DoD Survey

An official Department of Defense survey of US law enforcement users of the CVSA®, released on 30 March 2007, conclusively demonstrates “that the CVSA is a useful tool.” The survey respondents made up a cross-section of US law enforcement, and had the following credentials:

• Combined 1,497 years of police officer experience
• Combined 500 years of CVSA® experience
• Total of 14,629 career CVSA® examinations

The survey clearly states the following:

• Approximately 86% of the respondents indicated they thought the CVSA® was either “Very” or “Extremely” effective in detecting stress.
• 84% of respondents indicated their initial training from NITV Federal Services had been either “Very” or “Extremely” effective.  (Note:  None of the respondents characterized their training as “not effective” or “slightly effective.”)
• The respondents reported that 75% of the CVSA® deception indicated results were verified by obtaining a confession (or an admission if it was a screening test) from the examination subject.
• The survey cited the CVSA® as having “a remarkably low error rate.”  The survey respondents further reported a 0.4% (less than 1%) false negative or false positive rate from the CVSA®.  (Note:  These results are based on the old CVSA®.  The new CVSA®III, with FACT Scoring System has been demonstrated to be consistently more effective at eliminating both false negative and false positive results.)

The survey concludes: “It is clear that the majority of the survey respondents believe the CVSA is a useful tool.  Key factors in this usefulness appear to be its ease of use, timeliness, affordability, and ability to help convince guilty subjects to confess.  It appears to be very helpful in clearing cases.”