STATEMENT VALIDITY ASSESSMENT - INTERVIEW PROCEDURES AND CONTENT-ANALYSIS OF CHILDRENS STATEMENTS OF SEXUAL ABUSE

This article describes Statement Validity Assessment (SVA), which is a set of techniques and procedures for obtaining and evaluating statements by children who have allegedly been sexually abused. SVA consists of a structured interview of the child witness, a system for analyzing in detail the content of the child's recorded statement (Criteria-Based Content Analysis), and an overall method (Validity Checklist) for analyzing the validity of the allegations contained in the statement. The need for SVA in sexual abuse cases is described, together with the history and rationale of its development and details of the interview and assessment procedures. Some of the research on SVA is described, but the reader is referred to a companion article (Horowitz, this issue) for a detailed presentation of the research literature.