WS - E - Conducting Community Surveys

Introduction Why undertake a community survey? The widespread adoption of community policing across the nation has increased the interest in law enforcement agencies’ conducting community surveys. Many police engaged in community policing want to know “how we're doing” from the citizens’ perspective. Community surveys provide descriptive information that goes beyond the traditional measures of police workload, arrest activity, reported offenses, and calls for service. Besides, since community police officers are trying to be responsive to community concerns, any complete measure of success would have to include asking the members of the community themselves. Community surveys at a city-wide or county-wide level can be designed to provide police with reliable feedback from citizens about perceptions of police performance. In addition, these surveys collect information about criminal victimization, residents’ views about crime, and their willingness to report crime to the police. From a police management perspective, these surveys collect information about the most effective approaches to dealing with crime. Since these surveys provide a measure of police performance, they can be used to analyze the way police deliver services and possibly change the allocation of resources where needed. Some community surveys provide detailed information about specific problems affecting parts of a city, which helps in focusing police resources. Survey research is a science and requires that accepted practices be followed. But carrying out surveys need not be intimidating. Even terms such as field testing, validation, sampling and statistical analyses need not be barriers to you if you want to conduct survey research to shed light on police practices. You can partner with a local college, university, or research firm to assist you in developing and administering the survey as well as reporting the findings. Local colleges, universities, and research firms can assist you with survey issues addressed throughout this guide, including validity, reliability, purpose, probability sampling, survey administration, and analyzing and interpreting survey results. Survey research is straightforward, although it can be time-consuming to follow acceptable practices. To make available good community surveys and reliable survey methods to cities, counties, and states, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in the U.S. Department of Justice have developed a software package that includes a standardized community survey you can administer by telephone. The entire questionnaire is included at no cost in the software package available to government agencies and researchers. This guide comes with the software and its technical how-to manual. It gives practical, basic pointers for police in conducting community surveys. It provides an overview of key issues involved in conducting survey research. This guide provides some basic do’s and don’ts for conducting surveys that can withstand Conducting Community Surveys 1