“Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers” is how the French philosopher Voltaire described the importance of questions.

If you can overlook the gender specific reference as a throwback to the language of the 18th century, then the message is clear - ask better questions, get better answers.

If you add that premise to the rigours of modern psychological methods and language then you are on the right lines to seeing where academics at Goldsmiths University in London are leading their research.

Professor of Applied Psychology, Fiona Gabbert and Dr Adrian Scott, Reader in Psychology, are at the forefront of this work, part of which is being done in collaboration with Locate International. They are behind the comprehensive questionnaire which is at the heart of Quest.

But while Quest is the latest tool in the investigation of cold missing and unidentified persons cases, the evolution of the questioning goes back more than ten years.

Prof Gabbert explained:

“We knew from speaking to police officers that for some crimes, such as a major critical incident, the number of witnesses outnumber the amount of police officers who are available to interview them. For incidents involving multiple witnesses, this meant that some people weren’t interviewed at all, or there was a big delay in interviewing people. As applied cognitive psychologists, we looked into what we could do about this and we developed an investigative tool that could be used in these types of incidents.”

That tool is called the Self-Administered Interview (SAI). It is a method of capturing the evidence of multiple people about a single incident without the need for an officer to conduct the interviews, thus freeing up police resources.

“The original Self-Administered Interview was developed to be suitable for any kind of criminal incident that happened. There are a number of sections throughout the questionnaire that enable a witness, or victim of a crime, to write their own account of what happened and who was involved.” said Professor Gabbert.

“There is guidance for people to help them fill in the forms, inbuilt retrieval techniques to help improve memory without tainting that memory, and it uses language which is designed to build trust and rapport. What it produces is a detailed statement in the person’s own words. Early work to develop the Self-Administered Interview was in collaboration with Greater Manchester Police. Over the last few years it’s been refined, extended, and improved. So, fast forward to today, and the Self-Administered Interview (SAI) is now endorsed by the College of Policing, and is a recommendation in the Authorised Professional Practice for eliciting initial accounts from victims and witnesses” explained Professor Gabbert.

Since then, bespoke versions of the Self-Administered Interview have been developed for particular incidents, such as gathering evidence about road accidents, and for reporting workplace incidents.

Professor Gabbert and her team are also developing a version for use in reporting sexual crimes in areas where there might not be a police force, like cruise ships or oil rigs. With Locate International, the team has developed a version for use in long term unsolved missing person investigations.

The relationship between Locate International and the team at Goldsmiths started in late 2020 when Locate CEO Dave Grimstead contacted them to ask if the SAI could be used and further developed for use in gathering data about missing persons.

This resulted in the version which is currently being used as part of QUEST. It focusses exclusively on missing people, exploring the social circles that person had at the time they went missing; possible reasons for them going missing and the theories that those who knew them best might have about why they might have disappeared.

“It’s important to ask people for their theories about why someone has gone missing, It gives them a voice to say what they believe. This might have already been investigated by the police at the time, or it might be a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle that the police had overlooked in their original lines of inquiry. And the beauty of it being an online form is that does not require a police officer, or any kind of investigator, to be available to conduct the interview. It allows us to distribute the link to the online version so that anybody who wants to provide information can complete the form.

“We know that some of the cases that Locate are investigating are really quite sensitive and the reason that police have no leads is because key witnesses are reluctant, or sometimes too scared, to speak to the police. So, people have an option to complete the form with their name attached to it, which allows us to follow up with additional questions, or to complete the form anonymously. This might just open the door to new investigative leads.”

One challenge of investigating long-term unsolved cases is that people’s memories for what happened at that time have faded. Professor Gabbert and Dr Scott have spent a long time focussing on how best to use psychological techniques and memory retrieval methods to help jog people’s memories for details from many years ago, without tainting or influencing that memory. These techniques include activating people’s memories for other events that happened at the time; such as what music and movies were popular, big news, sports, or political events, etc.

Once people have been helped to remember the crucial time surrounding when an individual went missing, they are guided to report their memories.

Dr Scott said:

“A few things that we thought were important was having a manageable structure so people aren’t overwhelmed with an infinite number of questions, and to allow people to have their voice so they can tell us what they think, including what they think was overlooked originally.”

Dave Grimstead added: “The way the system has been built is to build on all the work that Adrian and Fiona have done which is mainly the open questions. At some point we need more closed questions, which are mainly around human identification, so if someone has had an operation it’s a very specific question.

Our digital forensic teams also need closed questions to get specific information. The challenge has been to blend that together.

This has led to a system where people complete the open questions first, after which they are sent follow up questionnaires that are relevant to their particular case.”

The SAI has already been used by a number of families to provide information about their missing loved ones but it’s being rolled out slowly so that it can be developed further as it progresses. That information is then analysed by the software provided by Altia.