in federal Polygraphs? Or is it up to the personal preference of the polygrapher?
poly
No, it's not always administered (although it usually is). In some cases, for example when an examinee is brought back for a follow-up polygraph, the stim test might be skipped.
:) Taken 3 polys in my life, and the stim was only used in the first one, which was R/I. Both CQT's had no stim test... no numbers, no trick deck of cards, no battery of irrelevants at the beginning. Nothing...
As a 4-time end-to-end reader of TLBTLD (bless you, George...), and from my own experiences, I can tell you this with some surety:
Polygraphers can be pains in the rump or very sweet to you. Depending on what whoever hired them wants to hear, whether they want to pass or fail you or don't care, and what their quota is for confessions, who knows how they'll go about things- especially on something that even they know is a fraud (stim tests are deceit defined)...