From Glenn Langenburg, St. Paul, Minnesota:

Our research team (a collaboration between the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and Penn State Univ in the U.S.) would like to invite you to participate in the NIJ funded research study titled “Improving the Understanding and the Reliability of the Concept of 'Sufficiency' in Friction Ridge Examinations”. Details of the study can be found under the grant 2010-DN-BX-K267.

We are seeking LATENT PRINT EXAMINERS to participate in this research.  We also will accept participants who are currently training to become latent print examiners. You will be asked several questions in a pre-test survey regarding your training and experience.

The aim of the study is to understand:  What does a latent print examiner consider to be “sufficient”?  We are looking at sufficiency in the Analysis Phase of ACE-V for determining “value” of a latent print. We are also exploring sufficiency during the Evaluation phase for the determination of “individualization” and “exclusion” decisions.

The experiment consists of 15 trials (plus a practice trial). You will need a computer (PC or Mac will work) with an internet connection. It is preferable that you use Firefox, Safari, or Google Chrome as a browser. There are known problems with Internet Explorer, especially older versions.

It is estimated that it will take approximately 4 hours (approximately 15 minutes per trial) to complete the experiment. You will log into a secure server with an anonymous and unique user name and password. You will use a platform for documenting called “PiAnoS 4” (Picture Annotation System 4).  If you have used a previous version of PiAnoS before, you will notice that it has been significantly updated with new tools to map the quality (clarity), mark Level 3 Detail, and mark features such as scars and creases. You may work at your own pace, stopping and continuing as needed over a couple of sessions.

For your participation in the study, we are offering participants a number of “goodies”. Participants who complete the entire study (all 16 trials) will receive a unique code to redeem their “goodies”. We are offering: 1) free access to PiAnoS 4 on the University of Lausanne server, 2) a DVD with all the images from the study, 3) images of over a thousand latent prints and corresponding 10-print cards, 4) transcripts and power point presentations from a couple of recent admissibility hearings, which have not yet been made available to the community, 5) a pdf copy of my PhD thesis—a 300 page + document with over a dozen studies and their raw data on ACE-V research, and 6) training materials, documents, distortion cases (compiled by Charles Parker and Sandy Siegel), articles, presentations, and much more. In addition, 1 in 20 participants will be randomly selected to receive a hard copy of the printed version of my PhD thesis.

If you are interested in participating, please email my research assistant, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . She will provide you with instructions and details to participate.

We will be collecting data through August 1, 2012.