Technical Affairs

by Mike Aamodt, Associate Editor

This month’s column will answer a question submitted by an ACN reader about the validity of military experience in predicating police officer success. The question is a timely one as we have just completed an extensive meta-analysis of the validity of a variety of law enforcement predictors (e.g. education, cognitive ability, personality, interests).

In this month’s column is also what we hope to be a little humor – a test to determine if you are a professional interviewer or what comedian Jeff Foxworthy might be tempted to call a “Redneck Interviewer.” You might want to score this “test” in the privacy of your own interview room.

Question:

Is it justified for a police department to give preference to applicants with military experience?

Answer:

Giving preference to applicants with prior military experience is a common practice with law enforcement agencies. There are two main ideas behind providing such a preference: rewarding veterans for their service to the country and assumed validity.

Rewarding Veterans for Their Military Service: In rewarding veterans for prior military service, an agency is not making any assumptions about validity. Instead, it provides some form of preferential hiring as a “thank you” for serving the country. Usually, this “thank you” is mandated by state or local law and comes in the form of adding 5 or 10 points to a veteran’s civil service examination score.

At times, this “thank you” is done more informally when an agency (typically full of veterans) decides to “break any ties” by opting for military veterans. The informal granting of such a preference is particularly common in a selection system using something such as a “rule of three” or “rule of five” wherein the names of the top three or five scorers on an exam are given to the Chief. The Chief then has sole authority to choose which of the top three or five scorers he or she wants to hire.

From a legal perspective, there is nothing wrong with providing preference for military veterans as the 1964 Civil Rights Act exempts such preference from adverse impact violations (examples of other exemptions include valid tests, bona fide seniority systems, national security).

Assumption of Validity: A second common reason for giving preference to veterans is the assumption that military veterans will be better cops than non-veterans because the military environment and training techniques are similar to those in many law enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, based on the nine available studies on this issue, there is no empirical support for such an assumption. As shown below, a meta-analysis of those nine studies indicates that there is no significant relationship between prior military service and either academy performance or patrol performance. In a meta-analysis, the average validity coefficient is consider statistically significant if the confidence interval around the average validity coefficient does not include zero. In this meta-analysis, the confidence intervals of -.02 to .12 for academy performance and -.09 to .03 for patrol performance include zero.

This lack of significance is an important finding because preference for veterans will result in adverse impact against females. Though such adverse impact is not illegal due to the aforementioned exemption, it is counter to the desire of most agencies to increase the number of females in law enforcement positions. And, this adverse impact is not accompanied by a higher quality workforce.

Meta-Analysis Results of the Validity of Prior Military Experience

Study	Criteria
	Academy Performance		Patrol Performance
	n	validity (r)	n	validity (r)
Mealia (1990)			500	-.09
Hooper (1988)	129	.14	129	-.08
Kedia (1985)			150	.28
Gottlieb and Baker (1974)			70	.00
Matyas (1980)			90	.02
McConnell (1967)			97	-.24
Lester (1979)	260	.04
Rose (1995)	203	.01
Scarfo (1996)	152	.06
Total Sample Size	744		1036
Average validity (r)		.05		-.03
95% confidence interval
Lower bound		-.02		-.09
Upper bound		.12		.03

References

Gottlieb, M.C., & Baker, C.F. (1974). Predicting police officer effectiveness. The Journal of Forensic Psychology, 6, 35-46.

Hooper, M.K. (1988). Relationship of college education to police officer job performance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Claremont Graduate School.

Kedia, P.R. (1985). Assessing the effect of college education of police job performance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Southern Mississippi.

Lester, D. (1979). Predictors of graduation from a police training academy. Psychological Reports. 44, 362.

McConnell, W.A. (1967). Relationship of personal history to success as a police patrolman. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Colorado State University.

Matyas, G.S. (1980). The relationship of MMPI and biographical data to police performance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Missouri-Columbia.

Media, R.M. (1990). Background factors and police performance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation.

Rose, J.E. (1995). Consolidation of law enforcement basic training academies: An evaluation of pilot projects. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Northern Arizona University.

Scarfo, S. (1996). Relationship between police academy performance and level of education. Unpublished research paper, Radford University.

Are You a Redneck Interviewer?

Give yourself a point toward being a redneck interviewer:

If you think EEO is a new Chevy truck model.
If a job applicant ever complimented you on the color of your tube top.
If applicants have to step around your dog to sit down.
If you think a circadian rhythm is a new dance step.
If the term “shift work” makes you think of sewing a dress.
If you think you should sort e-mail right before f-mail.
If you have ever asked an applicant “not including your spouse, how many siblings do you have?”
If you are surprised when an applicant’s license plate number and home address are not the same.
If you think SHRM is a guy you went to grade school with.
If you named your dog OSHA.