Author

Marcia Moberg

Date of Award

9-26-2000

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Charles R.|Peters, Douglas Honts

Abstract

This study was conducted to examine the utility of Statement Validity Assessment (SVA) and Criterion-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) in situations where children give a false report. Twenty-one children, aged 4–5, were interviewed about two true (parent-supplied) events and two false (experimenter-contrived) events eight times over a ten week period using the criterion set forth in SVA (Raskin & Esplin, 1991). The dependent variables were frequency of assent, CBCA scores, and narrative length. Across all three dependent measures, significant differences existed between true and false narratives such that frequency of assent was higher for true narratives, CBCA scores were higher and the narrative lengths were longer. As predicted, CBCA scores were a significant predictor of true and false reports, however, the generalizabilty of these results would be questionable.

Share

COinS