UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Developing core national indicators of public attitudes towards the police in Canada

Jackson, Jonathan; Bradford, Ben; Giacomantonio, Chris; Mugford, Rebecca; (2022) Developing core national indicators of public attitudes towards the police in Canada. Policing and Society 10.1080/10439463.2022.2102757. (In press). Green open access

[thumbnail of Developing core national indicators of public attitudes towards the police in Canada.pdf]
Preview
PDF
Developing core national indicators of public attitudes towards the police in Canada.pdf - Published Version

Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

Police departments regularly conduct public opinion surveys to measure attitudes towards the police. The results of these surveys can be used to shape and evaluate policing policy and practice. Yet the extant evidence base is hampered when people use different methods and when there is no common data standard. In this paper we present a set of 13 core national indicators that can be used by police services across Canada to ensure measurement quality and draw proper comparisons between regions and over time. Having identified a set of 50 survey questions through an expert consultation process, we field those items on a quota sample of 2527 Canadians. Our analysis of the survey data has three stages. First, we use confirmatory factor analysis to assess scale properties. Second, we use substitution analysis to identify 13 single indicators that ‘best stand in’ for each scale. Third, we use the set of 50 and the sub-set of 13 measures to test procedural justice theory for the first time in the Canadian context. Overall, those commissioning and managing public attitudes surveys can use the 13 core indicators as a conceptually-rich and empirically-validated tool through which to understand local survey data in the context of other municipal, provincial, territorial and national contexts.

Type: Article
Title: Developing core national indicators of public attitudes towards the police in Canada
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/10439463.2022.2102757
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2022.2102757
Language: English
Additional information: © 2022 Copyright of the Crown in Canada. Public Safety Canada This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Keywords: Procedural justice, measurement, police legitimacy, cooperation
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Security and Crime Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10152793
Downloads since deposit
105Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item