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Police and Citizen Value Systems: Some Cross‐sectional Comparisons
Author(s) -
Griffeth Rodger W.,
Cafferty Thomas P.
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1977.tb00745.x
Subject(s) - generality , psychology , social psychology , value (mathematics) , sample (material) , test (biology) , rank (graph theory) , spearman's rank correlation coefficient , statistics , mathematics , combinatorics , paleontology , chemistry , chromatography , psychotherapist , biology
Rokeach, Miller, and Snyder (1971) have reported evidence for a “value gap” between samples of police and citizens in the midwest. The objectives of the present study were: (1) to examine the generality of this finding for another section of the country, the southeast; (2) to extend the analysis from the comparisons of individual values to the comparison of configurations of values between police and citizens; and (3) to compare the police sample from the Rokeach et al. study with the police sample from this study. The Rokeach Value Survey was administered to 104 South Carolina police officers and to 316 citizens sampled in a variety of South Carolina community settings. Group comparisons were made on the rank ordered individual values using the median test. In addition, group median rank orders were compared using the Spearman correlation. The results for the individual values generally supported the findings of Rokeach et al. (1971). For the value configurations, the police‐community correlations were uniformly high, indicating general agreement on the relative order of most values. Results of the cross‐sectional comparison of police samples revealed a very high degree of correspondance for both individual values and configurations.