A systematic review of the validity of Criteria-based Content Analysis in child sexual abuse cases and other field studies

Abstract

Criteria-based Content Analysis (CBCA) has been primarily employed to assess the credibility of child sexual abuse (CSA) allegations. However, several studies on the validity of CBCA have focused on autobiographical events other than CSA. Because of the differences between real cases and the laboratory, we focused specifically on CBCA field studies on both CSA and other areas of application. We formally assessed several ground-truth criteria (and other methodological aspects) in a pool of 36 field studies. Seven archival studies (six of which were on CSA) and seven quasi-experiments (none of which was on CSA) were found to be either methodologically sound (12 studies) or acceptable with reservations (two studies), and were therefore included. We describe the paradigm and methods used in each study. Across studies, most CBCA criteria significantly differed between truthful and deceptive accounts, with similar medium to large effect sizes for the methodologically sound quasi-experiments and archival CSA studies. Our review shows that CBCA criteria may discriminate in domains other than CSA. The implications for the real-world usage of CBCA are discussed.