Beliefs about child witnesses: a survey of Danish legal professionals, social workers and psychologists.

Beliefs about our memory can have consequences for how we act in our everyday life and in professional contexts, including what we expect from witnesses during interviews. Previous research has documented that the beliefs that professionals or laypeople hold regarding witnesses are not always aligned with science. While most studies have targeted beliefs about memory in general, fewer studies have tailored their questionnaires to map out beliefs about child witnesses. In this study, we surveyed 340 Danish professionals including police, psychologists, social workers, judges, defence attorneys, and prosecutors about their beliefs regarding children as witnesses. Since the main interest was to map out current beliefs held by the groups, we did not have predictions regarding specific items. However, since previous research has shown that beliefs held by various professional groups are not always aligned with science, this was also to be expected in this study. Overall, the results replicated earlier findings. It is noteworthy that a large proportion of respondents selected the response category "neither agree nor disagree". Furthermore, prior training was found to influence the responses. Key areas where an update of the knowledge base is deemed relevant are highlighted and future directions are discussed.