The act of eliciting reliable and detailed information from a child about abuse is a complex process that requires highly specialized skills in interviewing. While the outcome of any investigative interview is determined by a wide range of factors (see Ceci, Powell, & Principe, 2002), one of the best predictors of reliable child witness evidence is a good initial investigative interview. The more complete and accurate the initial investigative interview, the more complete and accurate the child’s story during examination. A complete and accurate account, in turn, makes the child’s account in cross-examination less susceptible to distortion.

There is clear international consensus regarding what constitutes a best practice in an investigative interview with a child. The central aim is to obtain an account of the event or situation in the child’s own words, with as little specific prompting as possible from the interviewer (Poole & Lamb, 1998; Wilson & Powell, 2001). Such an account, referred to as a free-narrative account, generally proceeds with the interviewer asking a broad open-ended question (“Tell me everything you can remember about…. Start at the beginning. What was the first thing that happened?”).

The interviewer then uses minimal nonverbal encouragers (head nods, pauses, “Mmmm,” silence, “Uh-Huh”) and further open-ended questions (“Tell me more about that.” “What happened then?” “What else can you remember about…?”) to steer the interviewee to the next point in the story or to gently encourage the interviewee to provide more narrative information.

Once the child has reached the end of their story, the interviewer usually guides them back to specific parts of the narrative and provides them with the opportunity for further recall (“You said Billy touched you. Tell me more about that.”). The importance of these prompts is that they are general. Open-ended questions encourage elaborate responses and allow interviewees the flexibility to choose which aspects of the event they will describe (Powell and Snow, 2007). In contrast, specific questions ask about a specific detail or concept, and can usually be answered in one or two words.