Example research essay topic: Open Ended Questions Studies Have Shown - 1,069 words

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Using young children as witnesses in criminal and civil cases has come under the spotlight in recent years due to an increased awareness of child sexual abuse. Children are now allowed to provide testimony in cases dealing with sexual abuse, where there are only two accounts of reality, that of the child's and that of the alleged perpetrator. Herein lies the major problem with allowing young children to testify in a court of law. Numerous studies have shown that there are weaknesses in children's reporting and memory, thus causing great concern in the legal profession. Also, there are questions concerning the use of suggestibility techniques by interviewers that may sway a child's testimony and may even allow children to create events that may not have occurred at all.

Obviously, this is a topic of great concern that has major impacts on the lives of numerous people across the globe and is an issue that we must resolve. There are many concerns to address when discussing this topic and this paper will address several of the issues in order to clarify a few misconceptions. The main issue concerning child testimony and recollection is that of the interviewing process. A consistent finding concerning suggestibility is that young children are more vulnerable to suggestive techniques than older children. As seen in Goodwin's suggestibility survey (which compared three to four year olds versus seven year olds), younger children were found to be more suggestible than older children. This is of great concern because most sexual abuse occurs among preschoolers.

A major problem during interviewers is that interviewers develop interviewers bias. Interviewers bias occurs when they hold preset ideas about events that may or may not have occurred. Professionals then seek confirmatory evidence instead of asking children open-ended questions. These interviewers do not ask questions that may dis confirm there preset beliefs, they simply ask very specific questions repeatedly in order to catch a defendant. Stereotype inducement is another tool used when interviewing children. Interviewers who use this strategy usually associate unfavorable characteristics to a suspect while interviewing a child.

Children may be told that the person is bad or that he / she does bad things in order to symbolically link the suspect to stereotypical negative behaviors. Some interviewers even threaten or bribe children in order to obtain desired information about a suspect or event. For example, some children have been told that if they disclose desired information that they will be able to see there parents or guardians sooner than if they do not answer correctly. In other instances, children have been given police badges and were told that they were helpers in an investigation and needed to tell the interviewer the information they were requesting. Another type of interview bias that is seen in some interviews is the use of anatomically detailed dolls.

These dolls are given to children and then they are asked to show the interviewer how they were fondled or touched. Often times, children are asked these specific questions before they even offer any evidence to suggest any abuse had taken place. This often urges children to describe events that never occurred at all simply because interviewers are often intimidating and pressure young children into describing such events. Guided imagery is another technique used during interviews. This strategy is applied when professionals ask children to remember or pretend if an event occurred and then visualize this event.

Often, interviewers ask children to pretend about instances that they believed to happen. Here again children are intimidated and pressured into describing things that may or may not have taken place. There should be special cautions taken when relying on children's testimony. Individuals in the legal system often refer to the child's reliability (accuracy of the child's report) and credibility (the believability that one assigns to a witness's testimony) as true measures of determining a child's testimony. An important question is whether a jury, a judge, a lawyer, a social worker or a therapist can determine whether a child's testimony is accurate or a product of suggestive interviews.

Research using stereotyped induction has shown that all the professionals listed above were severely inaccurate when rating a child's credibility and reliability. Evidence has shown that even trained professionals often times can not tell the difference between an accurate testimonial and a testimony that is the product of suggestive interviews. Despite the numerous issues that suggest that child testimony should no longer be accepted, there are many ways in which these issues can be fixed. It is important to remember that children under specific situations are capable of providing useful information. Numerous studies have shown that when children are asked open-ended questions and nonspecific questions their reports are often more accurate. Another suggestion would require interviewers to interview a child without repeating questions numerous times and only interview the child one or two times.

With repeated questioning comes more room for false details and events to be recalled. Also, if children were interviewed by unbiased, neutral interviewers, they would be less likely to use suggestive techniques and misleading questions. In addition, unbiased, neutral interviewers would be less likely to use bribes or threats when retrieving information from the child. Finally, the most important suggestion to add in handling potential child witnesses is training. Most professionals who interview potential witnesses have little or no training in this line of work. If we have specialization in this field, there would be less suggestive techniques used.

Overall, I believe that child witnesses could be a vital part to a sexual abuse case. We must remember that although younger children do have memory implications, adults also seem to have implications as well. Under the right conditions, child witnesses may be able to provide jurors with important evidence in a case. Yes, children should be allowed to testify in court. No one has greater knowledge about an alleged sexual abuse event more than the child himself. We as adults need to be cautious with these young vulnerable minds and not push our hypothesis of the alleged events onto the children.

If we can control many of the techniques used in the interview process, a child's testimony could be the beginning and the end to a criminal or civil case. The key to controlling these interviewing techniques is training and until we train our professionals who make devastating mistakes with our children, we will always question our children. Bibliography:

Research essay sample on Open Ended Questions Studies Have Shown