Improving Officer Decision-Making: Can Personality Predict Outcomes in Use of Force Decisions? North Carolina and South Carolina, 2018-2020 (ICPSR 38687)
Version Date: Apr 11, 2024 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
M. Lyn Exum, University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Department of Criminal Justice;
Shelley L. Johnson, University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Department of Criminal Justice;
Joseph B. Kuhns, University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Department of Criminal Justice;
Samuel E. DeWitt, University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Department of Criminal Justice
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38687.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
The current study sought to examine the impact of select psychological, cognitive, professional experience and social network factors on police officers' decisions to use force. Additionally, the study examined the impact of a brief citizen education intervention (i.e. the completion of police officer training simulations) on citizens' attitudes toward police and use of force. All participants completed three training scenarios inside a firearms training simulator.
A sample of law enforcement officers and civilians took part in the study. Participants completed a series of questionnaires designed to measure, among other things:
- Positive and Negative Emotionality
- Need for Cognition
- Cognitive Reflection
- Professional experiences as a police officer (law enforcement participants only)
- Size of friendship networks within the workplace (law enforcement participants only)
- Perceptions of how their friendship networks would be impacted if the participant were to use excessive force (law enforcement participants only)
- Pre-post measures of attitudes toward police (civilian participants only)
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
- There are a total of 167 respondents in the data file. Each respondent contributes three cases to the overall data file, one case for each of the three firearm training scenarios (see the variable SCENARIO). A total of 64 law enforcement officers participated across 7 de-identified departments; and 103 civilians were also surveyed.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
This study sought to examine the impact of select psychological, cognitive, social, and professional factors on police officers' decisions to use force. A secondary focus was to examine the impact of first-hand experiences with making use of force decisions on citizens' attitudes toward the police.
Study Design View help for Study Design
All participants completed three training scenarios inside a firearms training simulator. Participants interacted with noncompliant suspects on video screens and could attempt to resolve the conflict with de-escalation tactics, non-lethal force options (pepper spray or taser), or lethal force (firearm). All participants completed the same three scenarios, each with a separate task for the participant to complete. The tasks were:
- Removing a homeless man with an apparent mental illness from the town park after hours (low threat encounter)
- Subduing a suspect who is actively avoiding arrest and is about to stomp on a police officer who was pushed to the ground (medium threat)
- Subduing a suspect who has overpowered a police officer and is holding a gun to the officer's head (high threat)
Data collected from these training exercises included:
- Whether or not the participant used any type of force
- If force was used, the length of time required to make that decision
- The type of response tactic the participant used, be it de-escalation techniques, non-lethal force options (pepper spray or taser), or lethal force option
Finally, immediately before and after civilians completed the training scenarios, they completed a series of questions designed to measure their attitude toward police and police use of force. These questions can be grouped into four broad categories:
- Civilians' impressions of the difficulty and dangerousness of police work
- Civilians' views of police officer professionalism and decision making
- Civilians' views on the appropriate level of force in various confrontational situations
- Civilians' global perceptions of the police
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
The universe of sworn law enforcement officers across seven participating departments in North Carolina and South Carolina were targeted for this study. A convenience sample of officers responded to the recruitment materials.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
All sworn officers from seven participating law enforcement departments were invited to participate. The total number of officers who were invited was 548. Of these, 117 officers (21%) were recruited into the study and completed some portion of the project; however, only 64 officers (11%) completed enough data elements to be included in the project.
Civilian residents of the selected county were invited to participate through social media, fliers, e-mails to businesses, etc. The target goal was to get 100 participating civilians which was met.
Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales
- Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire - Brief Form (MPQ-BF)
- Need for Cognition (NFC)
- Cognitive Reflection Test
Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2024-04-11
Version History View help for Version History
2024-04-11 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.
This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.