OTA-Qualifying Field Studies of CQT Validity

The 10 field studies identified by the Office of Technology Assessment as meeting minimum scientific standards for CQT validity research.

Compilation of field studies meeting OTA minimum scientific standards, including confirmed ground truth and adequate methodological rigor.

The OTA identified 10 field studies meeting minimum scientific standards from the broader polygraph literature. Together they showed false positive rates ranging from 0-75% (averaging 19.1%) and false negative rates from 0-29.4% (averaging 10.2%). While variable, the preponderance showed detection rates substantially better than chance. The variability across studies reflects differences in methodology, examiner skill, and ground truth criteria.

These 10 studies formed the evidence base for the OTA Congressional review and established the standard for field validation research quality.

Background & Context

In 1983, the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment undertook a landmark systematic evaluation of polygraph research that would fundamentally shape understanding of lie detection validity for decades to come. Conducted at the request of the House Committee on Government Operations, the OTA review aimed to provide an objective assessment of polygraph validity to inform deliberations on proposed changes in Federal Government polygraph use. This occurred during a period of intense debate over expanding polygraph screening for national security purposes.

The OTA review addressed a critical gap in polygraph science: previous Federal debates had focused heavily on whether polygraph testing was scientifically valid, with prior congressional inquiries concluding there was little or no scientific basis for polygraph use, while prior scientific reviews contradicted each other, some concluding polygraph testing was almost 100 percent accurate, others that it was little better than chance. The field desperately needed a systematic, rigorous analysis using consistent scientific criteria.

OTA found that Federal Government use of polygraph tests had more than tripled over the preceding 10 years, with about 23,000 examinations conducted in 1982 compared to about 7,000 exams in 1973. The stakes were high: proposed policy changes would dramatically expand polygraph use beyond criminal investigations into routine personnel security screening, making an evidence-based assessment urgent.

Research Design & Methodology

By letter of February 3, 1983, the Committee on Government Operations asked OTA to assess the scientific evidence on polygraph validity based primarily on a critical review and evaluation of existing research; to conduct this assessment, OTA studied the actual polygraph examination process, reviewed the results of prior research reviews, analyzed a wide range of relevant field and analog studies, and surveyed Federal agencies. This multi-pronged approach provided both quantitative and qualitative assessment of available evidence.

The OTA team established rigorous inclusion criteria for field studies. Studies were considered field studies of validity if their sample consisted of actual instances of polygraph examinations conducted by professional polygraph examiners, used field-tested polygraph techniques, and used some independent criterion to assess actual guilt or innocence; although ground truth can probably never be known in an absolute sense, studies could be considered studies of validity only if they included some adequately described and systematically determined criterion of truth. Studies lacking independent verification were excluded as reliability studies rather than validity studies.

OTA identified 10 field studies that met minimum scientific standards and were conducted using the control question technique: Barland and Raskin, Bersh, Davidson, Horvath, Horvath and Reid, Hunter and Ash, Kleinmuntz and Szucko, Raskin, Slowick and Buckley, and Wicklander and Hunter. The OTA also reviewed six prior research reviews and 14 analog studies, creating the most comprehensive synthesis of polygraph validity evidence to that date.

Key methodological elements included:

• Systematic coding of study characteristics including verification criteria, examiner selection, and research design quality
• Analysis of both original examiner decisions and blind chart evaluations
• Inclusion of inconclusive results as errors rather than excluding them (which would artificially inflate accuracy rates)
• Separate evaluation of different ground truth criteria (confession, panel decisions, judicial outcomes)

Results & Key Findings

For research on the control question technique in specific-incident criminal investigations, false positive rates (innocent persons found deceptive) ranged from 0 to 75 percent and averaged 19.1 percent, while false negative rates (guilty persons found nondeceptive) ranged from 0 to 29.4 percent and averaged 10.2 percent. This represented the first comprehensive quantitative synthesis using consistent analytical methods.

The ten individual field studies showed substantial variability but consistently better-than-chance performance:

• Correct guilty detections: 70.6% to 98.6% (averaged 86.3%)
• Correct innocent detections: 2.5% to 94.1% (averaged 76%)
• False positive rate: 0% to 75% (averaged 19.1%)
• False negative rate: 0% to 29.4% (averaged 10.2%)

Six previous reviews of field studies showed average accuracy ranging from 64 to 98 percent, demonstrating the wide variability in prior assessments. The cumulative research evidence suggested that when used in criminal investigations, the polygraph test detects deception better than chance, but with error rates that could be considered significant.

OTA found a wide range of accuracy and error rates even among studies of the control question technique in criminal investigations; this accuracy range could be partially explained by variations in research design but perhaps to a greater extent by differences in examiners, examinees, question techniques, and conditions of testing. The study-to-study variation highlighted that polygraph accuracy was not a fixed property but depended critically on implementation.

Discussion & Significance

OTA concluded that no overall measure or single, simple judgment of polygraph testing validity could be established based on available scientific evidence. This finding was profoundly important: it meant policymakers could not rely on a single accuracy statistic but needed to understand validity as context-dependent and variable.

The review's significance extended beyond the specific numbers. Even though meeting minimal scientific standards, many research studies had various methodological problems that reduced the extent to which results could be generalized; cases and examiners were often sampled selectively rather than randomly; for field studies, criteria for actual guilt or innocence varied and in some studies were inadequate; only some versions of the control question technique had been researched. This systematic cataloging of limitations established new standards for future polygraph research.

Most critically for policy, OTA found no field studies on the validity of polygraph testing for preemployment screening or periodic screening. OTA concluded that while there was some evidence for the validity of polygraph testing as an adjunct to criminal investigations, there was very little research or scientific evidence to establish polygraph test validity in screening situations. This meant proposed expansions into personnel screening lacked scientific foundation.

Limitations & Considerations

Another selection of studies would yield different results, although OTA's selection represented the set of studies that met minimum scientific criteria; some researchers excluded inconclusive results in calculating accuracy rates, but OTA elected to include inconclusives on the grounds that an inconclusive is an error in the sense that a guilty or innocent person has not been correctly identified; exclusion of inconclusives would raise the overall accuracy rates calculated. This conservative analytical choice provided more realistic accuracy estimates but made comparison with other reviews challenging.

The OTA identified several critical limitations:

• Selective rather than random sampling of cases and examiners in most studies
• Variation in ground truth criteria, with some inadequate for definitive verification
• Research limited to specific versions of CQT, leaving many variants unstudied
• Lack of systematic exploration of examiner, subject, setting, and countermeasure effects
• No validation research for the screening applications being proposed for expanded use

All studies had substantial problems of research design, especially with case and examiner selection; as a result, the studies may represent a highly select sample of cases; these caveats limited the confidence that could be placed in any conclusions about polygraph validity based on field research.

Practical Applications

The OTA review established that polygraph validity cannot be reduced to a single number—accuracy depends on application, examiner skill, testing conditions, and subject characteristics. For criminal investigations where the CQT had been extensively studied, evidence supported validity better than chance but with significant error rates averaging 19.1% false positives and 10.2% false negatives. Practitioners must recognize this means roughly 1 in 5 innocent suspects may be incorrectly classified as deceptive, with serious consequences.