Police Officer Conscientiousness Case Study

Psychological assessment: Being a police officer is an extremely difficult career as they are tasked to deal with a lot of negative aspects of human nature, while having to operate within the law and their agency policies. (Dantzker, 2011) Being involved with law enforcement is considered to be one of the most dangerous and stressful jobs in existence, and because of this, agencies must find suitable recruits who can handle these demands in an adequate manner. (Dantzker, 2011) For well over 50 years, police agencies have been using psychological assessments in order to improve officer selection in recruits, growing from 67% of law enforcement agencies in the United States of America in 1990, increasing all the way up to over 91% in 2003.
(Arrigo & Claussen, 2003) The goal of this assessment is to identify and assess an individual’s personality characteristic of conscientiousness, as research shows that individuals who have high levels of conscientiousness are known to perform well on the job. (Arrigo & Claussen, 2003; Barrick & Mount, 1991) Some of the attributes associated with people who have a high level of conscientiousness include a high amount of integrity, most are honest, thorough and have an orientation to achievement. (Barrick & Mount, 1991) These characteristics are crucial for any police officer to come equipped with as it will dramatically increase police productivity and reduce corruption, such as anti-social behaviour, shakedowns such as taking bribes and even theft. (Arrigo & Claussen,
(Arrigo & Claussen, 2003) The IPI is a 310-question true / false test to identify various behavioural and personality characteristics, with questions designed to identify suitable candidates for jobs relevant in the police force such as substance abuse and trouble with the law. (Detrick, et al., 2016) For example, the IPI was put to test in a police recruit assessment, later showing that it predicted 72% of male officers and 83% of female officers who were then later terminated from the agencies. (Arrigo & Claussen, 2003; Inwald, 2008) As well as this, a variety of studies have supported the validity of the IPI for predicting police performance including ‘acting out’ indicators and poor performances in academic tasks. One study conducted to demonstrate the accuracy of the test used 1214 females and 3728 male officer candidates who were hired between 1980 and 1985. “Predictions for the “poor” performance category made by the original IPI were up to 41% more accurate than predictions made without benefit of psychological and biographical information gathered in a pre-employment setting.” (Inwald, 2008) On top of this, it has been shown to outperform psychologist ratings and interviews regarding predicting future terminations in law enforcement agencies. (Detrick et al., 2016) As shown,