Structured forensic-interview protocols built on open-ended prompts

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For the Court

The field regards structured, open-prompt interviewing as the solved part of the child-testimony problem: across countries and agencies, trained protocol use multiplies free-recall invitations, halves or better the risky question types, and increases what children report — with experimental ground-truth work showing no accuracy penalty. The acknowledged boundaries are the youngest children, where informativeness gains shrink, and implementation, where quality decays without supervision and feedback.

What This Claim Does NOT Say

That a protocol interview guarantees a true account — it raises the reliability of the elicitation process; it cannot certify content.

That statements from non-protocol interviews are inadmissible or false — quality varies; the protocol shifts the distribution, it does not define a legal threshold.

That the protocol eliminates suggestibility risk in preschoolers — informativeness gains are weakest at the youngest ages, where extra care remains necessary.

That reading the protocol suffices — effects were obtained with trained interviewers and decay without feedback; a checklist without training does not reproduce them.

That more details always mean better evidence — the finding is more information at equal accuracy under open prompts, not that volume proves veracity.

Scope — Where It Holds

Applies to investigative interviews of children (roughly ages 3–14) about alleged abuse or witnessed events, conducted by trained interviewers using structured protocols (NICHD Standard and Revised, and closely derived guidelines). Benefits for children's informativeness are weakest for preschoolers; interviewer gains require real training and decay without ongoing feedback and supervision.

Sources & Verification

Seminal

Lamb ME, Orbach Y, Hershkowitz I, Esplin PW, Horowitz D (2007). A structured forensic interview protocol improves the quality and informativeness of investigative interviews with children: A review of research using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol. Child Abuse & Neglect.
Systematic review · alleged child abuse victims in forensic interviews
Controlled studies repeatedly show that interview quality "reliably and dramatically improves" when interviewers use the NICHD Protocol: more free-recall invitations, fewer option-posing and suggestive prompts, and more information elicited by recall — the question types most likely to be accurate. As of the review, no other interviewing technique had been proven similarly effective. The canonical statement of the structured-protocol evidence base.
Bearing on this claim: Canonical program review: protocol use "reliably and dramatically" improves interview quality; no other technique similarly proven.
doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2007.03.021

Supporting

Precedent Bridge

When child witnesses are subjected to coercive or highly suggestive pretrial interview techniques, a pretrial "taint" hearing is required to determine whether their recollections were so distorted that their statements and testimony are unreliable; once the defendant shows "some evidence" of such techniques, the State must prove reliability by clear and convincing evidence.642 A.2d 1372 (N.J. 1994)

Limits & Counter-considerations

Field studies cannot verify the truth of real allegations (hence the analogue evidence carries the accuracy claim, at modest sample size and for staged, non-abusive events); the formal meta-analysis pools only five studies (the replication base is broader); informativeness gains are weakest for preschoolers; and effects depend on genuine training with ongoing feedback — protocol adoption on paper does not produce them. The protocol improves elicitation; it does not adjudicate credibility.