A systematic examination of actor and trainee interviewer behaviour during Joint Investigative Interviewing Training

This study is the first systematic examination of trainee interviewer and actor behaviour during Joint Investigative Interviewing Training (JIIT) simulations across two training sites in Scotland. As expected, interviewers were poor at adhering to best practice interview guidelines in the pre-substantive and closure phases of the interviews. Although invitations were used within the range of best practice, they were not used more often and did not elicit more allegation-related details than directive questions. Critically, actors’ responses to invitations were less informative than their responses to all other question types. Furthermore, large differences were observed between the two training sites in the number of questions asked and amount of information elicited by interviewers. Our results show that 1) trainee interviewers are not utilising simulations to practice all required interviewing skills, 2) adult actors are not reinforcing interviewers’ use of invitations as intended, and 3) trainee interviewers are not being afforded the same opportunities to practice their skills due to variation in resources across Scotland. We recommend improvements to the JIIT programme to address these concerns.