The Development Of The Rapport Scales For Investigative Interviews And Interrogations, Observer Version (RS3i-O)

Rapport between an interviewer and a source is a vital component of successful investigative interviews and interrogations. Accurate measurement of rapport in these interactions is crucial to understanding its development and maintenance. The Rapport Scales for Investigative Interviews and Interrogations, Source version (RS3i-S; Duke et al., 2018) was developed to measure sources\u27 perception of rapport, but no tool has been developed to measure rapport from a third-party observer\u27s perspective. The primary purpose of this study was to develop the Rapport Scales for Investigative Interviews and Interrogations, Observer version (RS3i-O), a tool that allows observers to rate the rapport generated in investigative contexts. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (EFAs and CFAs) were performed on ratings of 92 simulated investigative interviews made by trained undergraduate raters. The final version of the RS3i-O contained nine items comprising four rapport scales. The internal reliability of these scales was determined to be excellent and their inter-rater reliability was adequate. The convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity of the scales were examined using source ratings of the RS3i-S, a set of previously developed observational rapport scales, measures of source cooperation, and mean differences between interview styles. Substantial evidence of convergent validity was found for all RS3i-O scales, although discriminant validity among the four scales was weak. The secondary aim of the study was to evaluate the convergent and criterion validity of several linguistic variables measured by Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) 2015 and language style matching (LSM), a measure of linguistic convergence. Limited evidence of these linguistic variables\u27 validity as measures of rapport in investigative interactions and interrogations was found