Children are often used as witnesses to past events. However, there are issues involved in using children for this purpose that are not as salient when interviewing adults. This is due primarily to children’s perceptions of adults. Many studies have been conducted on the area of suggestibility in children. However, many of them do not focus on two prominent factors, the influence of authority and question type.
History
 Alfred Binet has done research in this field (Whipple, 1912). According to Binet, when questioned correctly, children could be valuable resources of information regarding past events. However, they are highly suggestible and care needs to be taken as not to influence their responses. Binet suggested having children compose a written description of an event as opposed to having them orally examined would likely decrease the amount of suggestibility present (Whipple, 1912).
 A related factor of suggestibility is the attributes of the interviewer. It makes sense to assume characteristics of the interviewer may have an effect on the amount of suggestibility present in a child. The interviewer is an integral component of the atmosphere in which the interview takes place. Because of children’s perceptions of adults and structured interviews, who interviews them may have an effect on their suggestibility.
  In the 1970's, regarding the issue of authority’s influence on children, researchers can look at studies conducted by Milgram (Meyer & Jesilow, 1996). According to Milgram, several factors make it easier to succumb to the power of authority. First, it is easier to be influenced by an authority figure when the results of one's testimony, and its effects on others, is unknown. That is, when a child (or an adult for that matter) does not realize the implication of harm that may befall someone else as a result of their testimony, it is more likely that they will give in to the authority figure's prompting to answer their questions (Meyer & Jesilow, 1996). For instance, when an interviewer tells a child being questioned that "nothing bad will happen to you," they are using this tactic (Meyer & Jesilow, 1996). One of the prevalent cases that spawned controversy over the credibility of child witnesses is the McMartin Preschool case of Manhattan Beach, California (Meyer & Jesilow, 1996). The owner of the school, his mother, and five other teachers were accused and charged with multiple counts of child molestation (Meyer & Jesilow, 1996). Of the 208 counts of molestation with which the owner was charged, there were fourteen upon which the jury could not decide because they felt the interviewers' method of questioning may have influenced the children’s condemnation (Meyer & Jesilow, 1996).
 In other domains this subject matter has also received worldwide attention, especially in Great Britain. Conventionally, the legal system of Great Britain has not favored the use of child testimony due to its dubious nature (Davies, 1994). Controversy on policies and law has sparked a revolution of research in the United Kingdom. Several reforms have been made based upon the research of psychologists, including the Criminal Justice Act and the Memorandum of Good Practice. The Criminal Justice Act brought in to trials the use of video equipment to interview children. This was done as an attempt to prevent additional distress to the child that might arise from the intimidation of speaking to a courtroom full of strangers and from having to confront the actual offender (Endres, Poggenpohl, & Erben, 1999). The Memorandum of Good Practice was drafted by both lawyers and psychologists in an effort to create a standard of guidelines when interviewing a child (Davies, 1994).
 An example of a recent study that has added to the evidence supporting such policy changes would be that performed by Bjorklund, Bjorklund, Brown, and Cassel (1998). These researchers investigated a complex interplay among the types of questions asked of the children, the time period in which they were asked, and the age of the children in question. After showing a group of children a video tape of a theft, the research team asked the children either "open ended unbiased-leading questions" which were designed to focus on more salient aspects of the theft, or "misleading questions" that implied incorrect facts. The unbiased-leading questions were to represent the kinds of questions that are used during a court in the actual trial. However, the "misleading questions" represented the techniques used by the pre-trial interviewers.
 The different periods used were two, four, and six weeks (Bjorklund et al., 1998). This information was used to assess whether or not the type of question asked had an impact on the way the event was stored in the child's memory over time, and later retrieved. The researchers worked with both children in the second grade and children enrolled in kindergarten. It was found that older children were less likely to be influenced by misleading questions than the younger children were. The older children also remembered the actual events longer. The kindergarten-aged children had an especially difficult time retaining accurate information when asked misleading questions in the six-week condition (Bjorklund at al., 1998).
Types of Influences
 Endres and colleagues (1999) conducted a similar study. Their goal was to look at the effect of a warning before the question is asked. These researchers recognized that sometimes leading type questions must be asked in a forensic interview, especially when the child is younger and has less well developed cognitive skills. Leading questions help young children who need prompting in order to speak of certain events. The researchers hypothesized that it would be better to give a warning to the child that the questions might be "tricky" and tell them that they can respond, "I don't know," because in some cases they may not know all the information. This technique would hopefully prevent the child from giving an erroneous answer in hopes of pleasing the interviewer. In other words, according to the researchers, this would help curb the social influence of appeasing an authority figure.
The results of the study supported the hypotheses. Children who were warned before they received leading type questions had considerably decreased suggestibility levels as measured by the Bonn Test of Statement Suggestibility, as compared to those who were not given a warning (Endres et al., 1999).
 In addition to the manner in which a question is posed, the identity of who asks the question may be just as likely to influence a child’s response. Roberts and Lamb (1999) looked at the effect of interviewer distortion on children's responses. They hypothesized that because children are generally more intimidated by a perceived authority figure, they would be more likely to accept distortions of events made by the interviewer. Their hypothesis was supported in that most children did accept the distortions. This was especially likely to happen if a longer period of time passed before the child was given a chance to correct the distortion. It was also more likely that if the child did not correct the distortion the first time it was mentioned, they would not correct it later.
 Researchers Brady, Poole, Warren, and Jones (1999) conducted another suggestibility experiment with children ranging in age from 3-7 years. The researcher told the children a story about her dog during a rapport building phase of the interview. Then, the children watched a three-minute video. The children were then instructed to color as a distraction task. The children were asked both open-ended and leading questions with misleading information contained in them. The latter questions were in a yes-or-no answer format. Consistent with the researchers' hypothesis, the children were more likely to incorrectly answer the leading questions.
Implications
 The above reviewed studies have serious implications for the manner in which forensic interviews are conducted. It appears that the more a child is interviewed with leading questions over a duration of time the more likely he or she is to internalize the events hinted at by the interviewer (Bjorklund et al., 1998). It may be that interviews need to be supervised and conducted in a specific fashion, to include non-biased questions in order to obtain information that is more accurate. It might also be that the interviewers themselves, regardless of whether they are social workers or police officers, need to be trained in a consistent fashion, as not to inadvertently or purposefully use their authority to seek the answers they desire.
 It also appears that when paired with an authority figure, a leading type question is apt to make a child more suggestible. This is illustrated in the results of the previously mentioned studies. It seems leads made into questions by the interviewer heavily influence children. According to researchers Meyer and Jesilow (1996), because children are taught to obey authority even when they do not want to and cannot yet distinguish relevant authority figures, they are more prone to suggestibility. The very presence of an interviewer may represent authority to a child unless care is taken to allow opportunity for the interviewer to get on the child’s level.
All of the researchers noted thus far have examined question type in some form, but none have examined this particular question type in combination with a non-authority figure. From the lack of studies conducted on the interaction of suggestibility and authority present in the literature, it is evident the power of authority over children in interviewing situations needs more research (Meyer & Jesilow, 1996).
The current study examined the relationship between the type of question and the type of interviewer. The current study used a 2 X 2 between subjects experimental design in which a child was questioned by either a perceived authority or a non-authority figure, and was asked either leading or non-leading (open-ended) questions. The level of suggestibility was measured as the number of correct responses on a portion of the Bonn Test of Statement Suggestibility.
  Endres et al. (1999) found that by manipulating the social influence of authority somewhat, children could achieve higher scores on the Bonn Test of Statement Suggestibility. By further manipulating the presence or absence of authority, it was hypothesized in the current study that there would be a main effect whereby the participants in the non-authority condition would score higher on a suggestibility scale than the perceived authority figure condition.
Consistent with the research done by Brady et al. in 1999, where children ages 3-7 were more likely to incorrectly answer leading questions, the current study hypothesized that there would be a main effect whereby the participants in the non-leading condition would score higher than those in the leading condition.
  Integrating the work done by Endres et al. and Brady et al., it makes sense that authority and question type would serve as a catalyst to each other and influence a child’s suggestibility level.  The current study hypothesized an interaction whereby in the non-authority condition, the type of question would not influence the number of correct responses, but when the perceived authority condition was paired with the leading question condition, the number of accurate responses would be significantly decreased.
According to researchers Roberts and Lamb (1999), and Bjorkland et al. (1998), it seemed that children exposed to incorrect ideas might in fact internalize them. The current study hypothesized that children in the leading question condition would have more of these intrusions than children in the open-ended question condition.