Accuracy Of an Eyewitness statement

[Suitner92]

Class Room Delivery Survey Questions:


Name: Date:


1.What would you say the deliverer's occupation was?


2.What time did the delivery arrive?


3.What did the deliverer drop off?


4.Did he say anything in-particular to the teacher?


5.Did he give a note to the teacher?


6.What would you say the deliverer's Ethic background was?


7.How tall approximately was the deliverer?


8.What was the deliverer wearing?


9.What color was the deliverer's eyes?


10.What would you say the deliverer's approximate weight was?


11.About how long did the delivery take place?


12.What company was the deliverer from?


13.What was the deliverer's name?



14.What color was the deliverer's hair?



15.What kind of animal did the deliverer have with them?



16.What color purse did they have?



17.What mood did they seem to have?


The following are questions i have already come up with.
I cant think of any more random or important questions to ask..

any ideas?


thanks!

[MelissaB]

Age is the first thing that comes to mind--I believe police will often ask witnesses for not only height, weight, hair and eye color, but also age.

Perhaps presence/absence of identifying markings, piercings or jewelry?

If the deliverer is a he, why ask about a purse?

What about shoe type? That might be an important factor if the police have found footprints.

All in all, though, I think you've done a good job coming up with questions.

[Suitner92]

thanks... those were awesome questions.

I feel retarded for not realizing age....


i threw that question in to throw them off..


the best way to prove accuracy is to make it as difficult as problem... right?

[MelissaB]

Don't feel bad for not thinking of bleep! That's why scientists usually talk these sorts of things over with friends--that way no one misses anything important.

If you do keep the question about the purse, I suggest removing 'he' from earlier questions so that there might be some small doubt over whether the deliverer was male or female. Otherwise you are likely to have a question with 100% accuracy (everyone will say no) just due to the question, not the observational abilities of your eyewitnesses. If you want to keep it the way it is, that's fine--just realize that questions on the survey can impact the responses you get to other questions.

[geoffbruton]

Hi Suitner92,

That is a great list of questions for eyewitnesses! MelissaB gave you some excellent advice. My only suggestion is to try and not make the questions "leading."

For example, Question #5 asks the eyewitness if the delivery person gave a note to the teacher. That question automatically tells the eyewitness that a note was involved - and consequently might make them think that they *must* have seen a note, even if they don't remember seeing it. (Eyewitness testimony is often unreliable for precisely this reason!)

You might want to consider rephrasing and splitting the question into bleep like, "Did the delivery person give anything to the teacher?" and, "Did the teacher give anything to the delivery person?" And even, "Did the delivery person take anything from the teacher?" (in case bleep was stolen rather than voluntarily given). That way, you are allowing the eyewitness to describe what they saw, without *suggesting* what they saw. Does that make sense?

Similarly, and on the topic of the purse, you might ask the eyewitness if the delivery person was carrying *anything* rather than telling the eyewitness that the person *was* carrying a purse.

If you consider it appropriate, you may want to think about having a set of questions that move through a topic in a form of if/then statements. For example, if the eyewitness says, yes, the delivery person was carrying bleep, the next question might be for a description of the item(s). Depending on how you write these questions, they could be as simple as "Was the delivery person carrying anything?" If yes, please describe the item(s) - to bleep like, "Was the delivery person carrying anything?", "What color was the object?" , "How large was the object?" and so on. Do you see what I mean? If the eyewitness doesn't remember the person carrying *any* object(s), then they can skip the following questions and move on to the next topic.

This survey is actually quite challenging, since most eyewitness interviews are relatively simple at first, and then become progressively more refined as the interview proceeds. I'll be very interested to see your results!

Best of luck, and please be sure to post back if you have any questions.
Geoff.

[jeffreyshu]

If the purpose of the survey is to test how failable eyewitness statements can be, inserting leading questions and other "trick" questions could be a good test of what types of questions or series of questions would cause eyewitnesses to deviate from the truth.

I thought court and police TV dramas might be a good initial source of how one can influence a person to say one thing or another. If you want to delve deeper into the subject, research the topics of "scientific survey" and "response bias"

[Louise]

I'd ask at the end how certain they were of their statement on a scale of 1-10. I'd make a terrible eyewitness- I cannot describe the people I work with daily, but I know this about myself and would probably say so in an interview. However, if faced with a form like yours (and knowing it was just for a science fair), I'd probably answer all the questions as well as I could. It might be interesting to compare the accuracy of the survey by confidence level (I'd probably divide in to 1/3s to give you sufficient data for each group.)

Good luck!
Louise