Iowa State University researchers Christian Meissner and Adrienne Lyles evaluated the available training programs for investigators and identified techniques and suggested practices at odds with science-based interviewing strategies. Lyles, associate director of Equal Opportunity, senior deputy Title IX coordinator and associate teaching professor in philosophy at Iowa State, says the findings, published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, are consistent with her experience.

“The training is not comprehensive. Many of the programs I attended were offered by for-profit companies and law firms,” Lyles said. “The law firms focused on how to avoid litigation and the for-profit companies were very generic and not evidence- or research-based practice.”

Lyles and Meissner, a professor of psychology, started working together to address these weaknesses and recommend a set of evidence-based practices for Title IX investigative interviews. Meissner leads an international research team developing interview methods for the FBI, CIA and other law enforcement agencies to reduce false confessions and effectively gather information. He says the techniques work in any type of investigation.

“The goal of any investigative interview, regardless of who you are interviewing, is to gather a complete and accurate recollection from a subject in a manner that will move an investigation forward,” Meissner said. “These techniques are very effective at providing people an opportunity to tell their story absent any preconceptions or biases on behalf of the investigator.”

Building rapport, trust

Title IX procedures are in place to protect students from discrimination and harassment, Lyles said, and the process and purpose are very different from the criminal justice system. There is a greater focus on education rather than punishment. To ensure due process and neutrality, she says investigators must be impartial when interviewing the complainant, respondent and witnesses. Ultimately, investigators must assess the credibility of a complaint and determine if there is a violation of Title IX policy.

Some of the training programs Lyles and Meissner examined suggest that investigators can determine the veracity of a Title IX complaint by watching the behavior of the respondent during the interview. The researchers say there is no evidence to support the effectiveness of such an approach. They also found no scientific evidence that victims and perpetrators have different neurobiological responses to the same event, as some programs claimed.

Meissner says using evidence-based techniques can help investigators build rapport and trust to elicit as much information as possible and facilitate memory recall. It is important for Title IX investigators to get a complete and detailed account during the initial interview so the individuals involved do not have to tell their story multiple times. By asking the right questions and using evidence strategically, Meissner says they can accomplish those goals.

“By asking open-ended questions, investigators avoid inserting any bias,” Meissner said. “If they have information from social media, video surveillance and witnesses, they can use that evidence strategically to assess credibility of the subject and verify the information they have collected.”

Recommendations for investigators

In the paper, Meissner and Lyles outline the following recommendations for developing evidence-based interviewing best practices for Title IX investigations:

• Limit bias during the interview: Investigators should utilize interview approaches to limit biased or leading questions and not presume the respondent engaged in misconduct.
• Develop rapport and facilitate cooperation: An empathic, nonjudgmental and collaborative approach can facilitate conversation and reduce reluctance to cooperate.
• Enhance retrieval of accurate information from memory: Research has consistently shown the value of open-ended questions, followed by relevant probe questions (who, what, when, why).
• Use strategic questions to assess credibility: Asking subjects for verifiable details and using strategic questioning approaches that facilitate memory and reporting can significantly improve assessments of credibility.

Lyles says Iowa State has developed a standard practice guide incorporating science-based investigative interviewing techniques. By sharing this information, she hopes other schools will do the same.

“We’re trying to create some standards for good investigative practice,” Lyles said. “As investigators we are neutral fact-finders. We do not advocate for any party. It is our job to be impartial and unbiased. It is important that the process not advantage or disadvantage any party.”

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The most successful startups have leaders who both seek input and set boundaries with their team members, the researchers found.

The research, “On the Emergence of Collective Psychological Ownership in New Creative Teams,” by McCombs Assistant Professor of Management Stephen Gray, along with Andrew Knight and Markus Baer of Washington University in St. Louis, is published online in advance in Organization Science.

“To get others to feel like, ‘This startup is really ours,’ the team needs to have their fingerprints on the idea,” Gray said. “Not just building it up as it currently stands, but actually shaping, maneuvering and influencing some aspects of the idea.” Such requests for team input on the startup idea are labeled “help-seeking” behaviors.

But being too open to team input has its drawbacks. If they want to prevent disagreements, entrepreneurs must set boundaries around soliciting feedback on those parts of the idea they want to keep unchanged. The researchers call these “territorial-marking” behaviors. They were found to be beneficial for startups.

“Team members respond positively to a leader who sets clear boundaries,” Gray said.

The authors conducted research at Startup Weekend, a series of worldwide entrepreneurship competitions, by collecting quantitative data such as surveys, video pitches and judge ratings from 89 teams. They explored how entrepreneurs’ help-seeking and territorial-marking behavior affected each team’s feelings of collective ownership and, ultimately, the team’s performance in the competition.

Entrepreneurs fell into one of four behavior types: About a quarter kicked off their team’s work without having any initial group conversations around the startup idea; a quarter proactively solicited input on all aspects of their idea; another quarter engaged in territorial-marking behavior, inhibiting team member input on the startup idea; and the final quarter struck a balance, being simultaneously collaborative on some parts of the idea (e.g., product design) while also being protective of other parts of the idea (e.g., target market).

Leaders who had upfront conversations about boundaries minimized conflict. Those who solicited team input encouraged collective ownership. And despite the researchers’ predictions that help-seeking behavior by startup founders might “over empower” team members to make unsolicited changes — potentially causing conflict with the entrepreneur — the researchers found that such behavior actually lessened team conflict.

The researchers found that establishing limits signals the entrepreneur’s psychological investment to new team members. When an entrepreneur shows he or she cares about an idea or part of an idea, the team notices. Team members are therefore more willing to invest their time and resources to turn the idea into a reality.

“The best entrepreneurs can strike balance,” Gray said. “It’s somebody who’s a little bit assertive and directive but not overly so, and somebody who’s a bit collaborative but not overly so. That’s really the blend that you’re trying to find as an entrepreneur.”

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Trapping the white blood cells — which are about the size of cancer cells — and filtering out smaller red blood cells leaves behind the tumor cells, which could then be used to diagnose the disease, potentially provide early warning of recurrence and enable research into the cancer metastasis process. The work, led by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, could advance the goal of personalized cancer treatment by allowing rapid and low-cost separation of tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream.

“Isolating circulating tumor cells from whole blood samples has been a challenge because we are looking for a handful of cancer cells mixed with billions of normal red and white blood cells,” said A. Fatih Sarioglu, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). “With this device, we can process a clinically-relevant volume of blood by capturing nearly all of the white blood cells and then filtering out the red blood cells by size. That leaves us with undamaged tumor cells that can be sequenced to determine the specific cancer type and the unique characteristics of each patient’s tumor.”

The research was reported September 20 in the journal Lab on a Chip, and was supported by a seed grant from the Integrated Cancer Research Center at Georgia Tech.

Other attempts to capture circulating tumor cells have attempted to extract them from the blood using microfluidic technology that recognizes specific surface markers on the cancer cells. But because the cancer can change over time, the malignant cells can’t be recognized with certainty. And even if they can be captured, the tumor cells must be removed from circuitous channels in the device and separated from the antigen without causing damage.

Sarioglu and collaborators, including ECE graduate student and first author Chia-Heng Chu, decided to take a different approach, building 3D-printed traps lined with antigens to capture the white blood cells in a sample. The 3D printed traps allowed the researchers to greatly expand the surface area for capturing the white blood cells as they pass by in blood samples. Zig-zagging fluid channels, some as much as half a meter long, increase the likelihood that every white blood cell would come into contact with a channel wall.

“Usual microfluidic devices have just a single layer with channel heights of 50 to 100 microns,” Sarioglu said. “They are thick, but most of it just empty plastic. Using 3D printing liberates us from the single channel and allows us to create many channels in three dimensions that better utilize the space.”

While the 3D printing allowed an increase in channel density, that came with a significant challenge. Earlier microfluidic devices could be designed with etched channels to carry the blood. But with 3D printing processes that are fabricated layer-by-layer, channels had to be filled with wax to allow more channels to be built atop them. The torturous channel structure, designed to maximize cell-wall interaction, made it virtually impossible to get the wax out after fabrication.

The solution was to design cell traps that fit into standard centrifuges designed to spin samples for separation. The traps were heated in the centrifuge and then spun to allow the melted wax to escape. After removing the liquid wax, the channels received the antigen coating.

After the white blood cells are removed, the smaller red blood cells pass through a simple commercial filter that traps the cancer cells and any remaining white blood cells. The tumor cells can then be removed from the filter, which is integrated into the 3D printed device.

Minimal processing of blood samples is a goal for the project to make the process available to clinics and hospitals without requiring specialized technician skills. Less processing also reduces the risk of damage to the tumor cells and minimizes other cellular changes that could skew the evaluation.

As part of the proof of principle testing, the researchers coated the white blood cells with biotin to accelerate testing. Future cell traps will use antigens designed to attract the cells to the channel walls without the biotin processing step.

The researchers tested their approach by adding cancer cells to blood taken from healthy people. Because they knew how many cells were added, they could tell how many they should extract, and the experiment showed the trap could capture around 90 percent of the tumor cells. Later testing of blood samples from prostate cancer patients isolated tumor cells from a 10-milliliter whole blood sample.

Testing included cells from prostate, breast and ovarian cancer, but Sarioglu believes that the device will capture circulating tumor cells from any type of cancer because the removal mechanism targets blood cells rather than cancer cells.

Next steps will be to narrow the channels in the device, test white blood cell removal without the use of biotin, boost the percentage of white cell extraction and connect cell traps to increase trapping capacity.

“We expect that this will really be an enabling tool for clinicians,” Sarioglu said. “In our lab, the mindset is always toward translating our research by making the device simple enough to be used in hospitals, clinics and other facilities that will help diagnose disease in patients.”