Department of Psychology, Luther College at the University of Regina, 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina, Saskatchewan S4S 0A2, Canada.
Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University, Room 614, Education Building, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y2, Canada.
Child Abuse Negl. 2022 Dec;134:105930. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2022.105930. Epub 2022 Oct 24.
International research has explored lawyer-child interactions in court; however, little focus has been spent examining other aspects of lawyers' interactions with children (e.g., interview preparation; building rapport).
The present study investigated lawyer's self-reported interactions with child witnesses.
Participants included 96 lawyers (M = 40.34, SD = 11.07; 52 % female) practicing in Canada with experience questioning child witnesses (under 18 years old).
A survey was used to gather self-reported data on how lawyers prepare for, question, and respond to children as witnesses in court. We then explored whether these strategies differed depending on the role of the Canadian lawyer (i.e., prosecution or defence), experience, or gender.
Results indicate that lawyers report and demonstrate knowledge consistent with current best practices in questioning children. While gender and experience did not appear to play a strong role in lawyer-child interactions, prosecutors reported behavior more consistent with best practices compared to defence lawyers.
These findings provide important insight into strengths and weaknesses of lawyer-child interactions in court as well as highlight a strong need for future research to examine the link between self-reported behavior (i.e., perceived behavior) with observable behavior (i.e., actual behavior) in lawyer-child interactions.
国际研究已经探讨了律师与法庭上的儿童之间的互动，但很少关注律师与儿童的其他互动方面（例如，访谈准备；建立融洽关系）。
本研究调查了律师与儿童证人的自我报告互动。
参与者包括 96 名在加拿大执业并有询问儿童证人（18 岁以下）经验的律师（M=40.34，SD=11.07；52%为女性）。
使用问卷调查收集有关律师在法庭上准备、询问和回应儿童证人的自我报告数据。然后，我们探讨了这些策略是否因加拿大律师的角色（即检方或辩方）、经验或性别而异。
结果表明，律师报告并展示了与询问儿童方面的当前最佳实践一致的知识。虽然性别和经验似乎并没有在律师与儿童的互动中发挥重要作用，但与辩护律师相比，检察官的行为更符合最佳实践。
这些发现为法庭上律师与儿童的互动的优势和劣势提供了重要的见解，并强调了未来研究需要检验自我报告的行为（即感知行为）与律师与儿童的互动中的观察行为（即实际行为）之间的联系。
