Meta-analysis on the effects of interviewer supportiveness on the accuracy of children’s reports

Increasingly, children are called upon to participate in decisions that affect their welfare, from providing testimony in court to providing input to public policies. However, many questions remain regarding how to elicit accurate, reliable information from children. A meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the effect of a supportive interviewer on the accuracy of information provided by children (ages 4 to 12). The interviewers asked both neutral and misleading questions in both supportive and non-supportive conditions. Our results suggest that interviewer supportiveness, when provided in a non-suggestive manner, bolsters the reliability of children’s reports, and that supportiveness lowers children’s errors on misleading questions. Despite the importance of this topic, only eight randomized control studies were identified to be included in the meta-analysis. These studies hail from the psychology literature and were published over 18 years. These two facts introduced some interesting challenges in preparing the data for the meta-analysis. The analyses included the meta-analysis, investigation into possible non-independence, a search for outliers and cumulative meta-analyses. The current guidelines for publishing a meta-analysis in the psychological literature, specifically the MARS guidelines, will be discussed, as well the user-written commands and their options used to perform these analyses.