Evaluation of a police training programme designed to enhance open-ended questions with adult witnesses

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Zekiroski, H
Powell, MB
Brubacher, SP
Curtis, P
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2024
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Abstract

The current study evaluated a new training programme developed for generalist police who interview adults. It was designed to enhance officers’ use of open-ended questions with adult witnesses. The programme included all key training activities that had been used in successful earlier training evaluation studies related to the interviewing of child complainants of abuse. A total of 90 officers (recruits, n = 26; frontline, n = 37; and investigators, n = 27), completed the course over 6–12 weeks and their standardised mock interviews were analysed for open-ended question usage as well as auxiliary behaviours designed to support a narrative. Interviewer performance increased over time from baselines of 6–18% open-ended questions to 70–76% following the programme. Although there was a drop in performance at least 6 months after the training ceased (with no intervening follow-up sessions) (M = 9.02, SD = 3.07), performance was still significantly better than baseline, and the improvements in open-ended question usage were associated with improvement in broader interviewer behaviours known to enhance narrative detail such as the use of minimal encouragers. The practical implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

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International Journal of Police Science and Management

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© The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advance online version.

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Specialist studies in education

Police administration, procedures and practice

Criminology

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Zekiroski, H; Powell, MB; Brubacher, SP; Curtis, P, Evaluation of a police training programme designed to enhance open-ended questions with adult witnesses, International Journal of Police Science and Management, 2024

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