An official website of the United States government
Users of forced-choice questionnaires (FCQs) to measure personality commonly assume statement parameter invariance across contexts – between Likert and forced-choice (FC) items and between different FC items that share a common statement. In this paper, an empirical study was designed to check these two assumptions for an FCQ assessment measuring interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. We compared parameters of common statements between two Likert forms and two FCQ forms with a block size of two (statement pairs) and among five FCQ pair forms. In three of the five FCQ forms, statements were paired only with a statement they had appeared with in a triplet block. In the other two FCQ forms, statements were paired with statements they had not been paired with in a triplet block. This design allows us to evaluate statement parameter changes due to changes in context. The results do not support the statement parameter invariance assumption between Likert and FC items or the assumption between FC items when recombining statements form new items. However, the assumption between FC items was generally held for pairs formed by dropping a statement from a triplet item. There were some suggestions for sources of context effects, but the analyses were not definitive. Implications of the findings for test practice are discussed.
more »
« less
Police interviewing behaviors and commercially sexually exploited adolescents’ reluctance.
Little is known about the relation between law enforcement interviewing behaviors and commercially sexually exploited children’s (CSEC) reluctance. This study examined the relation between officers’ use of maximization, (references to) expertise, minimization, and support and adolescent CSEC victims’ reluctance in a small sample of police interviews (n = 2,416 question-answer pairs across ten interviews). Twenty-six percent of officers’ utterances contained at least one interviewing tactic. When statements were paired with maximization, they were correlated with more reluctance than when they were not paired with an interviewing tactic. Contrary to predictions, support was also related to greater reluctance. Open-ended (recall) questions and statements were associated with greater reluctance than closed-ended (recognition) questions. The results highlight the importance of understanding the context in which interviewing strategies are employed when assessing the relation between interviewer behavior and interviewee reluctance.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1921250
- PAR ID:
- 10283260
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Psychology public policy and law
- ISSN:
- 1076-8971
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Though much is known about children's sexual abuse disclosure, less attention has been directed towards disclosure in other types of youthful victims, especially those who may be reluctant to tell due to either normative development or victims' specific experiences. Trafficked youth, particularly those who are adolescents, 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 use of rapport building and supportive strategies. Federal interviewers used pre‐substantive instructions and built rapport with potential victims more often than police did. Also, and although 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.more » « less
-
Adolescents tend to be neglected in research examining child sexual abuse (CSA) interviews, yet are often said to be particularly reluctant. This study examined reluctance among 119 10- to 17-year-old females questioned about suspected CSA ( n = 25,942 responses), utilizing a scheme identifying previously overlooked types of reluctance in commercially sexually exploited (CSE) youth. In contrast to the CSE youth in a prior study, in which 26% of responses were reluctant, only 8% of CSA victims’ responses expressed reluctance. Reluctance was unrelated to age, abuse characteristics, and don’t know (IDK) responding. Greater reluctance (but not IDK responding) was related to disclosure of fewer characteristics of abuse. Virtually all youth (93%) had disclosed prior to the interview, in contrast to previous studies examining reluctance among adolescent victims of internet-initiated sexual abuse and CSE. The way in which abuse is discovered may better explain reluctance than the age of the alleged victims.more » « less
-
Employment outcomes for autistic 1 individuals are often poorer relative to their neurotypical (NT) peers, resulting in a greater need for other forms of financial and social support. While a great deal of work has focused on developing interventions for autistic children, relatively less attention has been paid to directly addressing the employment challenges faced by autistic adults. One key impediment to autistic individuals securing employment is the job interview. Autistic individuals often experience anxiety in interview situations, particularly with open-ended questions and unexpected interruptions. They also exhibit atypical gaze patterns that may be perceived as, but not necessarily indicative of, disinterest or inattention. In response, we developed a closed-loop adaptive virtual reality (VR)–based job interview training platform, which we have named Career Interview Readiness in VR (CIRVR). CIRVR is designed to provide an engaging, adaptive, and individualized experience to practice and refine interviewing skills in a less anxiety-inducing virtual context. CIRVR contains a real-time physiology-based stress detection module, as well as a real-time gaze detection module, to permit individualized adaptation. We also present the first prototype of the CIRVR Dashboard, which provides visualizations of data to help autistic individuals as well as potential employers and job coaches make sense of the data gathered from interview sessions. We conducted a feasibility study with 9 autistic and 8 NT individuals to assess the preliminary usability and feasibility of CIRVR. Results showed differences in perceived usability of the system between autistic and NT participants, and higher levels of stress in autistic individuals during interviews. Participants across both groups reported satisfaction with CIRVR and the structure of the interview. These findings and feedback will support future work in improving CIRVR’s features in hopes for it to be a valuable tool to support autistic job candidates as well as their potential employers.more » « less
-
Live video (LV) communication tools (e.g., Zoom) have the potential to provide survey researchers with many of the benefits of in-person interviewing, while also greatly reducing data collection costs, given that interviewers do not need to travel and make in-person visits to sampled households. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of in-person data collection to public health crises, forcing survey researchers to explore remote data collection modes—such as LV interviewing—that seem likely to yield high-quality data without in-person interaction. Given the potential benefits of these technologies, the operational and methodological aspects of video interviewing have started to receive research attention from survey methodologists. Although it is remote, video interviewing still involves respondent–interviewer interaction that introduces the possibility of interviewer effects. No research to date has evaluated this potential threat to the quality of the data collected in video interviews. This research note presents an evaluation of interviewer effects in a recent experimental study of alternative approaches to video interviewing including both LV interviewing and the use of prerecorded videos of the same interviewers asking questions embedded in a web survey (“prerecorded video” interviewing). We find little evidence of significant interviewer effects when using these two approaches, which is a promising result. We also find that when interviewer effects were present, they tended to be slightly larger in the LV approach as would be expected in light of its being an interactive approach. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for future research using video interviewing.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1037/law0000315
