Publication Abstract
Using Robots to Interview Children About Bullying: Lessons Learned from an Exploratory Study
Bethel, C. L., Henkel, Z. M., Stives, K., May, D., Eakin, D., Pilkinton, M., Jones, A., & Stubbs-Richardson, M. (2016). Using Robots to Interview Children About Bullying: Lessons Learned from an Exploratory Study. Proceedings of the 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication Conference. New York, NY: IEEE.
Abstract
This article describes the results of a study that
compares disclosure occurrences of bullying from children
(ages 8 to 12) to either a human or a social robot. Results
from an orally administered questionnaire to 60 children,
split evenly between human and robotic interviewers, revealed
that few significant differences in reporting were encountered
between interviewer types. Overall 9 of 60 (15%) of participants
reported being bullied in the past month. Participants were
significantly more likely to report that fellow students were
teased about their looks to the robot interviewer in comparison
to the human interviewer. In addition to the examination of
these results, a discussion of lessons learned for future studies
of this nature are provided.