Integration of Pre-Employment Polygraph Screening into the Police Selection Process

Abstract

The authors provide a polygraph primer for police psychologists involved in law enforcement personnel selection. Law-enforcement pre-employment polygraph examinations are a decision-support tool intended to add incremental validity to the personnel selection process. Problems stemming from the use of the polygraph may be related to misunderstanding of the polygraph test and to field practices surrounding the use of polygraphy in the police selection process. Potential problems can result from ineffective selection of test issues, poorly constructed test questions and misguided policies surrounding the use of the polygraph. The authors review the history of polygraph screening, research, and field practices, and suggest that using polygraph results alone to disqualify a candidate from employment is a misguided field practice. Suggestions are offered for maximizing the decision-support value of the polygraph. Polygraph examination targets are discussed, with emphasis on selecting actuarially derived predictors associated with increased success in law enforcement training and job performance. The authors provide recommendations for field practice, and propose that police psychologists may be most suited to effectively integrate the polygraph results and information into the hiring recommendation process

Potential Jurors’ Perceptions of Polygraphs in Court

“…They also opined that the inmate's contention of inherent inaccuracy and imperfection of the polygraph was erroneous and found that the decision had not been made solely on the basis of the polygraph results. This is similar to the standards suggested earlier; polygraphs can be considered as evidence if the results are able to be methodologically triangulated (Handler et al, 2009).…”

“…They used a sample of both university students and law enforcement trainees, who were informed of the nature of the experiment. Offe and Offe (2007) (Handler et al, 2009). …”

“…Raskin and Kircher (2014) found that, despite the face validity of psychopaths being able to lie on an exam, the actual results did not show much strength for this connection. Handler et al (2009) indicated that the lack of consistency in polygraph literature and methodology extends to the interpretation and conclusion-forming of results as well.…”

“…The most common way this occurs is termed global analysis (Handler et al, 2009), where the examiner directly inspects the test results for physiological responses or trends in responses to a particular question or two. The limitations of this are obvious: it introduces examiner subjectivity and is almost entirely dependent on the examiner's ability to recognize visual patterns from the available data.…”

“…Increasingly frequent is the utilization of numerical scoring (Handler et al, 2009, p. 7), in which examiners run basic statistics on the data to compare magnitude and assign objectively-defined scores, with cutoffs at certain levels specifically delineated as truthful, deceptive, or otherwise. In a criminal investigation, an inconclusive result on a polygraph exam often results in a re-test, where the rates of inconclusive results tend to drop (Handler et al, 2009).…”