Facilitating Maltreated Children's Disclosures

描述（由申请人提供）：促进受虐待儿童的披露儿童虐待是对儿童福祉的最严重威胁之一。与此同时，相当大比例的受虐待儿童从未披露虐待，以不完整和不令人信服的方式披露，或撤回他们的指控。迄今为止，很少有科学研究直接和实验地检验了克服披露动机障碍的有效程序。鉴于受虐待儿童的披露对保护儿童至关重要，必须了解影响这些儿童披露虐待意愿的因素及其报告的准确性和完整性。拟议的研究项目将涉及一系列新颖的实验室和实地实验研究，旨在确定访谈方法，以促进受虐待儿童的披露，同时最大限度地减少虚假指控。该项目将解决四个具体目标：1)开发新的准备方法，在不增加虚假报告可能性的情况下，促使受虐待儿童披露情况；2)确定问题类型，最大限度地提高受虐待儿童披露的准确性和完整性；3)识别准确、完整和可信报告的语言和非语言指标；4)通过实验检验新型访谈方法在实地访谈中的有效性。目标1和目标2将涉及实验室实验研究，对受虐待和未受虐待的儿童进行实验研究，这些儿童与社会经济地位和种族相匹配，他们经历了阶段性事件，以便了解基本真相。访谈技巧将被系统地改变，以评估这些技巧如何影响儿童的信息披露。接下来，目标3将涉及对儿童行为的计算机化分析，以识别真实和虚假报告的语言和非语言指标，并评估专业人士和非专业人士对儿童可信度的看法。最后，在目标4中，通过实验室实验确定的最有前途的方法将用于现场实验，直接测试访谈创新对社会服务确定为潜在受害者的儿童虐待披露的影响。这是世界上唯一一个具有这种性质的研究项目：它结合了实验室和现场实验研究方法，以了解受虐待儿童的披露和不披露。这项研究代表了一个前所未有的机会，可以推进儿童发展和发展精神病理学的理论，并为最佳实践访谈策略提供关键的见解，从而优化对受虐待儿童的准确和可信的披露。在社会和法律服务中实施这种做法将改善调查虐待行为的过程，从而促进和保护儿童及其家庭。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Facilitating Maltreated Children's Disclosures Child maltreatment is one of the most serious threats to children's well-being. At the same time, substantial percentages of maltreated children never disclose maltreatment, disclose in an incomplete and unconvincing manner, or recant their allegations. As yet, little scientific research has directly and experimentally examined effective procedures for overcoming motivational barriers to disclosure. Given the critical importance of maltreated children's disclosure for the protection of children, it is imperative to understand factors affecting these children's willingness to disclose abuse and the accuracy and completeness of their reports. The proposed program of research will involve a series of novel laboratory and field experimental studies designed to identify interviewing methods that facilitate maltreated children's disclosures while minimizing false allegations. The project will address four specific aims: 1) To develop novel preparatory methods for eliciting disclosures from maltreated children without increasing the likelihood of false reports; 2) to identify question-types that maximize the accuracy and completeness of maltreated children's disclosures; 3) to identify verbal and nonverbal indices of accurate, complete, and credible reports; and 4) to experimentally test the efficacy of novel interviewing methods in field interviews. Aims 1 and 2 will involve laboratory experimental studies with maltreated and non-maltreated children matched for SES and ethnicity who experience staged events so that ground truth is known. Interviewing techniques will be varied systematically to assess the how the techniques affect children's disclosures. Next, Aim 3 will involve computerized analyses of children's behaviors to identify the verbal and nonverbal indices of true and false reports and evaluations of professionals' and lay persons' perceptions of children's credibility. Finally, in Aim 4, the most promising approaches identified via the lab experiments will be employed in a field experiment that directly tests the effects of interviewing innovations on abuse disclosures in children identified as potential victims by social services. This is the only research program of this nature in the world: it combines laboratory and field experimental research methods to understand disclosure and non-disclosure in maltreated children. The research represents an unprecedented opportunity to advance theories of child development and developmental psychopathology and provide critical insight into best practice interview strategies that optimize accurate and credible disclosures in maltreated children. The implementation of such practices in social and legal services will improve the process by which maltreatment is investigated, and thus promote and protect children and their families.