Testing the Effects of Different Rapport-Building Techniques on Adolescents’ Disclosures

• In Event: Improving Eyewitness Reporting: Novel Approaches Across Development

Abstract

Adolescents comprise a vulnerable population of victims to crimes. Yet little research has addressed their disclosure tendencies, especially developmental processes that may impede some of those disclosures. Because adolescence increase in risk-taking behaviors and are exposed to others who engage in risky behaviors, they may well be questioned legally about negative experiences. Adolescents’ strong allegiance to peers (whose behaviors may be of interest) and growing feelings of autonomy about their actions (Braams et al., 2015) may decrease their willingness to tell. In order to intervene when harm has occurred, it is imperative to ascertain how best to elicit clear and detailed disclosures from them. Strategies that improve reporting in other age groups (e.g., children and adults), such as rapport building, have not been adequately tested with adolescents. In the present study, we tested whether rapport-building techniques, modified from those used with children and adults to address motivational reasons why adolescents are likely reluctant, enhances the amount of detail adolescents provide about prior experiences.

Adolescent participants (N=120, 14-19-years-old, M=16.45; 66% female, 29% male, 5% other) completed an online questionnaire indicating significant events (e.g., big argument with a family member) they experienced in past year. Approximately one week later, they completed an online zoom interview. Interviews began with one of three rapport-building instructions: standard, open-ended, or enhanced, varied during an initial “get to know you” phase. The standard conditioned consisted of closed-ended questions (e.g., do you have any pets?). The open condition consisted of open-ended questions (e.g., what sort of pet would you like?). The enhanced condition paired open-ended question with elaboration encouragements and interviewer self-disclosures. Participants were then asked to describe an experienced event from the pre-questionnaire.

We divided participants into three age groups: ages 14-15 (n=39, m=14.38), 16-17 (n=40, m=16.45) 18-19 (n=41, m=18.41) equally distributed across rapport-building conditions (the age groups correspond to legal cut-offs for different types of crimes). Significant variability emerged in the amount of detail adolescents provided about prior experiences (M=401, SD=561 words), with three participants providing extremely lengthy narratives (these were > 3 SD above the mean (>2,502) and were excluded). A 3 (rapport condition) x 3 (age) ANOVA predicting the length of participants’ narratives revealed a significant main effect of rapport F(2, 114) = 4.319, p = .016. Post-hoc Tukey test revealed that participants in the enhanced rapport condition (M=381, SD=245) provided significantly longer narratives than those in the standard condition (M=246, SD= 172) (p=.018). Participants in the open condition (M=349, SD=229) fell in the middle and did not significantly differ from the other two groups. The age effect, surprisingly, was nonsignificant.

These results preliminary suggest that mutual disclosure by an interviewer may be especially beneficial for eliciting more complete reports from adolescents, possibly because adolescents feel like autonomous partners when this occurs in the interaction. Subsequent analyses will focus on the content of what adolescents report as well as their perceptions of the interviewer to evaluate potential reasons for the increases in reporting.

Authors

• Emma Simpson, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Rachel E. Dianiska

• Jodi A Quas, University of California, Irvine