A longitudinal predictive study of success and performance of law enforcement officers.

Abstract

A 20-year longitudinal study of biographical, psychological, and aptitudinal variables predictive of successful police performance is described. Subjects were 95 men appointed as deputy sheriffs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department between 1947 and 1950. Among the significant predictors, stepwisediscriminant analysis yielded as "best" predictors of at least one criterion of success, age, height, the civil service written test score, scale 9 of the MMPI, the Kuder Mechanical scale, and the Guilford-Martin General Activity scale.There is need for work identifying reliable and valid predictors of police performance (for a review, see Becker & Felkenes, 1968). Although most studies have involved concurrent validity (e.g., Sterne, 1960; Baehr, Furcon, & Froemel, 1968), a 7-year prediction study by Blum (1964) found correlations between predictors (including MMPI scales) and such criteria as supervisors' ratings, misconduct and commendations. Marsh (1962), in a 10-year predictive study of sheriffs employed in Los Angeles County, established that certain performance criteria could be successfully predicted by various test scores, ratings and biodata. The present paper reports the results of a follow-up of some of these same officers after a 20-year period. The primary objectives of the study were (a) to evaluate the continued significance of Marsh's 10-year predictors as 20-year predictors and (&) to determine for each criterion the "best" among those predictors found significant. METHOD SubjectsThe subjects were 95 male law enforcement officers chosen from two randomly selected classes from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Academy. All subjects were appointed as deputies in 1947-1950.

Psychological Assessment of Airline Pilot Applicants With the MMPI-2

“…The reasons for the broad use of the MMPI in these programs include its relative ease of administration, objective scoring and interpretation procedures, and external validity for characterizing personality and clinically relevant symptomatic behavior of individuals from the general population. In spite of the fact that the MMPT was originally developed for use in medical and psychiatric 32 BUTCHER screening, a number of studies have documented the utility of the MMPI in personnel screening (Azen, Snibbe, & Montgomery, 1973;Bernstein, 1980;Bernstein, Schoenfeld, & Costello, 1982;Bernstein, Teng, Grannemann, & Garbin, 1987;Beutler, Nussbaum, & Meredith, 1988;Beutler, Storm, Kirkish, & Gaines, 1985;Costello, Schoenfeld, & Kobos, 1982;Fulkerson, Freud, & Raynor, 1958;Fulkerson & Sells, 1958;Geist & Boyd, 1980;Goorney, 1970;Murphy, 1972;Saccuzzo, Higgins, & Lewandowski, 1974;Schoenfeld, Kobos, & Phinney, 1980;Scogin & Beutler, 1986;Scogin & Reiser, 1976). Nevertheless, the interpretation of MMPI profiles in personnel screening requires some modification, because the manner in which job applicants respond to personality items is different from the way in which other nonclinical subjects respond.…”

The Use of the MMPI as a Measure of Personal Adjustment in Career Counseling

“…This practice is based on the &dquo;birds-of-a-feather&dquo; assumption that different occupations attract and/or foster unique personality characteristics and, hence, the closer the match between applicant characteristics and the prototype of successful incumbent characteristics, the higher the likelihood of job success (Katzell, 1964). Examples of such studies over the past two decades include fire fighters (Arvey, Mussio, & Payne, 1972), law enforcement and corrections officers (Azen, Snibbe, & Montgomery, 1973;Hooke & Krause, 1971;Peterson & Branson, 1986;Soloway, Hays, & Zieben, 1976), counselor trainees (Bonynge & Hoffman, 1977;Schoenfield, Preston, & Adams, 1976), nurses (Burgess, Duffey, & Temple, 1972), military training cadets (Callan, 1972), physician's assistants (Crovitz, Huse, & Lewis, 1973), skydivers (Delk, 1973), and managers (Harrell & Harrell, 1973). Finally, many studies have been reported using MMPI scores as predictors of job performance for a wide variety of occupational groups.…”

Personality Judgment and the Utility of the Unstructured Employment Interview

“…Research has supported the belief that personality is important for optimal functioning in certain jobs. For example, self-report personality questionnaire responses and trait ratings by interviewers have been shown to predict the performance of police officers (Azen, Snibbe, & Montgomery, 1973;Landy, 1976). Similarly, personality ratings by colleagues have been shown to predict the teaching performance of college professors (Murray, Rushton, & Paunonen, 1990).…”