Facilitating sensitive disclosures by building rapport: the sensitive topic paradigm*

ABSTRACT

Investigative interviews are critical to both the investigative process and its subsequent outcome. It is not uncommon, however, for interviewees to be reluctant to disclose all that they can remember due to negative feelings (e.g. shame, embarrassment). To overcome such feelings and facilitate detailed disclosures, researchers and practitioners across a variety of professional contexts have advocated for the use of rapport building. There exists little research, however, where rapport building has been experimentally evaluated within an ecologically valid paradigm. Within the current study, participants underwent an interview regarding a topic that we be believed to be inherently uncomfortable to discuss (i.e. details of their self-pleasuring behaviours) and were questioned using either a Rapport or No Rapport approach. Across N = 39 participants, results indicated (1) the outlined paradigm may be an effective method of examining interviewing tactics in an ecologically valid manner and (2) establishing rapport is an effective method of overcoming feelings of discomfort and facilitating disclosures. Practical and theoretical implications, as well as potential next steps are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Victim interview
• rapport
• sensitive topics
• discomfort
• disclosures

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/fxznj/?view_only=73e5e3ea56b34f27aefec88e36a114e3 and https://osf.io/fxznj/?view_only=73e5e3ea56b34f27aefec88e36a114e3

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In our analyses, we relied on both Credible Intervals and Confidence Intervals, which share the same abbreviation (i.e., CI). Therefore, to allow readers to distinguish between the two, we did not italicize the abbreviation for Confidence Intervals.