A control question test oriented towards students.

Abstract

Control Question Tests were altered for 12 of 24 students who were examined with a polygraph about a mock crime which half of them had committed. The altered tests substituted control questions about students' cheating and plagiarism for the standard questions about crime issues. Responses to the altered tests were compared with those from tests using regular control questions which are usually about criminal issues. All tests were conducted by a professor. Detection scores derived from response magnitudes of skin resistance differed between innocent (M = 2.0) and guilty participants (M = -1.9). Guilt and innocence interacted with the type of test. Those examined with control questions oriented towards students scored as more innocent when actually innocent (M = 4.3) than guilty students examined with the student form (M = -3.0) or the crime form (M = -0.8) of the test and innocent students (M = -0.3) examined with control questions oriented towards crimes. The discussion is augmented by results from a direct analysis of magnitude of scores.