Job Analysis of the Entry-Level Patrol Officer Job With the District of Columbia Police Department

• NCJ Number: 86533
• Author(s): L I Wetrogan; C C Diane
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 81 pages
• Corporate Author: US Office of Personnel Management
• Sale Source: National Technical Information Service
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The present report describes a job analysis study conducted by the Office of Personnel Management to help in the development of an entry-level examination for Washington D.C. police officers.

Abstract

The study utilized a task analysis approach and a task-by-ability matching procedure to identify the knowledges, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAO's) necessary for successful performance of the patrol officer job. Three hundred and fifty patrol officers responded to an inventory containing 317 task statements. Those tasks statements in the highest third on rated importance were linked to a set of KSAO's using a task-by-ability rating format. The results indicated that cognitive and social-personal attributes were the most important for differentiating superior from barely acceptable performance of the most important police officer tasks. Physical and perceptual attributes tended to be rated as below average in importance. A high level of agreement was obtained between men and women and black and white patrol officers in terms of rated importance of the KSAO's. The results of the job analysis served as the basis for the development of an experimental written test. (NTIS abstract)