Validity of Officer Self-Reported Citizen Complaints

Abstract

This research note explores the use of self-report surveys in police samples to study citizen complaints. Officer self-reported citizen complaints are compared with official departmental complaints data among a sample of 440 officers in a large municipal police department. Findings reflect moderate correspondence between self-reported and official data for ever having been the subject of a complaint (data correspond for 77% of respondents; phi = .54). Validity appears stronger for dichotomous measures of complaints, compared with frequency measures, though correspondence was high among those officers self-reporting the frequency of complaints (data were within ±1 complaint for 78.5% of these respondents; r = .81 after removing outliers). Demographic correlates are similar for both official and self-report data. Results generally support the use of self-report surveys in police samples to study citizen complaints.

Keywords

self-reports citizen complaints police behavior

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