NCJ Number
100103
Date Published
Unknown
Length
63 pages
Annotation
This paper is designed to acquaint police administrators with the range of procedures that have been developed to deal with multicriterion decision problems and their applicability to decisionmaking involved in the assessment of overall police department performance.
Abstract
Following a review of the wide range of performance measures available and the difficulties of combining multiple measures, three broad categories of systematic procedures for dealing with multicriteria decisions are delineated. These include unidimensional approaches, nonmathematical group techniques, and formal (mathematical) procedures. Emphasis is placed on the formal procedures and their potential in police and other public-sector applications. A large variety of these procedures are described in three major groups: purely formal procedures, such as vector maximum programming and multiobjective linear programming; iterative interactive procedures, such as the Zionts-Wallenius method and Steuer's interactive procedure; and mixed procedures which include both purely formal data and individual decisionmaker preference. On the basis of an analysis of both formal and user considerations, four of the mixed procedures are viewed as most appropriate for use in police performance assessment: social judgment theory, multiattribute utility technology, the analytic hierarchy process, and compromise programming. It is suggested that these four procedures be pilot tested to examine their relative effectiveness, utility, and acceptance by police managers. 53 references and footnotes.