NCJ Number
139902
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 16 Issue: 6 Dated: (December 1992) Pages: 663-676
Date Published
1992
Length
14 pages
Annotation
The Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) technique was tested with 114 young adult, undergraduate students to determine whether it is as useful with adults as it is with children in differentiating truth from falsehood in interviews.
Abstract
The research used 14 of the 19 CBCA criteria in a two by two design. The students participated as a requirement for an introductory psychology course. The students estimated the truthfulness of the statements of 12 adults. Six of the statements were true, while the other six described an invented traumatic personal experience. The participants viewed a videotape or read a written transcript; half were briefly trained in CBCA and half received no training. Results revealed that the trained participants who saw videotapes performed significantly better than chance and were significantly more accurate than the trained and untrained participants who read transcripts and the untrained participants who viewed videotapes. For the trained participants, 10 of the 14 CBCA criteria yielded significant differences in the predicted direction, when evaluations of truthful statements were compared with those of invented statements. Findings provide support for the validity of the CBCA technique for detecting the truthfulness of statements and suggested that its usefulness may extend beyond the evaluation of the statements of children. Tables, figure, and 25 references