The Enhanced Cognitive Interview (CI) is a widely studied method to gather informative and accurate testimonies. Nevertheless, witnesses still commit errors and it can be very valuable to determine which statements are more likely to be accurate or inaccurate. This study examined whether qualitative confidence judgments could be used to evaluate report accuracy in a time-saving manner. Forty-four participants watched a mock robbery video and were interviewed 48 h later with a revised CI. Participants’ recall was categorized as follows: (1) evaluated with very high confidence (certainties), (2) recalled with low-confidence utterances (uncertainties), or (3) recalled with no confidence markers (regular recall). Certainties were more accurate than uncertainties and regular recall. Uncertainties were less accurate than regular recall; thus, its exclusion raised participants’ report accuracy. Witnesses were capable of qualitatively distinguishing between highly reliable information, fairly reliable information, and less reliable information in a time-saving way. Such a distinction can be important for investigative professionals who do not know what happened during the crime and may want to estimate which information is more likely to be correct.

The research base concerning interviews with suspects remains to be comprehensively developed. For example, the extant literature provides differing views regarding how best to undertake the important interview task of disclosing evidence. In the current study, using a self-report questionnaire, 224 investigators based in England and Wales were asked as to their own preferred methods. Most respondents advocated a gradual method of disclosing evidence, stating that this approach would better reveal inconsistencies and obtain a complete version of events (similar to the reasoning of those who preferred disclosing evidence later). Those who advocated revealing evidence early stated this approach would more likely elicit confessions. Several respondents would not commit to one single method, arguing that their chosen strategy was contextually dependent. The study’s findings suggest that it remains arguable as to whether there is one best approach to evidence disclosure and/or whether particular circumstances should influence interviewing strategies.

Despite many years of empirical research focusing on investigative interviewing and detecting deception, very little research attention has been paid to the various types of evidence which feature in police interviews with suspects. In particular, the use of forensic evidence in the context of police interviews has not been previously considered, although in recent years the availability of various types of forensic analyses has dramatically increased. In the current study 398 experienced police interviewers from various countries completed a questionnaire about their experience of using various types of forensic evidence in interviews with suspects, as well as their perceptions regarding the strength of various sources of forensic information and how this may affect their interviewing strategy. The results indicated that although the participants have forensic evidence available in a large proportion of their interviews with suspects, the vast majority of police interviewers have received no training about how to interpret or use such forensic information. However, the perceived strength of forensic evidence was reported by some participants to affect their interview strategy and specifically the timing of the disclosure of such evidence during an interview. These findings are discussed with reference to police training and interview techniques, and suggestions for further research are offered.

This research focuses exclusively on real-life taped interviews with serious crime suspects and examines the strategies used and types of questions asked by police, and suspects’ responses to these. The information source was audio-tape-recorded interviews with 56 suspects. These recordings were obtained from 11 police services across England and Wales and were analysed using a specially designed coding frame. It was found that interviewers employed a range of strategies with presentation of evidence and challenge the most frequently observed. Closed questions were by far the most frequently used, and open questions, although less frequent, were found to occur more during the opening phases of the interviews. The frequency of ineffective question types (e.g. negative, repetitive, multiple) was low. A number of significant associations were observed between interviewer strategies and suspect responses. Rapport/empathy and open-type questions were associated with an increased likelihood of suspects admitting the offence whilst describing trauma, and negative questions were associated with a decreased likelihood.

Preparation and planning has been argued to be vitally important as to how effectively investigators undertake their interviews with suspects. Yet it has also been found in previous research that investigators admit that they plan only occasionally, often attributing insufficient time as reason for not undertaking the task. Employing a novel research paradigm that utilized theoretical foundations concerning planning, the present study explored empirically 95 South Korean financial crime investigators’ views, using a self-administered questionnaire. Through the use of second generation statistical modelling, an understanding was developed of the relative relationships between various concepts (which had themselves emerged from an established theoretical framework of planning that had been further extended to accommodate the context of the present study) The study found that perceived time pressures actually showed a very low association with interview planning. Rather, investigators self-belief as to their own capability alongside workplace culture were each found to have stronger associations with investigators’ intentions to plan for their interviews. As such, we argue that there should be more focus on improving occupational culture relating to interview planning, while developing training programs that identify, evaluate and enhance investigators’ planning skills. Implications for practice are therefore discussed.

The present study introduces an adaptation of the Griffiths Question Map (GQM; Griffiths & Milne, 2006) which extends the chronological, visual map of question types used in an investigative interview to include child interviewee’s responses (through the addition of the Interview Answer Grid, IAG). Furthermore, it provides a rare evaluation of repeated interviews with children. From a sample of transcripts of Scottish repeated interviews with child victims, two ‘good’ and two ‘poor’ first interviews were chosen based on interviewer question types. First and second investigative interviews of these four children were mapped using the GQM and IAG in order to examine across the two interviews the similarity of interviewer and interviewee behaviours and the consistency and investigative-relevance of information provided. Both ‘good’ and ‘poor’ interviews were found to include practices discouraged by interviewing guidelines, which would not have been identified by examining question proportions alone. Furthermore, ‘good’ first interviews were followed by second interviews which began with poor question types, suggesting a possible impact of confirmation bias. Social support was also assessed and found to be used infrequently, mainly in response to the child being informative rather than pre-emptively by interviewers in an attempt to encourage this. Children were also found to disclose throughout their second interviews, suggesting that rapport-maintenance is vital for single and multiple interviews. The use of the GQM and IAG are encouraged as techniques for determining interview quality.