Detecting deception in written statements

Policing - 2011
Timothy W.Armistead1
1Armistead Investigative Services, Pinole, California, USA

Tóm tắt

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the most recently published and most comprehensively designed study of scientific content analysis (SCAN), a widely used but rarely researched method of content analysis for detecting deception in written statements.Design/methodology/approachThe author reviewed the design, data, and findings of the study and performed statistical re‐analysis of the raw data. Prior citations and critiques of the study by scholars also were reviewed.FindingsThe design and data analysis of the British Home Office study are in part deficient. The design includes features of a quasi‐experimental study which were operationalized poorly, and the data aggregation and analysis produced an incomplete and problematic interpretation of the raw data. Prior reviewers of the Home Office study erred in part in their understanding of the study's findings and deficiencies.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was limited to the raw data of the study, but even so, the results justify additional research on SCAN. In particular, studies should be designed that control for variables such as length of law enforcement career, educational level, number of written statements taken during the career, measures of verbal intelligence, and pre‐SCAN‐training ability to detect deception in statements. The design and analysis flaws of the Home Office study which are identified in the paper would also need to be avoided.Originality/valueThis is the first published paper to identify the full range of design and data analysis deficiencies of the Home Office study and to argue that its data nonetheless support the recommendation that SCAN be researched more thoroughly.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

Adams, S.H. (1996), “Statement analysis: what do suspects' words really reveal?”, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, October, pp. 12‐20.

Adams, S.H. (2002), “Communication under stress: indicators of veracity and deception in written narratives”, PhD dissertation, University of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, available at: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd‐04262002‐164813/ (accessed 17 May 2010).

Bar‐Hillel, M. (1980), “The base‐rate fallacy in probability judgments”, Acta Psycholgica, Vol. 44, pp. 211‐33.

Campbell, D.T. and Stanley, J.C. (1966), Experimental and Quasi‐Experimental Designs for Research, Rand‐McNally College Publishing, Chicago, IL.

Copas, J.B. and Loeber, R. (1990), “Relative improvement over chance for 2×2 tables”, British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, Vol. 43, pp. 293‐307.

Driscoll, L.N. (1994), “A validity assessment of written statements from suspects in criminal investigations using the SCAN technique”, Police Studies, Vol. 17 No. 4, pp. 77‐88.

Ekman, P. and O'Sullivan, M. (1991), “Who can catch a liar?”, American Psychologist, Vol. 46 No. 9, pp. 913‐20.

Garrido, E., Massip, J. and Herrero, C. (2004), “Police officer credibility judgments: accuracy and estimated ability”, International Journal of Psychology, Vol. 39, pp. 254‐75.

Goeleven, E., De Raedt, R., Leyman, L. and Verschuere, B. (2008), “The Karolinska directed emotional faces: a validation study”, Cognition and Emotion, Vol. 22 No. 6, pp. 1094‐118.

Goodman, S.N. (1999), “Toward evidence‐based medical statistics, 1: the p value fallacy”, Annals of Internal Medicine, Vol. 130, pp. 995‐1004.

Gunnarsson, M. (2010), Group Decision Making, Verlag, Frederick, MD.

Kenny, D.A. (1996), “The design and analysis of social‐interaction research”, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 47, pp. 59‐86.

Kenny, D.A. and Judd, C.M. (1986), “Consequences of violating the independence assumption in analysis of variance”, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 99, pp. 422‐31.

King, W.R. and Dunn, T.M. (2010), “Detecting deception in field settings: a review and critique of the criminal justice and psychological literatures”, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, Vol. 33 No. 2, pp. 305‐20.

Klopf, G. and Tooke, A. (2003), “Statement analysis field examination technique: a useful investigative tool – perspective”, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, April, pp. 6‐14.

Lesce, T. (1990), “SCAN: Deception detection by scientific content analysis”, Law and Order, Vol. 38 No. 8, pp. 3‐6.

Listi, G.A. (2010), “The impact of racial metric variation in the os coxae on the morphological assessment of sex”, Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 55 No. 5, pp. 1157‐61.

Lunenburg, F.C. (2008), Educational Administration: Concepts and Practices, 5th Ed., Wadsworth/Cengage, Belmont, CA.

Masip, J., Alonzo, H., Garrido, E. and Antón, C. (2005), “Generalized communicative suspicion (GCS) among police officers: accounting for the investigator bias effect”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 35, pp. 1046‐66.

Motulsky, H. (1995), Intuitive Biostatistics, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Porter, S. and Yuille, J.C. (1996), “The language of deceit: an investigation of the verbal clues to deception in the interrogation context”, Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 20, pp. 443‐59.

Sapir, A. (1987), Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN), Laboratory for Scientific Interrogation, Phoenix, AZ.

Schafer, J.R. (2008), “Text bridges and the micro‐action interview”, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, January, pp. 20‐4.

Schervish, M.J. (1996), “P values: what they are and what they are not”, The American Statistician, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 203‐6.

Shadish, W.R., Cook, T.D. and Campbell, D.T. (2001), Experimental and Quasi‐experimental Design for Generalized Causal Inference, Wadsworth‐Cengage Learning, Belmont, CA.

Smith, N. (2001), “Reading between the lines: an evaluation of the scientific content analysis technique (SCAN)”, Police Research Series, paper 135, Home Office: Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, London, available at: http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/prs135.pdf (accessed 25 May 2010).

Vrij, A. (2008), Detecting Lies and Deceit: Pitfalls and Opportunities, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.

Wagner, H.L. (1993), “On measuring performance in category judgment studies of nonverbal behavior”, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 3‐28.

Thông tin
Thông tin xuất bản

Policing

Thông tin tác giả