The Development and Validation of the Child Sexual Assault Victim Credibility Scale: An Instrument to Measure Laypersons' Perceptions of Victim Credibility.

Child sexual assault is a global health issue, with extensive implications for legal, social, clinical, and health psychology. The perceived credibility of child victims is of considerable importance in terms of the successful prosecution of such cases. However, there has been considerable inconsistency within past research regarding how best to measure credibility, and to date, there exists no broadly accepted scale for the measurement of lay perceptions of credibility of child victims. The current study evaluates a proposed Child Sexual Assault Victim Credibility Scale (CSAVCS) and includes the results of both a pilot and scale validation study. A two-phase approach for instrument development was adopted. Thirty-six participants from the general community were involved in the pilot study (Phase I), comprising six males and 30 females. A further 210 participants (61 males and 149 females) were included in the scale validation sample (Phase II). Participants read a transcript of a child disclosing sexual abuse and rated their perceptions of the child's accuracy, believability, competency, reliability, and truthfulness. The scale's reliability and internal validity were successfully tested and modified in Phase I and subsequently validated and confirmed in Phase II. There was strong evidence of internal consistency, reliability, and content validity. Following model respecification, the final 23-item model was confirmed. The evaluation of the CSAVCS was a crucial first step and will be useful for future research exploring perceived credibility. Using a validated and reliable scale may serve to improve the consistency of measurement of credibility and to facilitate comparisons among studies.

Measurement of Victim Credibility in Child Sexual Assault Cases: A Systematic Review.

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.

The Effect of Gender on Perceptions of Credibility in Child Sexual Assault Cases: A Systematic Review.

Child sexual assault cases have one of the highest attrition rates throughout the justice system, with jurors' perceptions of the credibility of the child playing a critical role in the judicial process and resulting outcomes. One of the most prominent influences on credibility is gender, specifically victim and perceiver gender. This article reports the findings of a systematic search of the literature exploring the impact of these factors on perceptions of victim credibility. Results suggest that overall females tend to rate victim credibility higher than do males; however, this gender effect is minimized when the alleged perpetrator is not the biological parent of the victim. There is little support for a victim gender effect, such that potential jurors' ratings of victim credibility does not appear to be influenced by the gender of the victim. The review highlights the lack of consistent and comprehensive measurement of credibility. Legal implications are discussed.

The Development of a Conceptual Model of Perceived Victim Credibility in Child Sexual Assault Cases.

Perceived victim credibility is a crucial factor in jury decision-making, especially in the context of child sexual assault cases where there are often no corroborating witnesses. Yet despite the importance of credibility and the expanding research in this area, there remains no unified understanding of what credibility is, what domains it encompasses and how it can be comprehensively measured. This article proposes a conceptual model of perceived victim credibility encompassing the five domains of accuracy, believability, competency, reliability and truthfulness. These domains are defined, distinguishing between the various sub-constructs based on the items they encompass. This model provides a theoretical framework for the development of an instrument to measure perceived victim credibility in future research studies. This is valuable for both researchers and professionals working in the area of child sexual assault in terms of understanding the construct of credibility and unifying the approach to measuring and comparing attitudes.