Maryland Police Officers in the U.S - Research Paper Example

The research hypothesis is that the personal characteristics of police officers directly influence their effectiveness in conducting their duties.

Summary of variables

1. Dependent variable – effectiveness in police work
2. Independent variables:
3. Dominance
4. Functional intelligence
5. Autonomous achievement
6. Controlling variables:
7. Leadership
8. Suitability for police work

Research constructs are ideas that help build up an issue for which the researcher wants to study. The researcher believes that the construct of efficacy within police officers is influenced by their personality traits. He further postulates that these traits revolve around the constructs of leadership and the Force’s own internal recruiting criteria. The researcher begins by asserting that the spotting and choosing of competent police officers is a pertinent social concern for all stakeholders. The ability to acquire persons and develop valid measurement mechanisms that have such predictive ability is invaluable according to the researcher. These are quasi-experimental variables. The conditions of the study are several. Firstly, the sample size is exclusively comprised of male cadets and who have had at least a year of highway patrol duty. Furthermore, the participants have completely undertaken the State’s leadership exam as prescribed by Gough (a pioneer scientist in the study of behavioral analysis). The statistical design is a quasi-experimental one. The hypothesis is of a causal relationship. The use of control variables helps to block the interference of confounding variables that might prevent this causal relationship from blossoming. The design uses analysis of covariance and standard deviation tests to evaluate the hypothesis.

Conclusion

Follow-up research may be conducted perhaps on another police department to identify the predisposition of personality traits to the efficiency of police work. Unlike in the above research which employed bias by using only one police department, and participants were drawn from one gender only, this research shall use a random selection of a sizeable group (perhaps even similar) but drawn from at least three separate police departments in different states.