Understanding public attitudes towards the police: Co-variates of satisfaction, trust, and confidence
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2020
Abstract
Prior research on public attitudes towards the police has tended to refer to three concepts-satisfaction with the police, confidence in the police, and trust in the police-entirely interchangeably. Recently, there has been a call to differentiate these three concepts. The current study seeks to address this research gap by analysing a unique Canadian dataset that includes all three concepts. The main research question that the study tries to answer is whether significant co-variates will differ in predicting the three concepts. Th e findings indicate that diff erent models have slightly diff erent demographic co-variates, but they share three of the same co-variates: Dissatisfaction with prior citizen-police contacts, victimization, and neighbourhood conditions. The study suggests that while differentiating these three concepts may be promising, it is important, efficient, and practical to handle the three shared co-variates to improve overall public attitudes towards the police.
Recommended Citation
Hu, Xiaochen; Dai, Mengyan; DeValve, Michael J.; and Lejeune, Andrew, "Understanding public attitudes towards the police: Co-variates of satisfaction, trust, and confidence" (2020). College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 294.
https://digitalcommons.uncfsu.edu/college_humanities_social_sciences/294