Finnila-Tuohimaa, K., Santtila, P., Sainio, M., Niemi, P., & Sandnabba, K. (2009). Expert judgment in cases of alleged child sexual abuse: Clinicians' sensitivity to suggestive influences, pre-existing beliefs and base rate estimates. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50, 129-142.
Recent research has focused on the investigation processes of child sexual abuse cases. It has been shown that suggestive interviewing techniques, such as leading questions, stereotype inductions and emotional tones, can distort the children's account, thus putting into question the children's testimony in court. The present study was undertaken to examine the factors influencing expert judgement in child sexual abuse cases, as well as the clinician's awareness of the effect of suggestive interviewing techniques. Participants each read a case of father-daughter incest. However, subsequent case materials varied by the inclusion of interview transcripts and the use of suggestive interviewing techniques; overall, there were 16 different combinations of case materials. Participants then rated the case's credibility on various dimensions (e.g. case ought to be prosecuted; suspected perpetrator ought to be convicted, etc.). Participants reported on their clinical background, and past experience with child sexual abuse cases; they also completed scales to assess attitudes and beliefs towards child sexual abuse victims and the criminal justice system, as well as knowledge on incest's prevalence rate.
A total of 320 child social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists in Finland participated to this study. Results showed that (1) the presence of leading questions in the child interview's transcript decreased the estimated credibility of the case from 78% to 63%, but none of the other suggestive techniques had any effect on the assessment made by the clinicians; (2) surprisingly, the assessment of credibility was not affected by the absence or presence of the transcripts or the number of suggestive techniques used by the interviewer; (3) the clinicians' clinical background and experience with child sexual abuse cases had no strong relationship with the assessment made; (4) pro-victim and anti-criminal justice system attitudes and beliefs positively influenced the assessment made of the case's credibility, even after controlling for number of suggestive techniques (Pro-victim beliefs accounted for nearly one tenth of the variance of credibility, while Anti-criminal justice beliefs accounted for nearly one twentieth of the variance of credibility); (5) participants' estimates of the incest prevalence rate had no relationship with their judgments. Overall, this study showed that attitudes and beliefs influence how clinicians perceive the credibility of a child sexual abuse case, while the presence of suggestive interviewing techniques in transcripts, as well as the clinicians' clinical background, experience with abuse cases and knowledge on incest have little impact on their judgment. The authors conclude that results are worrisome as clinicians do not seem to be knowledgeable on and to make use of recent evidence showing the negative influence of suggestive interviewing techniques with child sexual abuse victims.
The study addressed an important clinical issue, which is expert judgement of clinicians on child sexual abuse investigations. The sample size was reasonable considering the research questions and the data analysis strategies (between-subjects factorial design). Its major limitation is related to the use of case scenarios to assess the clinicians' judgement. Although cases were created to be as realistic as possible (a real case was used as the basis of all scenarios), clinicians were not asked to provide their judgement in real-life settings. It is therefore difficult to know if results are generalizable to real-case situations for which clinicians have access to more on-hand and in-depth information. In addition, the basis of all cases involved a 6-year-old girl victim and her father as the suspected perpetrator. Results might have differed if cases had involved victims of different age groups and genders and perpetrators of different relationships with the alleged victim. The study was conducted in Finland and the results may not be transferable to other countries since child sexual abuse investigation training might differ. The assessment of the factors that impact clinicians' judgement in real-life situations that involve different types of child sexual abuse cases should be considered in future research across countries.