Current Projects

The goal of the project will be to identify how investigators’ and treatment providers’ day-to-day work has been impacted and the influence on their well-being. Specifically, this project will assess how Covid-19 has affected: (1) how workers are interacting with children and families (i.e., changes in agencies protocols); (2) workers’ perceptions of current barriers and opportunities in adapting their work practices; and (3) workers’ concerns with their effectiveness in their roles and their personal well-being. Funding to support this research was provided by the President’s Research Fund (Luther College, University of Regina), Internal SSHRC Grant (McGill University), and CRISS Research Award (Brock University). See below link for a summary report of the findings.

Research funding was provided by the President’s Research Fund (Luther College, University of Regina), Internal SSHRC Grant (McGill University), and CRISS Research Award (Brock University) for the initial data collection in March 2020 and follow-up data collection in winter 2020-21 and conducting focus groups is supported by a SSHRC Covid-19 Partnership Grant.

RESEARCH RESULTS

ENGLISH: COVID-19 Child Maltreatment Report 2020

FRENCH: LA COVID-19 ET MALTRAITANCE DES ENFANTS 2020

The Impact of COVID-19 on Social Work Practice in Canada: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Contexts: Click here to view a manuscript accepted for publication in Journal of Comparative Social Work

A National Canadian Survey on the Impact of COVID-19 on Child Maltreatment Frontline Workers: Click here to view a manuscript accepted for publication in the journal titled Children and Youth Services Review. 

Working with Child Victims During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitive Student of the Child Maltreatment Investigators' Experiences. Click here to view the publication in the Journal of Forensic Social Work. 

Best practice protocols for eliciting reliable evidence suggest that children should be asked age-appropriate questions that rely on open-ended requests for information (e.g., Lyon, 2011). However, international researchers have found that lawyers in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand frequently deviate from using such questions when talking to children in court (e.g., Klemfuss et al., 2014), potentially risking the reliability of children’s testimony (e.g., Zajac & Hayne, 2006) as well as how children’s evidence is perceived by judges and juries (e.g., Brewer et al., 1999). In Canada, a systematic review of how lawyers question children or to what extent best-practices are followed has yet to be performed. Thus, in the proposed program of research, a team of emerging and established legal and developmental psychologists will systematically examine (1) how children are questioned in Canadian courtrooms and (2) how these questioning methods impact layperson and lawyers perceptions of children’s testimony.  

RESEARCH RESULTS:

Adults’ sensitivity to the age-appropriateness of lawyer’s questioning of children in a physical abuse case. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/cbs0000266 

Understanding when children will or will not be honest is an essential developmental issue to consider when interviewing children. Additionally, understanding what social dynamics can impact this honesty, is important as these social dynamics may influence whether a disclosure may be believed. Honesty is often perceived as a moral virtue and is frequently a topic of instruction by parents and educators. However, not all forms of honesty are equally appraised. Tattling for instance, sits within a moral gray zone - although a form of truth-telling, children are frequently reprimanded for being ‘tattle-tales’ by peers and adults alike. No research has used experimental design to explore the development of tattling behaviour in children (i.e., the reporting of another child’s minor transgression to an adult). This posidy of experimentally-based research has led to a lack of understanding of how children evaluate tattling in others and, more importantly, when and at what stage of development children employ tattling. Thus, the short-term objectives of this program of research are to (1) expand our understanding of children’s moral evaluations of tattling by examining tattling on various rule violators (i.e., adults versus peer aged) for either major or minor (i.e., norm) rule violations (Project 1), (2) to experimentally measure the developmental trajectory of children’s tattling behaviours (Project 2A), and (3) to examine the relationship between children’s tattling behaviours and their cognitive maturation (executive functioning skills and theory of mind understanding) (Project 2B). The long-term objective is to develop a cognitive theoretical model of children’s tattling behaviours that can be used by developmental researchers as well as parents and educational workers to support children in developing an understanding of honesty.