details about the
event in question) that will help them better understand
which explanation is most likely
• Case features will help an interviewer determine how to
explore alternative explanations
Alternate Hypotheses
• decreases the influence of bias
• increases the likelihood of gathering accurate
information
• encourages detail gathering
• improves ability to defend the case in Court
Use of diagrams
• not endorsed by all interviewing protocols
• ChildFirst® is one of the protocols that allows for
the use diagrams
• ChildFirst® encourages the use of diagrams to
establish common language for body parts
• ChildFirst® allows for diagrams to be used before
or after a disclosure of abuse
Research on the use of

11. diagrams
• field studies show more forensically relevant information is
elicited from children but accuracy cannot be determined with
these types of studies (Aldridge et al., 2004; Teoh et al., 2010)
• lab studies show there is an increased risk for false
identifications when compared to asking children about touch
with open questions
• researchers recommend NOT using diagrams to elicit
disclosures of abuse (see Poole & Dickinson, 2011)
• researchers and protocol developers should work together to
better understand the effects of using diagrams with children to
talk about touch events
Use of anatomical dolls
• not endorsed by all protocols
• ChildFirst® is one of the protocols that allows for the
use of dolls but has strict guidelines
• ChildFirst® advises dolls should only be used in age
appropriate ways*
• ChildFirst® only allows for the use of dolls following a
disclosure of abuse when certain elements are
ambiguous (e.g., child doesn’t have the words to
describe an action)
* suggests children should understand the dolls as
representations of the child/other person;
research is still needed to better understand children’s use of

12. dolls as representations
Research on the use of
anatomical dolls
• most research does not support the use of dolls
with children
• research may be needed to consider the use of
dolls as demonstration aids in contexts similar to
their use by ChildFirst®
• dolls should only be used in age appropriate ways*
• may be used before or after a disclosure of abuse
3. Closure
• Transition to Topic of Concern
- Open invitation to provide a free narrative
- Explore details using developmentally
appropriate questions
- Consider alternate possibilities for a child’s
statement (i.e., test alternate hypotheses)