[Can you] Tell me? Children’s and adults’ responses to open‐ended prompts beginning with ‘Can you’

Abstract

Purpose

Interviewers sometimes preface information requests with the stem ‘Can you’; for instance, ‘[Can you] tell me everything that happened?’ Questions like these often function as indirect speech acts—explicitly asking if the respondent knows the answer, while implicitly requesting that information. Although interviewers have been advised against using such phrasings with children, little research has systematically examined how children respond when these questions are used to request information. Across two studies, we explored how children and adults respond to open-ended questions starting with ‘Can you’ compared to directly phrased alternatives.

Methods

In Study 1, 39 children aged 6–12 years were interviewed about experienced events using open-ended questions that were either prefaced with ‘Can you’ or directly phrased. Study 2 extended this investigation by examining 54 adults who were interviewed about an online interactive experience as a comparison.

Results

We explored participants’ response patterns across the two open-ended question constructions, including how frequently participants responded with a simple yes/no response or provided elaboration. Children and adults responded similarly to indirect and direct open-ended question phrasings, frequently providing elaboration. There was only one case in each age group where a simple yes/no response was provided.

Conclusions

While we recommend that interviewers continue to minimize use of ‘Can you’ stems on open-ended prompts, our findings show that children (aged 6 years and older) and adults predominantly do recognize the implicit request. Further research is needed to describe response patterns when questions query sensitive topics with reluctant interviewees.