Considering Objective and Subjective Measures for Police Use of Force Evaluation

Paula M. Di Nota, Jennifer F. Chan, Juha-Matti Huhta and Judith P. Andersen
Additional contact information
Paula M. Di Nota: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada
Jennifer F. Chan: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada
Juha-Matti Huhta: Police University College, 33721 Tampere, Finland
Judith P. Andersen: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 10, 1-12

Abstract: In spite of significant interest in the application of police use of force (UOF) from organisations, researchers, and the general public, there remains no industry standard for how police UOF is trained, and by extension, evaluated. While certain UOF behaviours can be objectively measured (e.g., correct shoot/no shoot decision making (DM), shot accuracy), the subjective evaluation of many UOF skills (e.g., situation awareness, SA) falls to the discretion of individual instructors. The aim of the current brief communication is to consider the operationalisation of essential UOF behaviours as objective and subjective measures, respectively. Using longitudinal data from a sample of Canadian police officers ( n = 57) evaluated during UOF training scenarios, we discuss how objective and subjective measures reflect changes in officer performance over time. Objective lethal force DM was measured as a binary ‘correct–incorrect’ outcome and subjective SA was measured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘unacceptable’ to ‘exceptional’. Subjective evaluation of SA demonstrated significant changes over time, while DM remained relatively high and stable. Given the practical and professional implications of UOF, we recommend that a combination of objective and subjective measures is systematically implemented at all stages of police UOF training and evaluation (i.e., basic, advanced, in-service).

Keywords: evaluation; assessment; objective measures; subjective measures; decision-making; situation awareness; police; use of force (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/10/5351/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/10/5351/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:10:p:5351-:d:556574

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().