Criterion Validity of the Directed Lie Screening Test and the Empirical Scoring System with Inexperienced Examiners and Non-naive Examinees in a Laboratory Setting

A cohort of inexperienced polygraph examiner trainees from the Iraqi National Information and Investigative Agency (NIIA) and Director General for Intelligence and Security (DGIS) Polygraph Programs used the Directed Lie Screening Test (DLST) with non-naive examinees in a mock espionage scenario as part of their field-training activities. Unweighted decision accuracy was .855 with an inconclusive rate of .086. There were no significant differences in the distribution of deceptive and truthful scores and the distributions of scores from a previous Monte Carlo study on the DLST. A series of two-way analyses showed there were no significant differences between criterion accuracy achieved by ESS scores of DLST examinations and that reported in the development studies on the Test for Espionage and Sabotage.