Purpose

Many authors describe police culture as a relevant determinant of officers' health, policing behavior and reaction to change. Investigation of such relationships requires an appropriate instrument for measuring police culture.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper proposes a questionnaire containing 20 values that are characteristic of police culture (e.g. masculinity, loyalty, solidarity). In an online survey, 153 German police officers described their last workgroups in terms of how typical these values are. Besides conducting item and factor analyses, multiple regression models were tested to explore the effect of group characteristics on police culture.

Findings

A four-factor solution, comprising (1) conservative-male culture, (2) institutional pride culture, (3) team culture and (4) diligence culture, seems to fit the data best. Significant predictors of the police culture total score are percentage of male officers, average age of the group and service in a problematic district.

Research limitations/implications

Overall, the results indicate that police culture is a measurable multidimensional construct, which substantially depends on the composition and the operational area of the workgroup. A limitation of the study is the retrospective and subjective assessment of cultural values.

Originality/value

The questionnaire presented in this paper depicts the culture of police workgroups in a differentiated way and is able to detect cultural variation within the police. Future research could draw on the questionnaire to investigate determinants and consequences of police culture.

中文翻译：

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警察文化的维度–定量分析

目的

许多作者将警察文化描述为警官健康，治安行为和对变化的反应的相关决定因素。对这种关系的调查需要一种衡量警察文化的适当手段。

设计/方法/方法

本文提出了一个包含20种价值观的问卷，这些价值观是警察文化的特征（例如男子气概，忠诚度，团结度）。在一项在线调查中，有153名德国警察按照这些价值观的典型性描述了他们的最后一个工作组。除了进行项目和因素分析外，还测试了多个回归模型以探讨群体特征对警察文化的影响。

发现

包括（1）保守男性文化，（2）机构自豪文化，（3）团队文化和（4）勤奋文化在内的四要素解决方案似乎最适合数据。警察文化总分的重要预测因素是男警务人员的百分比，该小组的平均年龄和在有问题的地区的服务。

研究局限/意义

总体而言，结果表明，警察文化是一种可衡量的多维结构，它在很大程度上取决于工作组的组成和业务范围。该研究的局限性是对文化价值的回顾性和主观评估。

创意/价值

本文中提出的问卷以不同的方式描绘了警察工作组的文化，并且能够发现警察内部的文化差异。未来的研究可以利用问卷调查法来调查警察文化的决定因素和后果。