Methodological Considerations Affecting the Utility of Incorporating Innocent Subjects Into the Design of Guilty Knowledge Polygraph Experiments

• NCJ Number: 122820
• Journal: Polygraph Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Dated: (1989) Pages: 143-157
• Author(s): H W Timm
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 15 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not innocent parties who are given the guilty knowledge polygraph test are incorrectly diagnosed as guilty at chance levels as theorized in the literature.

Abstract

The first phase of the study compared the reported distribution of scores attained by innocent subjects in earlier studies to the values expected by chance. It was found that significantly fewer (p less than .0001) false positives were reported in these studies than predicted by the probability model. The second phase consisted of a guilty knowledge polygraph experiment which included 54 innocent subjects. The false positive rate for these subjects did conform to chance expectancies. Possible explanations and implications of the findings were noted. 3 tables, 20 references, 1 appendix. (Author abstract)