NCJ Number
84810
Date Published
1976
Length
364 pages
Annotation
To determine the feasibility of employing women as state traffic officers (STOs), the California Highway Patrol (CHP) conducted a two-year study.
Abstract
The CHP employed forty-one women and forty-two men as traffic officers and gave them the standard sixteen-week training given all new officers. After graduation, the officers were assigned to highway patrol commands in various parts of the state and their performance was evaluated. The department also conducted surveys of the public and of department personnel during both years of the study to discover the attitudes that existed about women STOs. The study concluded that it is feasible to employ women as STOs; the cost of recruiting, training, and maintaining a woman as an STO is higher than for a man, but not exorbitantly so; improved selection and training procedures can reduce the cost of employing women; and academy grades were strongly correlated with men's and women's performance in the field. Doubts about the ability of women to perform as STOs centered primarily around the issue of physical strength, but the data collected was not sufficient to resolve the issue. It was recommended that future STO recruitment efforts be aimed toward those candidates most likely to meet the job qualifications; future research should be conducted on minimum physical qualifications for STOs; the minimum education requirements for STOs should be raised to include college hours; and individualized training should be provided to cadets during academy training. (About three-quarters of the document consists of appended materials.) (Resources in Education (ERIC) abstract)