Facilitating Maltreated Children's Disclosures

描述(由申请人提供)：促进被虐待儿童的披露虐待儿童是对儿童福祉最严重的威胁之一。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销其指控。到目前为止，很少有科学研究直接和实验地检验克服披露动机障碍的有效程序。鉴于披露受虐待儿童对保护儿童至关重要，必须了解影响这些儿童披露虐待行为意愿的因素及其报告的准确性和完整性。拟议的研究计划将涉及一系列新颖的实验室和现场实验研究，旨在确定有助于披露受虐待儿童的面谈方法，同时将虚假指控降至最低。该项目将针对四个具体目标：1)开发新的准备方法，以便在不增加虚假报告的可能性的情况下，促使被虐待儿童披露；2)确定最大限度地提高被虐待儿童披露的准确性和完整性的问题类型；3)确定准确、完整和可信报告的语言和非语言索引；以及4)在实地访谈中试验测试新访谈方法的有效性。目标1和目标2将涉及实验室实验研究，对象是SES和种族匹配的受虐待和未受虐待儿童，他们经历了上演的事件，以便了解基本事实。采访技巧将会有系统地变化，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分析，以确定真假报告的语言和非语言指标，以及专业人士和非专业人员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希望的方法将用于现场实验，直接测试访谈创新对被社会服务机构确定为潜在受害者的儿童披露虐待行为的影响。这是世界上唯一一个这种性质的研究项目：它结合了实验室和现场的实验研究方法，以了解虐待儿童的披露和不披露。这项研究代表着一个前所未有的机会，可以促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，这些策略优化了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程序，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.