NCJ Number
246690
Journal
Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 38 Issue: 2 Dated: February 2014 Pages: 212-216
Date Published
February 2014
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article is a commentary on an article in this same journal issue, in which Sonja Brubacher and David La Roy draw some hypotheses for future research from a case that involved successive forensic interviews of a child victim of repeated sexual abuse over a period of 4 years between the ages of 7 to 11.
Abstract
Although the current commentary notes that the case analyzed provides an opportunity to learn anecdotally about the elicitation and provision of "generic" and "episodic" information in a child forensic interview context, it questions whether, as a rule, interview evaluations based on a single case should be published in scientifically based journals. The commentary argues that the single-case evaluation adds little to the extant body of research, except as a teaching tool that indicates what could have been done differently in this particular case. The commentary also questions making generalizations from single cases, given particulars inherent in one evaluation. In addition, the commentary provides reasons why interpretation of case findings and resulting suggestions for interview best practices may, at times, be questioned. Further, the commentary indicates ethical considerations are an issue. One ethical issue is the need to avoid offending whoever conducted the interviews or whoever provided the interviews to the researchers. Problems of this type are particularly likely in studies that evaluate interviews. 34 references