Jodi A. Quas’s research while affiliated with University of California, Irvine and other places

While there has been considerable research on investigative interviews with children over the last three decades, there remains much to learn. The aim of this paper was to identify some of the issues and prospects for future scientific study that most urgently need to be addressed. Across 10 commentaries, leading scholars and practitioners highlight areas where additional research is needed on investigative interview practices with youths. Overarching themes include the need for better understanding of rapport‐building and its impact, as well as greater focus on social‐cultural and developmental factors and the needs of adolescents. There are calls to examine how interviews are occurring in real‐world contexts to better inform best practice recommendations in the field, to find means for ensuring better adherence to best practices among various groups of practitioners, and to understand their importance and impact when not followed, including by those testifying in courts. All reflect the need to better address that recurring challenge of reliably and consistently eliciting accurate and credible information from potentially reluctant young witnesses.

While there has been considerable research on investigative interviews with children over the last three decades, there remains much to learn. The aim of this paper was to identify some of the issues and prospects for future scientific study that most urgently need to be addressed. Across 10 commentaries, leading scholars and practitioners highlight areas where additional research is needed on investigative interview practices with youths. Overarching themes include the need for better understanding of rapport-building and its impact, as well as greater focus on social-cultural and developmental factors and the needs of adolescents. There are calls to examine how interviews are occurring in real world contexts to better inform best practice recommendations in the field, to find means for ensuring better adherence to best practices among various groups of practitioners, and to understand their importance and impact when not followed, including by those testifying in courts. All reflect the need to better address that recurring challenge of reliably and consistently eliciting accurate and credible information from potentially reluctant young witnesses. URGENT ISSUES 3 URGENT ISSUES AND PROSPECTS ON INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEWS WITH CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS While there has been considerable research on investigative interviews with children over the last three decades, there remains much to learn. The aim of this paper was to identify some of the issues and prospects for future scientific study that most urgently need to be addressed. Across 10 commentaries, leading scholars and practitioners highlight areas where additional research is needed on investigative interview practices with youths. Overarching themes include the need for better understanding of rapport-building and its impact, as well as greater focus on social-cultural and developmental factors and the needs of adolescents. There are calls to examine how interviews are occurring in real world contexts to better inform best practice recommendations in the field, to find means for ensuring better adherence to best practices among various groups of practitioners, and to understand their importance and impact when not followed, including by those testifying in courts. All reflect the need to better address that recurring challenge of reliably and consistently eliciting accurate and credible information from potentially reluctant young witnesses.

Although adolescents are at elevated risk of sexual victimisation, very limited research has focused on how best to interview suspected adolescent victims. The current study was conducted to lay the groundwork for the development of best-practice interviewing approaches with adolescents when sexual victimisation is suspected. Expert interviewers with experience and knowledge in interviewing suspected adolescent victims were asked about common challenges they encounter with adolescent interviewees and how they tailor their interviews for this population. The findings indicated that adolescents are often reluctant to disclose, and the strategies the interviewers use to meet the unique needs of adolescents hinge on respecting each adolescent as a relatively autonomous and independent person. Identifying which strategies expert interviewers use is a fruitful starting point for future experimental research that can test and ultimately develop evidence-based practices for this population, which is necessary to help interviewers interact with suspected adolescent victims in ways that align with their psychosocial and cognitive maturity.

Sex trafficking of minors is a significant problem across North America, with sizeable numbers of youth being directly or indirectly manipulated into being exploited or trafficked. Identification of these youth remains difficult, in part because of a lack of knowledge about common characteristics and in part because of victims' reluctance engaging with and trusting law enforcement enough to disclose their experiences. Given that many youth are trafficked during school‐aged years, school settings may represent an ideal location to target prevention and identification efforts, especially by health‐related school professionals, whose training, professional duties, and often positive relationships with youth may make the professionals trustworthy disclosure recipients. Whether such professionals are effective, though, depends on their knowledge of who is at risk for trafficking, characteristics that distinguish trafficking from other forms of harm, and effective questioning approaches to elicit disclosures from victimized youth. To document whether this knowledge exists, we surveyed 361 school‐based professionals concerning their ability to identify trafficking and knowledge of trafficking, adolescent development, and interviewing youth. Although nearly all (97%) school professionals recognized general student risk in the vignettes, only 18% identified that risk as trafficking. Professionals who had prior experience with trafficked youth were more likely to recognize trafficking than those without such experience. Finally, professionals evidenced some general knowledge about the existence of trafficking, adolescent development, and interviewing, but demonstrated more limited knowledge in the most common characteristics of trafficked minors and nuanced aspects of best‐practice questioning approaches. Results highlight important directions for training of school‐based professionals to improve prevention and identification of a highly vulnerable and often overlooked population of victims, namely trafficked minors.

This proof-of- concept study focused on interviewers’ behaviors and perceptions when interacting with a dynamic AI child avatar alleging abuse. Professionals ( N = 68) took part in a virtual reality (VR) study in which they questioned an avatar presented as a child victim of sexual or physical abuse. Of interest was how interviewers questioned the avatar, how productive the child avatar was in response, and how interviewers perceived the VR interaction. Findings suggested alignment between interviewers’ virtual questioning approaches and interviewers’ typical questioning behavior in real-world investigative interviews, with a diverse range of questions used to elicit disclosures from the child avatar. The avatar responded to most question types as children typically do, though more nuanced programming of the avatar’s productivity in response to complex question types is needed. Participants rated the avatar positively and felt comfortable with the VR experience. Results underscored the potential of AI-based interview training as a scalable, standardized alternative to traditional methods.

Adolescents frequently experience and witness violence and crime, yet very little research has been conducted to determine how best to question these witnesses to elicit complete and accurate disclosures. This systematic review integrated scientific research on rapport building with child and adult witnesses with theory and research on adolescent development in order to identify rapport building techniques likely to be effective with suspected adolescent victims and witnesses. Four databases were searched to identify investigations of rapport building in forensic interviewing of adolescents. Despite decades of research of studies including child and adult participants, only one study since 1990 experimentally tested techniques to build rapport with adolescents. Most rapport strategies used with children and adults have yet to be tested with adolescents. Tests of these strategies, along with modifications based on developmental science of adolescence, would provide a roadmap to determining which approaches are most beneficial when questioning adolescent victims and witnesses. There is a clear need for research that tests what strategies are best to use with adolescents. They may be reluctant to disclose information about stressful or traumatic experiences to adults due to both normative developmental processes and the types of events about which they are questioned in legal settings. Rapport building approaches tailored to address adolescents’ motivational needs may be effective in increasing adolescents’ reporting, and additional research testing such approaches will provide much-needed insight to inform the development of evidence-based practices for questioning these youth.

In this special issue, innovative research teams expanded work on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns on child maltreatment by assessing these effects on treatment and service delivery following maltreatment, on the professionals responsible for identification and treatment, and on the systems responsible for oversight and instruction. One theme that emerged across these studies concerned challenges faced by professionals as they attempted to evaluate families and provide service and support. Organizational leadership was crucial in helping these professionals navigate challenges in a positive and productive manner. A second theme concerned remote service delivery. Findings suggested that remote maltreatment assessments, treatment, and court procedures all worked to some degree. Thus, despite the massive social disruption caused by the pandemic and lockdowns, parents, professionals, and systems were able to adapt and address core needs of children and families. In future work, it may be important to consider how these findings and their implications vary depending on the type of maltreatment children experienced. Doing so would allow for more nuanced understanding of the consequences of significant national and global crises on child maltreatment and would enable clearer recommendations regarding how best to protect children and support families during such events.

Though much is known about children’s sexual abuse disclosure, less attention has been directed towards other types of youthful victims, especially those who may be reluctant due to either normative development or victims’ specific experiences. Trafficked youth, particularly those who are adolescent-age, represent one such group. Understanding how suspected youth trafficking victims are questioned by authorities, especially with respect to establishing rapport and trust, is important for informing professionals how to effectively question this unique population of victims to overcome their reluctance. We examined transcripts of interviews conducted by federal interviewers (n = 12,653 question-answer turns across 33 interviews) and police (n = 4,972 question-answer turns across 14 interviews) with trafficked youth between the ages of 12 and 18. Interviews were reliably coded for the length of pre-substantive questioning, provision of instructions and ground rules, and the use of rapport building and supportive strategies. Federal interviewers used pre-substantive instructions and built rapport with potential victims more often than police did. Though infrequently used overall, supportive interviewing strategies were evident more often by federal interviewers than police. Results provide much- needed knowledge about how law enforcement investigators interview and elicit disclosures from vulnerable populations of adolescent victims.