First Test(s) soon

[roland]

I will be taking a poly (many, perhaps) for multiple police departments that I am applying to. I've read through the site, and have read TLBTLD. What I'm concerned with is how to distinguish a control question from a relative question. I understand this is best done "on the fly", but I can only imagine it would be disastrous to misinterperet one for the other. Questions I've been asked on my applications deal with drug use, participation in crimes, and stealing, mostly. Can I assume that anything geared towards these subjects will be a relative question? I'd love any examples/scenarios you all can give me. About how many questions are they gonna ask me? Thanks in advance.

[George W. Maschke]

Roland,

Had you read The Lie Behind the Lie Detector carefully, you would know that there is no such thing as a "relative" question; the proper term is "relevant." You would also know that a question about petty theft is commonly used as a "control" question, while a question about major theft would be relevant. So you cannot necessarily assume that any question about a certain topic is necessarily a relevant question. You need to understand the rationale behind the different types of questions and be able to categorize them within the context of the question set presented during the pre-test phase.

The best advice I could give you is to attentively re-read Chapters 3 & 4 of TLBTLD. For additional examples of some commonly-used relevant and control/comparison questions, see the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute's Law Enforcement Pre-Employment Test examiner's guide:

http://antipolygraph.org/documents/dodpi-lepet.pdf