posted 05-28-2009 02:28 PM
Donna,To think realistically about what it might take to create a model policy that can service the varying needs and begin to unify varying practices across many many jurisdictions and local areas, it is not hard to imaging that the achievement of a realistic and reasonable model policy is a huge achievement.
While the primary objective of a model policy of this type will be public safety and accurate polygraph testing, there are potential secondary objectives of business/marketing, power, and ego/notoriety that can at times have the potential to begin to interfere with the primary objectives. The achievement of a model that can address the issues without becoming distracted is a credit to the good people at the APA BOD and the PCSOT Committee.
The APA published the recent LE/Public-Service Model Policy in the last APA Magazine, and it sounds like we'll see this one in print too.
It is likely that none of us will see or know all the details of the final version until it is actually published.
The policy discussed on this board is the one that began during about November 2008, in response to Ebvan's challenge. However, it has gone through many revisions since then and will look a bit different than it did during November. The modified policy you describe is based largely on the ideas and work of the PCSOT committee, the existing APA standards and other existing standards documents. There was, in fact, a lot of thought that had already been put into regional PCSOT policies, and some wheels may not have needed re-inventing.
The PCSOT committee accomplished the monumental task of achieving more uniform consensus among professionals from widely various regions, field practices, and professional disciplines regarding definitions of the types of PCSOT examinations, and the importance of RQ formulation that emphasizes a question that leads a reader or referring agent to an understanding of a categorical behavioral concern (behaviorally descriptive RQs). I can only imagine how much cussing and discussing that achievement required. So, the document, consistent with the work of the PCSOT committee, is built around those types of PCSOT examination.
Of course no standards or policy document is perfect. The challenge will always be to unify field practices where necessary to prevent problems - without allowing ourselves to get caught up in our anecdotal experience, pet ideas, or unproven assumptions to a degree that makes us dumber than we would be without the standards. That is the largest hazard: over-standardizing around unstudied hypothesis, which leads to an assumption of knowledge where it may not exist, which then precludes our further interest in studying the real answer to that question of knowledge. So, it is a balancing act between the need to standardize and the need to not over-standardize. This is sometimes achieved by an emphasis on the idea of standardizing practices without attempting to make standardized declarations about matters of science.
The PCSOT committee and the BOD deserve a lot of credit for this difficult achievement. The present PCSOT committee worked on this for approximately 18 months. Prior to that the previous PCSOT also spent a year discussing and drafting a proposed model policy. You can also meet the people who were present at a very important series of discussions that occurred years ago. I believe those discussions led to the previous PCSOT model policy from about 2003.
The new policy will look a little different, and perhaps a little more developed than previous model policies, based on continued learning and experience since the onset of development of PCSOT standards and policies. It will remain important, if we wish to avoid being surprised at some future time to learn that we have been wrong about some very important assumptions, to avoid over-standardizing assumptions or questions about matters of science.
It will be important to the APA and the polygraph profession to position ourselves to fit alongside related professions (psychology, physiology, forensic assessment, risk assessment, risk management, inferential statistics, decision theory, signal detection theory etc.) that will increasingly expect an emphasis on evidence-based approaches. In order to foster the development of that anticipated and expected evidence, you'll notice the inclusion of operational definitions for behavioral concerns relevant to PCSOT examiners and risk-assessment/risk-management professional who work with sex offenders. Behavioral definitions provide uniformity among varying professionals and varying jurisdictions by answering the question: “what does it look like when someone does X.”
If there are more practical differences between the new model policy and practices to which we field examiners were indoctrinated and imprinted - that will most likely be a reflection of this balancing act, and the difference between evidence-based, theory-based, and values-based assumptions.
To the extent that we hold certain assumptions and values to be self-evident, all model policies will in some ways be based on scientific knowledge, while at other times based on administrative positions based on estimated risk and what we value as of primary importance. The PCSOT Model Policy, as I anticipate it, will be an important achievement in this area.
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Polygraph Place Bulletin Board
posted 05-27-2009 02:14 PM
