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.

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.