Interviewing witnesses in a second language: A comparison of interpreter-assisted, unaided, and self-administered interviews

Purpose

With increasing rates of migration worldwide, police are more likely than ever to interview witnesses who do not have the same first language as they do. We examined how to best approach this situation by comparing three different ways of conducting such interviews.

Methods

Native Arabic speakers (N = 128) living in Sweden witnessed a video of a mock crime and were allocated to one of three interview conditions: a face-to-face interview in Swedish (i.e. their second language), a face-to-face interview with an interpreter translating from Swedish to Arabic or an Arabic language Self-Administered Interview© (SAI).

Results

For total number of details reported, the no interpreter condition resulted in moderately fewer details being reported than the interpreter and SAI conditions. A similar trend was seen for correct details; however, these differences were not statistically significant. Participants in the SAI condition were somewhat less accurate in their reports compared with both the interpreter and no interpreter conditions.

Conclusions

If interviewing without an interpreter, there is minimal loss of reported detail when the witness speaks the interviewer's language at an intermediate level and the questions posed are few and simple. Moreover, provided that the witness has a sufficient level of literacy, administrating the SAI in the witness's native language can be an alternative for witnesses with no or limited verbal ability in the interviewer's language.