I have a poly scheduled in a few weeks. At any rate, I was doing some research on the test and chatting with a buddy that was in the hiring process with another agency. He said that he took the poly and that the examiner came back and told him he had trouble with 2 questions. He didn't know why there would be an issue. Then he said that the department called him a week later telling him that his test came back as "no opinion" and was being scheduled for a retest. He said that he was pretty bummed and thought that he failed the test, but this retest gave him hope. I want my test to go over smoothly and I told him about this site to help him out. Exactly what are the outcomes anyway? Is his "no opinon" outcome a possible test outcome? I thought it was, for lack of better terminology, that you are lying or not.
sounds like an "inconclusive" result which means that they could not say one way or the other if he was showing a reaction or not to whatever the question was.
Here are the terms generally used by the federal polygraph community to characterize outcomes:
- No Deception Indicated (NDI) - a "passing" score. Reactions to "control" questions were significantly stronger than reactions to relevant questions. This may alternatively be called "No Significant Response" (NSR) in screening situations.
- Deception Indicated (DI) - a "failing" score. Reactions to relevant questions were significantly stronger than reactions to "control" questions. This may alternatively be called "Significant Response" (SR) in screening situations.
- No Opinion (NO) - reactions to relevant and "control" questions were about the same. May also be called "Inconclusive."