Quantified Assessment of AFIS Contextual Information on Accuracy and Reliability of Subsequent Examiner Conclusions

This project will determine whether commonly-available Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) information in the form of search scores and ranking have a bias effect on examiners during AFIS comparisons of the images associated with that data. If so, this study will determine practical measures to reduce the potential for error. The objectives of this multi-studies project are to: quantify whether the knowledge of a high AFIS score of a particular latent-candidate pairing biases the examiner toward identification, at different quality levels; quantify whether the knowledge of a low AFIS score of a particular latent-candidate pairing biases the examiner away from identification (i.e., toward exclusion or insufficiency), at different quality levels; quantify whether the knowledge of a first or first-three latent-candidate pairing biases the examiner toward identification, at different quality levels; and quantify whether the knowledge of a last or last-three latent-candidate pairing biases the examiner away from identification (i.e., toward exclusion or insufficiency), at different quality levels. ca/ncf