I'm going to be doing a polygraph soon for a law enforcement position. Here is the format:
1) Prior to even entering the situation all applicants are required to fill out a "lifestyles questionairre"- essentially asking question such as drug/alcohol use, theft from employer, cheated on an exam, use of violence toward children or adult, illegal use of computer, etc, etc. These questions do requir you to detail any 'yes' answers.
2) Upon entering the polygraph room, the polygrapher pours over he lifestyles questionairre and reasks you all of the questions and asks you to verbalize the details. This goes on for bout 2 hrs.
3) You are asked to leave the room... upon reentering, you are hooked up to the machine and 10 of the questions are reasked.
My questions are:
1) How would one go about answering the 'lifestyles questionairre? Make no admissions?
2) How would I identify the control questions? It seems all the questions in the 'lifestyles questionairre' are relevant. Are some control?
Thanks..... anyone else have a test like this?
Trout,
The use of a pre-polygraph questionnaire is not uncommon among law enforcement agencies. The quesions on the questionnaire are not necessarily the precise quesions that you will be asked during the actual "in-test" phase of the polygraph interrogation (when you are connected to the polygraph instrument).
However, the information that you provide in the pre-polygraph questionnaire will assist the polygrapher in choosing which probable-lie "control" questions to use.
After you decide what admissions you may care to make in the pre-polygraph questionnaire, it is important that you make no additional admissions during the polygraph interrogation, because doing so may well lead to your disqualification, as it will be taken as evidence that you were dishonest in completing the questionnaire and only came clean when confronted by the polygraph.
You mention i should make no more admissions, but what if I am going to use counter measures against a control? For example, i admit to stealing some minor office supplies in my pre-questionairre... then he asks me, 'other then what you mention in your questionairre, have you stolen anything else?' I say no, but since this is a control a try to elicit some sort of response (counter measure).... since i already made the statement in my questionairre that i had done nothing else other then what i admitted to, the counter measure would show i had actually done more.... in other words there would be a discrepancy between the written questionnaire and thre polygraph.
Does this make sense?
Thanks