Polygraph use in police officer selection and hiring practices

¶ … Creswell, 2009). Given the range of resources that will come under study in this research, a meta-analysis is not readily applicable. Typically, with a retrospective study of this scale, more research is discarded than retained for analysis. Further, a number of large studies have been conducted on this general topic, including research commissioned by Congress ("CNSTAT," 2003; OTA," 1983). Using a descriptive research approach, the researcher will utilize primary and secondary data sources (Creswell, 2009). Document review will constitute a large proportion of the secondary research data. Primary research will consist of interviews with select Individuals in professional positions who are privy to agency information about the use and outcomes of polygraphs.

Instrumentation

The corpus of literature will provide a substantive amount of secondary data for analysis and will inform the direction of further efforts at primary research. A comprehensive literature review will be employed to identify pertinent documents for study. The focus of the inquiry is the use of polygraphs for the purpose of selecting candidates for police training and hiring by police forces of various types, including municipal police departments, state troopers, and federal special agency forces.

The purpose of the structured interviews is to enhance access to information about misconduct statistics in which personnel selection included the use of polygraphs. Secondary research data will coded using a constant comparative qualitative technique or through the use of qualitative research data (QRD) software. In either case, the role of the researcher in the coding process is that of interpreter, the performance of which is enhanced by his expertise in organizations with criminal justice functions.

Structured interviews will be conducted with relevant participants who are nominated using a snowball referencing approach, in which individuals who have been interviewed may recommend others for the interview process. This is a conventional approach to selecting study participants in qualitative research.

Sampling Procedures

The sampling frame will be non-probability sampling based on the identification of agencies that use polygraphs in their selection of police training candidates and similar applications. The sampling process will entail convenience sampling according to the availability of participants with relevant knowledge about the use of polygraphs in their organizations, and also on the willingness of individuals in the population to participate in the study.

Data Collection & Analysis

The contexts from which the secondary research data was obtained will tend to dictate the actual data collection procedures. Organizations and agencies will differ with regard to procedures for access, for data replication, and for citation. Since the thrust of the research is policy implementation, this research will utilize policy analysis structures and processes (Ross & Esposito, 2005; Segrave, 2004). There is a clear interdependency between policy analysis and implementation research, and elements of both are evident in the background against which this research will be conducted. Many factors must be considered regarding the ethics and efficacy of using polygraphs human resource functions (Iacono, 2001). Policy implementation research must be conducted contextually. This means that any textual analysis, as in secondary research approaches, must also be considered within context.

The documents obtained from agencies and organizations must be selected on the basis of clear demonstration that they are conceptually coherent and have been subject to evaluation prior to the proposed research examination. Reliability and validity are enhanced when the researchers are confident that the definitions of the independent variables have been constructed using plain language that is readily interpretable by others. To provide further assurances regarding reliability, inter-rater reliability measures will be conducted. In this manner, assistant researchers will use the established coding protocol on an independent basis in order to allow comparison of the ratings on the same excerpts of narratives.

Reporting Plan

The research findings will be disseminated in aggregate report form to all participating agencies and organizations as part of the agreement for their participation, as is typical of most syndicated primary research. All data collected from individuals will be preserved only in coded format with unique numerical identifiers. Data will be retained in digital format for five years and then will be destroyed. All participants of the study will have been informed of these conditions for data retention and research findings.