posted 01-26-2013 08:41 PM
Meanwhile back at the ranch...The real issue here is whether the APA and the polygraph profession will benefit from improved guidelines around examinee suitability.
At present, examiners are often criticized, from outside and from within the profession, for testing people of certain agaes, or who take medications, or have been diagnosed with any the wide variety of presently known medical or mental health disorders or have any form of identified disability or exceptionality.
Accusations of unethical conduct and invalid examination results are all too easy whenever it is time to defend an exam - and without with constructed guidelines the words "ethical" and "valid" tend to wielded like cudgels. Examinee suitability is a common area for this.
Part of the problem is this: 1) examiners have routinely written everyone as "fit" for the polygraph if they completed a test, no matter how many medications or what kind of problem, and 2) standard practice guidelines in the past said simply that we were to determine each examinee's suitability prior to testing - with little to no actual guidance or standards about how to do that. Suitability decisions eventually came down a simple matter of "that's the way I saw it in my professional opinion," and contests came down to a matter of professional vanity and who has the better resume, instead of referencing any actual standardized guidelines or evidence.
In fact, examiners have been unnecessarily vulnerable to criticism around many exams.
Criminals, including sex offenders, are often not healthy normal-functioning persons. They sometimes have a variety of mental health and physical health problems, and (if you can imagine) co-occurring substance use problems.
So what is the best thing to do? Wait and do nothing until a big case or a big lawsuit occurs. We could do that? Suitability discussions probably occur around every legal discussion of the polygraph. Its only a matter of time before attorneys hone their arguments and attacks.
How man criminal suspects, for example, smoke a little tiny bit of medicine before a polygraph - just to help them stay calm? Should we test them. How many of them have a beer or two with lunch before a polygraph? Should we send them home and politely ask them to return when they are completely sober?
Its only a matter of time before we start to see a bit of an increase in the visibility of PSTD in our culture. 80% of those cases can be expected to have a co-occurring mental disorder and 40 to 60 can be expected to have a co-occurring substance use disorder. Some of them will find themselves in the kind of trouble for which they may get referred for a polygrapht test.
We could wait until it happens, and then try to figure out how to navigate all the issues. Or we an try to think ahead.
What the APA has done - if you read it carefully - is to provide examiners with a Model Suitability Policy that will help defend many reasonable decisions to proceed with testing - based on a thoughtful understanding of the ethics and science involved.
Now some people will find it challenging: anyone who wants a black and white solution may find it not completely black and white enough - there are still some areas of judgement and ambiguity, and that is unavoidable when dealing with humans. We'll just have to continue to use our expert judgment.
Others may find it far too grey, and therefor far to complicated. There is no way around that unless we draw lines that are completely arbitrary. While that would make some people feel good - that we're all doing it the same and if we're wrong at least we're all wrong together. But that would not make us smarter - in fact it might make us feel smarter (better) while actually functioning less intelligently.
So...
Why age 12?
Now I'm just guessing that Dan will not be satisfied unless a completely independent researcher who cares nothing about the polygraph completes and replicates a double-blind control-group field study (which is just darn near impossible) - but that is his concern not ours.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with Dan or anyone asking the hard questions. If we continue to avoid reacting personally then we can continue to benefit from those challenging questions.
Our concern is practical - whether there should or should not be an age limit? Personally I would be fine with not having any age limit and having a guideline around the level of functioning. But that will be difficult for many to understand and make use of and - though imperfect - age boundaries are more easy for agencies and the community to perceive and administrate. Voting - age 18. Drinking - age 21 (though some mental health folks and college administrators would suggest lowering it to 18. Driving - age 16. And so on. Now think about this - there is actually no mistaken assumptions that all 16 year-olds are created equally. We all know that some are more functionally mature than others.
There are other complications. In Colorado, for example, a 17 year-old CHILD can legally consent to sexually contact with an adult - as long as the adult is not 10 or more years older. Wow - the age of the adult determines the capacity of the child to consent.
In Arizona 17 year-old children cannot legally consent to sexual contact and 18 year-old dating partners are at risk for serious legal consequences. Maybe this is a case of unequal levels of functional maturity, or maybe the issue of consent is not entirely a legal issue. Maybe consent is actually a sociological and developmental issue, and an ethical issue, just as much, or more, than it is a legal issue. And maybe the lines are not completely black and white.
Maybe the lines are different in different jurisdictions. That already causes problems. More of that will cause more problems. Do nothing to create order, and we can expect more chaos.
In reality the APA cannot solve or impose soluations for all the different jurisdications. But APA has got to put a recommendation line somewhere because if not then somebody is going to get excoriated for testing a juvenile. And, if the APA says we cannot test juveniles then it will prevent any examiner from attempting to be helpful - or face accusations of unethical work. Or the APA can do nothing and make no effort to provide any guidelines to examiners - that way each examiner can argue their own decisions based on their own resume, their own work/expertise, and the strength of their own personality - which would set the stage for a lot of narcissitic professional aggression.
Best thing to do is to look at the literature and do what the evidence. What we know from Stan Abrams - and from experience - is that the polygraph can work with children as young as 11. Abrams actually said that functional maturity is more important than chronological age, and the APA Model Policy give guidance on how to determine this in some convenient ways.
There is a convergence of evidence in psychology and developmental neurology suggesting that normal functioning children of age 12 should be reasonably testable. There is not a complete absence of evidence or information on this.
In the end the APA has simple options: make a model policy that is more conservative but not based on the evidence and information, or make a policy based on the available, albiet limited, evidence and information.
As for medications, the suitability model policy does NOT say that people are not testable due to medications. There is no real basis for such a statement. The policy does give guidance about to be professionally accountable when their are obvious indicators (and often documentation from other professionals) that an examinee may not be functioning completely normally.
Which brings us to the point about normative data - and how confident we are that the examinee is represented by the published empirical evidence.
Read the suitability policy carefully. Ask quesitons. What you will find is that it can help us to account for why we are able to conclude it is correct and ethical to proceed with testing under the variety of circumstances under which we do so.
The purpose of the policy is simply to clarify what are presently thought to be the outside limits of suitability, and to provide guidance about how to evaluate and handle the predictable types of complication that we routinely encounter. Ultimately, the model policy will reduce our vulnerability by clarifying the circumstances and rationale under which we are able to conclude that it is ethical to test the people we test.
When an examinee is not suitable, when there is no benefit to conducting the test - when it is not ethical to do the test - then we don't do the test.
- more later
In the meantime, read the suitability policy carefully. And remember that it is only a model policy based on what we think we know right now and what we think are the compications across varying jurisdictions. There is obviously more to learn on this - and it will be important to remember Dan's continual message around thinking critically and not getting into a mindless zombie shuffle around the important and complex issue of examinee suitability.
It's also important not to get too reactive about any of this - else we extinguish the opportunity to learn from the conversation.
r
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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room."
--(Stanley Kubrick/Peter Sellers - Dr. Strangelove, 1964)
Polygraph Place Bulletin Board
posted 01-23-2013 10:28 AM
