Interviewing Children About Past Events: Evaluating the NICHD Interview Protocol

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

This study, conducted by the NICHD in collaboration with Lancaster University in Lancaster, England, will evaluate the accuracy of information obtained from children using AN ADAPTED VERSION OF NICHD's interview protocol. The NICHD protocol was developed to help forensic interviewers OBTAIN INFORMATION FROM children who may be victims of or witnesses to a crime ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES. This study does not involve forensic interviews, but is DESIGNED TO OBTAIN INFORMATION FROM children ABOUT an event that takes place at their school. The study will examine how children report a brief interaction with an unfamiliar adult, how the memory of the event changes over time, and how the use of different interview techniques can help children give a fuller and more accurate accounts of past experiences. Children 5 and 6 years of age who attend local schools in the Lancaster, England, area may be eligible for this study. Participants will be told that they are going to have their pictures taken and will be escorted by a researcher to a room at the school with another researcher who is posing as a photographer. The "photographer" and the child will put on a costume, such as a pirate's outfit, over their street clothes, helping each other put on pieces of the costume. The photographer will take pictures of the child in the costume. They will each take off the costumes and the child will be told that he or she will receive the photographs at a later time. Another researcher posing as a photographer will come into the room, interrupting the event, and begin to argue with the first photographer about who had booked the equipment. They will resolve the argument and apologize to the child for the interruption. About 6 weeks after the event, the children will be interviewed using the ADAPTED VERSION OF NICHD interview protocol. Half will be interviewed first about the staged event (the photo session), followed by an interview about a fictitious event (e.g., a class visit to the fire station) that could plausibly have happened but did not. The other half of the children will be interviewed first about the fictitious event and then about the staged event. The children will be interviewed according to one of the following three procedures: * The NICHD protocol preceded by a rapport-building phase that includes the rules of the interview and open-ended questions about the child and a recently experienced event * The NICHD protocol preceded by a rapport-building phase that includes the rules of the interview and direct questions about the child and a recently experienced event, or * The NICHD protocol preceded by the rules of the interview and open-ended questions about the child, but no opportunity to practice talking about a recently experienced event. After the interviewer has elicited as much information as is likely to be gained from verbal questions, he or she will present the child with a line drawing of a gender neutral person and ask the child to indicate where the child was touched by the photographer and where the child touched the photographer. Any child who provides a report of the fictitious event will be interviewed in the same way about the fictitious event. After 1 year, the children will be interviewed again in the same manner as the 6-week interview. The interviews will be audio- and videotaped to record the kind of information the children talk about and compare it to what actually happened in the event.

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Last update posted Jul 1, 2017 · Synced Sep 10, 2026

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