Intelligence and the Selection of Police Recruits (From Police and Policing: Contemporary Issues, Second Edition, P 15-36, 1999, Dennis J. Kenney and Robert P. McNamara, eds. -- See NCJ-179842)

• NCJ Number: 179843
• Author(s): Dennis J. Kenney; T. Steuart Watson
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 22 pages
• Sale Source: Praeger Publishers
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Reprinted from American Journal of Police, V 9, N 4

Annotation

This chapter examines the scores obtained by police trainees on one of the more reliable intelligence exams, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), in order to stimulate thought and research on issues related to the matching of applicant abilities with police functions as well as to explore the usefulness of using the WAIS-R as one screening measure.

Abstract

Research subjects were newly hired recruits for the police department of a mid-sized southeastern city. Each of the new officers was hired between November 1986 and May 1987 and began attending one of three classes at the regional police academy. It was during their academy assignment that each recruit was asked by the police department to take the WAIS-R voluntarily. All 36 of the recruits agreed to participate in the research. The WAIS-R is composed of six verbal and five performance (non-verbal) subtests. From these subtests, a Verbal Scale IQ, a Performance Scale IQ, and a Full-Scale IQ are derived. The results from the testing of the recruits show that the verbal comprehension skills of the group closely followed a normal distribution, suggesting that most had adequate verbal abilities to deal with the public and other consumers of their services. As a group, the sample's perceptual organizational skills, as measured by the Performance Scale IQ, were somewhat lower than their verbal abilities. Higher scores reflect the ability to analyze accurately and synthesize visually presented information and produce a timely motor response. Still, the differences found in the sample suggest that most recruits should have few difficulties with the police tasks that require perceptual abilities. Correlating significantly with most academy measures, those officers with higher IQs overall tended to score higher on academy measures than did those with lower IQs. The authors conclude that the varied results obtained from the WAIS-R testing will pose major problems to the problem-oriented policing strategies being considered by the agency involved. Even if implementation is properly done, the officers tested cannot uniformly perform the tasks that will be expected of them. This test of "intelligence" is thus appropriate for screening in agencies with an emphasis on problem-oriented policing strategies. 4 tables and a 47-item bibliography