Advancing Knowledge and Practice in Policing: A Longitudinal Platform for National Research

The proposed continuation project has four primary objectives. First, the project will include a national probability sample of 100 law enforcement agencies with representative diversity in agency size, agency type, and region of the country. This sample will allow for generalizability of the findings to agencies serving populations between 25,000 and 500,000, which includes the majority of police departments nationwide. Second, the research team will administer two types of organizational surveys - employee surveys that will attempt to reach nearly all agency personnel and key person surveys that will attempt to reach individuals who can inform the research team about particular internal organizational capacities (e.g., leadership; police management and accountability; employee development and professionalism; and, innovation and evidence-based policing). Third, a public satisfaction survey (to be called the Police-Citizen Interaction Survey, PCIS) will be administered to measure the quality of police services in terms of procedural justice, victim sensitivity, and legitimacy in the project's sample of 100 police agencies. The organizational and PCIS surveys will be supplemented by Census, LEMAS, and UCR data. LEMAS data will be used to capture additional personnel and agency characteristics, while the 2010 Census and UCR data will provide additional community characteristics and agency performance indicators as reflected in local crime rates. Finally, the project will provide standardized feedback to all 100 agencies to help improve the functions of the agencies. nca/ncf