Assisting With Inquiries - Problems of Research on the Police

• NCJ Number: 80110
• Author(s): R Reiner
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 31 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: Paper presented to the British Sociological Association Survey Research Group colloquium on 'Survey Research and the Law,' held at Warwick University, April 10-12, 1979 - Published in 'Quantitative Sociology Newsletter,' N 22, (Summer 1979)

Annotation

This British article discusses shifts in research methods in police studies which occurred after the 1960's, details the survey methodology used in a 1973 sociological study of police unionism, and identifies problems often encountered in survey work among police.

Abstract

Police research expanded considerably in both Great Britain and the United States after the 1960's, largely because of the upsurge in race riots, the antiwar protest movements, rapidly rising crime rates, and new patterns of deviance such as drug use. The growth of academic police research must also be traced to intellectual changes within sociology and criminology which are reflected in changes in methodology. A table of approximately 85 research studies on the police conducted in Great Britain and the United States during the 1960's and early 1970's shows that interview techniques favored in the early years were displaced by observational techniques or an historical approach. This reflects an increasing emphasis on labeling theory and concern with causes of police violations of due process legality, areas where interviews alone may not provide reliable data. After discussing the benefits and weaknesses of observation and historical methods, the article reviews the methodology used in a 1973 study of police unionism, which is the only research of the later period to use interviews as the main information source. In cooperation with the Police Federation and the Home Office, this project was concerned with police attitudes toward work and unions. The final sample consisted of 168 police officers, an overall response rate of 76 percent. Refusals to be interviewed when first approached by letter accounted for 70 percent of the nonresponses. A discussion of the tape recording methods used includes excerpts from several interviews. The conclusion focuses on the difficulties of survey work among the police, such as negotiation of access and handling relationships with informants so that they do not see the interviewer as either a subversive outsider or an official spy. The paper provides footnotes and 28 references.