APA run off election for VP - Private - Candidate Raymond Nelson

I understand there is to be a run-off election for the APA Vice President - Private position and that ballots have already been mailed out. The Polygraph Place promotes membership participation and to that end, we allow the publishing of candidacy statements for these elections. What follows is the statement for run-off candidate Raymond Nelson.

*********************************************************************************

Greetings again from Colorado:

I am contacting you again to request your vote in the current run-off election for APA Vice President – Private.

Why, you ask, do I think I am the best qualified candidate for the role of VP – Private?

Several reasons:

I am a goal-directed professional, who enjoys working hard and solving problems:

I am a polygraph examiner in private practice, and I also have cross-training and experience in related areas of clinical treatment and psycho diagnostics, forensic risk assessment, policy development, and inferential statistics and research.

I have extensive experience in sex offender treatment, (with adults and juveniles), treating victims of abuse, chronic mental health treatment, family and couples therapy, and treating persons with developmental disabilities.

I remain interested in all aspects of measurement and research as it applies not only to polygraph testing, but to mental health, sexual abuse, and risk management.

I attended polygraph school in 2000, and have been a polygraph examiner in private practice since 2001. Polygraph testing, for me, is not a side job, or second source of income. Polygraph testing is my full-time professional occupation.

As a self-employed professional running a small business, I am intimately aware of the challenges faced by independent professionals, including marketing, business operations, and the expense of continuing education. I am also aware of the importance of developing a healthy professional culture that is enthusiastic about the next phase of advancement.

Contributions to the polygraph profession:

In Colorado, I was a central and active participant in the development and re-development of the policies and procedures of the Sex Offender Management Board (SOMB), pertaining to polygraph testing, psycho-sexual risk assessment, and parental risk assessment with adult and juvenile sex offenders.

I have volunteered countless hours to the improvement of the polygraph science through the development of a powerful free computer scoring algorithm (OSS-3) that is available in the Lafayette and Limestone systems, is based on common inferential statistical approaches that will be instantly recognizable to statisticians and scientists in any scientific profession, and is designed to handle ZCT, MGQT and screening exams. In the spirit of service to the polygraph profession, we have open-sourced the algorithm and it is now available without cost to field examiners and researchers everywhere.

In the spirit of giving-back and collaboration with other professionals I have devoted much time to co-authoring several articles that have appeared in the Polygraph Journal.

APA and the future of polygraph... click to Ray Nelson's complete full statement