2-097 - Questioning Kids: Improving Children’s Self-Reports in Scientific Research

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Integrative Statement

This panel will address how scientists can use research on developmentally-sensitive investigative interviewing and conversations with children to facilitate methodological decisions that will generate robust and reliable science. Scientists studying children’s memory, narratives, and eyewitness testimony have developed methods that are most likely to elicit accurate, complete, and honest reports from youth. These researchers have established that how questions are phrased, how children are prepared for the task, and the context in which children are questioned, matter profoundly. In this Roundtable, researchers whose work focuses on eliciting information from youth will provide insight into how research in their respective topic areas and fields (developmental psychology, education, criminology) can inform data collection with youth across different domains of developmental science. The panel, moderated by forensic developmental psychologist Dr. Lindsay Malloy, will bring together a diverse group of experts who have knowledge that can be adapted to inform the methodological practices of developmental scientists when it comes to gathering information from youth. The panelists will note some key recommendations and engage in discussion and debate with audience members.

This panel should be of interest to all researchers who interview or otherwise gather self- reports from youth. The panel will address avenues for improving the self-reports of youth, denoting specific methods that can facilitate accurate, honest, and complete data when youth are questioned about their experiences, beliefs, knowledge, emotions, etc. Making intentional and informed methodological decisions in these areas can help ensure that we generate robust and reliable science.

Sub Unit

• Methods, History, Theory

Moderator

• Lindsay C Malloy, University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Panelists

• Jodi Quas, University of California, Irvine

• Robyn Fivush, Emory University

• Deb Vandell, University of California at Irvine

• Stacia Stolzenberg, Arizona State University