1 School of Psychology, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia.
2 John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA.
Trauma Violence Abuse. 2019 Jan;20(1):51-66. doi: 10.1177/1524838016683460. Epub 2016 Dec 21.
While the concept of credibility seems like an intuitive one, research has indicated that there is no consistent definition of this construct and that credibility may, in fact, be multidimensional. This article is the first to review how the measurement of credibility in child sexual assault cases has been conducted, with the view to improve how credibility is psychometrically measured. Our findings indicate that the majority of experiments have been conducted in the United States (67%), have been based primarily on undergraduate students as participants (67%), and primarily investigated cases involving a male defendant and female victim (69%). Ultimately, among experiments investigating victim credibility, approximately 60% of all measures were based on a single item and 53% used materials not based on the testimony of the child. Moreover, credibility has been measured using a great variety of constructs such as believability, honesty, truthfulness, suggestibility, accuracy, and reliability. A more nuanced and consistent definition of credibility will be needed to facilitate meaningful applications of the research literature.
虽然可信度的概念似乎是直观的，但研究表明，这个概念没有一致的定义，实际上它可能是多维的。本文首次综述了在儿童性侵犯案件中如何进行可信度的测量，以期改进可信度的心理测量方法。我们的研究结果表明，大多数实验是在美国进行的（67%），主要参与者是本科生（67%），并且主要调查了涉及男性被告和女性受害者的案件（69%）。最终，在调查受害者可信度的实验中，大约 60%的所有测量方法都基于一个单一的项目，而 53%的实验使用的材料都不是基于儿童的证词。此外，可信度已经使用了各种各样的概念来衡量，例如可置信性、诚实、真实、暗示性、准确性和可靠性。需要一个更细致和一致的可信度定义，以促进对研究文献的有意义的应用。
