Codebook
The codebook should be applied in accordance with Coding Rules (see Chapter 4).
1 Intervewiewer Prompts
Clarification-/confirmation-seeking prompts (see Note 5.2), will not be coded unless otherwise specified.
1.1 Other Prompts
1.2 Topic Prompts
- C
-
Context: prompts requesting background/descriptive information that is not specific to an episode of abuse or about the generic abuse script (see Note 5.1)
Suspect: facts about the suspect (name, age, occupation, height, skin colour)
People: facts about any other relevant people
Location: facts about locations (e.g., layout of house, child’s address at the time)
Time: temporally relevant facts (e.g., what classroom/term the child was in at the time)
Contact: how the child and suspect came to know each other, how often child and suspect meet
Body: sexual body part knowledge
(BUT note that these details can be episodic if the interviewer is attempting to particularise a specific occurrence; e.g., “what year were you in the time it happened in the back garden?”).
- RFI
-
‘Request for information’: prompts requesting specific episodic remembered details surrounding abusive acts
Suspect: physical description (not usually relevant for known suspects like family members, teachers)
People: questions about the presence of any other people
Location: to establish presence in a place
Clothes
Words: gist of conversations
Object
Time: temporal details surrounding the abuse
Disclosure: details about prior disclosures of the abuse (including disclosure time, circumstances, recipients, potential discussions of the event, and reactions to disclosure by both the child and recipients)
Action: questions about actions that occurred (e.g., “What did he do?”)
Reason: questions about reasons, causes, or explanations (e.g., “What made him say that?”, “How did you know that?”)
- ACT
-
Details that are central to, and delineate the structure of, the abusive act (e.g., nature, invasiveness).
- Action: seeking details explaining the overall actions that happened during the abuse (e.g., “What did he do?”)
- Duration: duration of abusive act
- Location: to establish where the abuse happened
- Spatial: where people are positioned in relation to the environment where the abuse happened
- Time: prompts used to establish/narrow down the timeframe of abuse (time of day/month/year)
- Reason: questions about reasons, causes, or explanations.
- Body: movement and positioning of victim/suspect body parts; clothing placement and removal (establishing whether skin-to-skin contact occurred)
- Subjective: victim’s thoughts and emotions
- Sensation: victim’s physical sensations (pain)
- Perspective: what the victim could see or hear, suspect’s facial expression
- Object: movement and position of objects used by suspect
- Injury: injuries resulting from the abusive act
- Words: gist of conversations during abuse, tone of suspect’s words
1.3 Repeated Abuse Prompts
Interviewer prompts to focus on eliciting episodic detail about a particular occurrence:
Using temporal terms (e.g., first, last, next)
Using a label previously provided by the child.
Using the terms “another time,” “other time,” “different time”, “one time,” “a time,” “any time.”
Using the term “remember best.”
Using the term “that time” in reference to the label/occurrence raised by the child.
Using terms that suggest episodic details “did it ever happen on a birthday”
Interviewer prompts to determine whether >1 event occurred:
Asking whether a previously mentioned abusive act occurred on one or more occasions.
Asking whether previously mentioned abusive acts occurred on the same or different occasions.
Asking how many times the abuse occurred.
Asking whether an occurrence of abuse ever occurred before/since the described occasion.
Asking whether the described occasion was the only time it occurred.
Interviewer prompts about similarities/differences among events, including:
asking about differences across events (e.g., did anything different happen on that time?)
asking whether a specific act or detail was the same or different across events
asking about where in the series of occurrences a previously mentioned detail occurred
1.4 Event Markers
- Event
-
This code applies to the first in a series of relevant interviewer prompts to which the child responds with forensically relevant details.
Unknown: use when the interviewer uses past tense when the interviewer and child have not explicitly established that there are multiple offences, even if the child uses generic language in their responses.
Ambiguous: use when the interviewer’s prompts use generic language (e.g., qualifiers like “usually”, timeless present tense) when the interviewer and child have not explicitly established that there are multiple offences.
1,2,3… (event number): use when the interviewer is asking about a particular occurrence. The number corresponds to the order in which the event is raised during the interview (not related to the labels used, e.g., first time).
Generic: use when the interviewer is seeking to elicit information about generalities/commonalities across occurrences (e.g., what usually happens)
- Also use this code when multiple offences have been established, and the interviewer’s prompts are in past tense, but the prompts are not explicitly about a specific time.
Multiple: use when the interviewer is asking about two or more events at the same time
2 Child Responses
Initial disclosure: the earliest point at which the child disclosed an abusive event, irrespective of whether they elaborated upon what happened (“to talk about the rude stuff”, “he touched me down there”)
re1: Disclosure of abuse including episodic labels/details that are differentiated as different occurrences of abuse.
re2: Disclosure that abuse has occurred a certain number of times or “more than once” without specific episodic labels/details.
single: Disclosure of a single episode of abuse
ambiguous: Disclosure of abusive experience that does not fit into any of the categories above
Linguistic cues from the child’s response suggesting they are recalling >1 occurrence of abuse.
Qualifier: indicate that an act may or may not occur in a given instance.
- optional qualifiers: sometimes, usually, maybe, might, or
- Example: “We usually have the first snack on the roof.”
- Example: “Then we go on the bus or our mommy picks us up.”
- conditional qualifiers: if, when, because, whenever
- Example: “Whenever we go to Grandma’s, we have cookies.”
- optional qualifiers: sometimes, usually, maybe, might, or
Tense: describes repeated/routine actions using timeless present tense or habitual markers
- Example: “We order food at a restaurant.”
- Habitual aspect markers: Markers: used to, would, always, every time, each time
- Example: “He used to order food at a restaurant.”
Multiple: A response that contains details from other episodes of abuse besides the particular episode that the interviewer is asking about.
Narrative details (see Note 5.6) provided in response to open questions (see Section 1.1).
1: What happened in the lead-up to the abuse? (Establishes suspect’s intent/knowledge to commit the act(s)).
- This includes: directions from the offender, and taking off clothes etc.This also means obtaining the context or background information.
2: What happened during the abusive act(s)? (Illegal acts of high investigative relevance).
- Everything that happened during the offending
3: What happened after the abuse until no other offending occurred? (Includes what made it stop and what happened after).
No other offending has happened, or there is nothing more to be identified in the event.
Eliciting information about what happened from the point of the offending/transgression until there is a (non-offending) adult present.
Off-track responses are responses that do not provide the information requested by the interviewer’s prompt or do not address the issue raised by the interviewer. These are usually unproductive responses that do not confirm, deny, or provide new forensically relevant information (except for multiple & cue).
Silence: The child’s response is comprised of only filler words (e.g., umm, ahh) or the child does not provide a verbal or gestural response to the question.
- Silent turns and filler-only turns are not coded as off-track responses if the interviewer treats them as incomplete by immediately repeating or clarifying the question (see point 7 in Chapter 4)
Refusal: The child explicitly declines to answer the interviewer’s question, such as by stating, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’ or ‘I won’t answer that.’”
IDK: Responses that express lack of memory, knowledge, or understanding, such as ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I don’t remember,’ ‘I’m not sure,’ or ‘I don’t get what you mean.’ This does not include when the child also elaborates on their response, providing a guess about what the answer might be (e.g., When did that happen?” Child: “I don’t know, but I think it was before Christmas some time, probably around the fall”).
- Minimal responses like “no,” “not really,” or “I don’t think so” should not be coded as off-track if they directly address the interviewer’s question by denying the information raised. The exception is ‘no’ responses to yes/no questions that probe for memory or knowledge (e.g., ‘Do you remember what he was wearing?’)
Sidetrack: A response that is overtly off-topic and non-substantive, such as shifting to an unrelated topic, discussing irrelevant events, or providing irrelevant personal anecdotes.
Question: An uninvited question posed by the child in response to the interviewer’s prompt. This includes questions that divert attention from the topic at hand, such as ‘Why do you need to know that?’ or ‘Can I go now?’ Clarification-seeking questions, rhetorical questions, or questions recounted in dialogue (e.g., ‘Then he said, “What are you doing here?”’) are excluded because they engage with the topic or provide relevant context.
Repeat: A response that repeats information already discussed in the interview without elaborating or adding new details.
2.1 React
SPECIAL (not child response) Interviewer reactions to off-track responses will be coded. The code (adapted from Earhart et al. 2019) should be applied to the interviewer’s subsequent prompt.
Accept: The interviewer accepts the child’s off-track response by either:
Making a supportive or encouraging comment (e.g., “That’s okay,” “Thank you for telling me that”),
Moving on to a different topic or the next logical question, without returning to the original prompt,
Refocusing the conversation on something the child has previously mentioned, without signalling dissatisfaction.
Reject: The interviewer does not accept the off-track response, and instead continues to ask about the same information or makes negative comments about the child’s response, increasing the pressure to provide an answer.
Increases pressure on the child to respond: The interviewer repeats/reframes the question or continues to ask about the same information, ignoring the child’s off-track response.
Interviewer: “Has it happened many times?”
Child: “I don’t know.”
Interviewer: “How many times has it happened?”
The interviewer’s subsequent prompt signals to the child that they have not answered the question and that their response was not legitimate.
Comments that signal dissatisfaction with the child’s off-track response
Additionally, code the interviewer’s subsequent prompt in relation to the original eliciting question as:
same: same question type category
risk: riskier question type category (higher number)
safe: safer question type category (lower number)
If more than one category applies, use the higher numbered category.
| Type | Explanation | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Invitation | Free recall questions which encouraged the child to freely recall any aspect of the event(s) and minimal encouragers that included very little information but prompted the child to continue. | ‘Tell me everything that happened’ ‘Uhuh’ Echoing the child’s words |
| 2. Directive | Free recall questions on a cued topic, including wh- questions (e.g. what, where, when, who, why). | ‘Where did that happen?’ |
| 3. Option-posing | All questions that required a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer (including “can you” questions) and forced choice questions which include answers for the child to choose between. | ‘Did you hit your head or your knee?’ |
| 4. Multiple | Single utterances in which the interviewer asked more than one question, and utterances in which the interviewer summarised what the child had said previously, either with or without including a direct question (children often respond to these summaries as if they have been asked to confirm the summary; see Note 5.2). | ‘Did you see the man? What did he look like? Where was he?’ |
| 5. Suggestive | Questions that introduce information the child has not mentioned previously or that imply a desired response. The question may also include other suggestive techniques, such as mentioning what the interviewer has heard from other sources. | Your mum told me your brother hurt you, what do you remember about that?’ |
| 6. Unknown | Questions that were not clearly transcribed, parts of the question were missing, or questions which were unfinished, either due to the child interrupting or the interviewer changing their question. | ‘When (unclear) the man?’ |
3 Other Codes
These codes should be applied to the first relevant line in the interview.
Closure
- When the interviewer either asks “are there any other times X…” (or similar) and the child says no and no further occurrences arise, or when the interviewer begins procedural duties at the end of the interview (e.g., was everything you told me today the truth?).
Break
- Suspension in transcript (break in the recording)
Indistinct
Response/prompt is inaudible/indistinct (as noted in the transcription) and cannot be inferred based on context
- Includes issues like fault in recording or inaudible segments.
Interruption
A situation that causes a deviation from the substantive phase of the interview while the recording continues.
Includes situations where the interviewer proposes a break, then continues with the interview anyway.
4 Coding Rules
Codes should be applied under 3 columns. Column 1: Open Questions & Topic Shifts; Column 2: Event Shifts and Repeated Abuse Prompts; Column 3: Child Responses & Other Codes.
Codes are not mutually exclusive, more than one code can be applied at each turn (use commas to separate them when applicable).
If multiple sub-categories of the same code apply to a single turn, use the syntax:
code>sub-category1:sub-category2:...(e.g.,cue>conditional:multiple,story>1:2). The order of the sub-categories should match the order in which they appear in the turn.If the interviewer repeats a prompt when the child does not respond (i.e., filler word or silence), or in order to clarify, only code the final prompt.
Q. All right. So I just want to work out before we go into the other bits, when you say, “my thingy”, what do you mean by “my thingy”?
A. Um - -
Q. What’s another word that you have for your thingy?
- Coding ends when the interviewer either asks “are there any other times X…” (or similar) and the child says no and no further occurrences arise, or when the interviewer begins procedural duties at the end of the interview (e.g., was everything you told me today the truth?). If the interviewer returns to questioning about the abuse, continue coding.