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NICHD Protocol for Android DOWNLOAD

Beta Version 1.3

The most well-known and widely studied interviewer training system is the freely available NICHD Protocol. It has been developed with reference to child development issues, including linguistic capabilities, memory, and suggestibility, forensic needs, interviewer behavior, and the effects of stress and trauma by a team of researchers, interviewers, police officers, and legal professionals. (see Lamb, M.E., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., & Esplin, P.W. (2008). Tell me what happened: Structured investigative interviews of child victims and witnesses. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.)

This is the BETA version of the NICHD Protocol designed for use on large Smart Phones and Tablets.

The electronic version is brought to you by David La Rooy, Fiona Gabbert, and Ian Ferguson with the support of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR).

Please send feedback about this Beta version to david@larooy.net

Installation Notes

A tablet or large smart phone running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or later required.

This beta version is supplied in an .apk installation file which can be installed on Android devices. Please transfer the installation file to your Android device.

To install this beta version, you will need to enable the installation of apps from sources other than the Play store. To do this, go into Android settings -> Security -> Tick “Unknown sources” -> Press OK. You may turn off this setting after installing the Beta application.

Navigate to where you have saved the .apk installation file and open it on your Android device. Click Install when prompted, this will install the app to your device.

The App can be launched through selecting NICHD Protocol from your application list.

The most well-known and widely studied interviewer training system is the freely available NICHD Protocol developed by Lamb and colleagues (2000; 2007; 2008). It has been developed with reference to child development issues, including linguistic capabilities, memory, and suggestibility, forensic needs, interviewer behaviour, and the effects of stress and trauma by a team of researchers, interviewers, police officers, and legal professionals. The purpose of the protocol has been to operationalise the ‘consensus’ approach to interviewing children. It is important to emphasize that the team of researchers directly involved in the development of the NICHD Protocol have drawn from a robust literature focusing on children’s capabilities involving hundreds (if not thousands) of researchers worldwide concerned about issues surrounding interviewing child witnesses. More than a decade of research has shown that effective interviewer training can begin with the proper use of the NICHD Protocol because it helps interviewers (who often are not trained in issues about children memory and communication) to maximize the amount of information obtained using open-ended prompts. The NICHD Protocol requires that fewer focused questions be used and does not advocate the use of anatomical dolls and other risky techniques. The research involved in developing the NICHD Protocol has been described as ‘outstanding’ (Bull, 2010), and the approach to interview training described as the ‘gold standard’ (Brainerd & Reyna, 2005; Herman, 2009). The NICHD Protocol has been designed to ‘dovetail’ into existing interviewing systems and is referred to in numerous formalised interview guidelines throughout the world.

Related Article

La Rooy, D., Brubacher, S. P., Aromäki-Stratos, A., Cyr, M., Hershkowitz, I., Korkman, J., Myklebust, T., Naka, M., Peixoto, C. E., Roberts^j  K. P., Stewart^,H., & Lamb^, M. E. (2015). The NICHD Protocol: A review of an internationally-used evidence-based tool for training child forensic interviewers. Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice. 2, 76–89.

Requests for assessments of forensic interviews are often made by lawyers defending accused individuals in criminal and civil court cases to determine whether or not interviews were conducted fairly. Given what is currently known about the laws of memory and how they apply to child forensic interviewing, combined with the social, linguistic, and emotional factors that are involved, it is not surprising that professionals turn to psychologists to provide these assessments. An expert witness will often be asked to prepare a report for the parties involved that can inform fact-finders of any concerns with the way interviews were conducted, and thus affect the weight that should be placed on the interview as evidence. Sometimes, however, there is heated debate about exactly who should be considered an expert, especially when issues to do with memory and suggestibility are to be considered.

In many jurisdictions Judges themselves decide who should be considered an expert, but there are also professional standards and ethical considerations, about which psychologists should be particularly aware. Some experts are so considered because they are recognized by their peers as scholars in the field. The easiest way to assess this ‘recognition’ is through publications in peer-reviewed journals. The peer-review process functions to improve the quality and coherence of scientific research, and demonstrates that the expert’s reasoning is consistent with that of scholars who have had the opportunity to evaluate their work. Although qualified experts may still have differences of opinion, selecting suitably qualified expert witnesses decreases the chance that there will be ‘battles of the experts’ in court. In reality, many professionals are willing to put themselves forward as memory experts based on their professional experience and training rather than an understanding of the dynamics of memory and scientific research about interviewing children. Thus, disagreements between experts are often better understood with reference to individual training and qualifications. For this reason, whenever experts provide court reports it is advisable to provide up-to-date curricula vitae so that professional qualifications are transparent.