Statement Validity Assessment (SVA)

Statement Validity Assessment (SVA) is a tool designed to determine the credibility of child witnesses' testimonies in trials for sexual offenses. SVA assessments are accepted as evidence in some North American courts and in criminal courts in several West European countries. The tool originated in Sweden and Germany and consists of four stages. Much of the SVA research is concerned with the ability of Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA), one of the four SVA stages, to discriminate between truth tellers and liars. The Validity Checklist, another stage of the SVA procedure, has also attracted attention from researchers.

That a technique has been developed to verify whether a child has been sexually abused is not surprising. It is often difficult to determine the facts in an allegation of ...