Shaun Parsons

Shaun Parsons was a clinical psychologist affiliated with the Clinical Psychology Department at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, during his polygraph research activities in 2004. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1998, and his broader research interests included mental health nursing education and personality disorder treatment in primary care settings. His polygraph work represented a focused period of collaboration with prominent forensic psychiatry researchers at Newcastle.

Parsons's key contribution to polygraph science was investigating whether periodic polygraph testing acted as a deterrent for sex offenders engaging in risk behavior, finding that polygraph testing reduced the seriousness of risk behaviors but only after offenders experienced the test itself. Working as part of a UK-based research team, he co-authored studies examining post-conviction sex offender testing (PCSOT) that helped establish evidence for the utility of polygraph in sex offender management. His research involved allocating fifty community-based male sex offenders into "Polygraph Aware" and "Polygraph Unaware" groups, revealing that 97% of those tested disclosed high-risk behaviors previously unknown to supervising probation officers.

Parsons's work contributed to the development of polygraph testing methodology for PCSOT using the Comparison Question Technique, and his 2004 studies with Grubin, Madsen, Sosnowski, and Warberg became frequently cited in the international literature on sex offender polygraph testing. His research findings on fuller disclosure of deviant sexual behavior and high-risk behaviors have been consistently referenced alongside other utility studies in the field. His primary collaborators were Don Grubin (Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at Newcastle) and Lars Madsen, with whom he formed a productive research team examining polygraph applications in forensic psychiatry.