ABSTRACT

Law enforcement agencies in many countries conduct surveys to learn about community opinions and concerns but low response rates can raise doubts about the generalizability of the results. This study examined differences between responders vs. nonresponders, and early vs. late responders, in a mailed survey of citizen satisfaction about law enforcement, and whether survey estimates changed with follow-up mailings. The univariate analysis revealed significant but small race/ethnicity and age differences between responders and nonresponders. Nonresponders tended to be nonwhite rather than white and to be younger. Late responders reported more negative attitudes toward law enforcement than did early responders with respect to perceived procedural justice and police legitimacy, although differences were small. While follow-up mailings increased the number of returns, this study found that the characteristics and attitudes of responders changed very little with additional mailings. The multivariate analysis revealed no evidence of multivariate bias, in particular, late survey responses did not change the positive association between procedural justice and police legitimacy. The findings imply that criminal justice scholars and law enforcement agencies that conduct citizen satisfaction surveys might consider increasing the initial sample size to boost statistical precision and power, or targeting unlikely respondents to reduce nonresponse bias, instead of investing in costly follow-up mailings. For police practice, the findings do not rule out invariance assertions about procedural justice. To the extent late responders resemble nonresponders, the impact of procedural justice may not depend on citizens’ survey response propensity.

摘要

许多国家的执法机构进行调查以了解社区的意见和担忧，但低响应率可能会引起人们对结果的普遍性的怀疑。本研究在公民对执法满意度的邮寄调查中检查了响应者与无响应者、早期响应者与迟到响应者之间的差异，以及调查估计是否随着后续邮件的变化而变化。单变量分析显示响应者和非响应者之间存在显着但很小的种族/民族和年龄差异。无反应者往往是非白人而不是白人并且更年轻。在感知程序正义和警察合法性方面，后期响应者比早期响应者对执法的负面态度更多，尽管差异很小。虽然后续邮件增加了退货数量，但这项研究发现，响应者的特征和态度随着邮件的增加而变化很小。多变量分析显示没有证据表明存在多变量偏差，特别是迟到的调查回复并没有改变程序正义与警察合法性之间的正相关关系。调查结果表明，进行公民满意度调查的刑事司法学者和执法机构可能会考虑增加初始样本量以提高统计精度和功效，或针对不太可能的受访者以减少不回复偏差，而不是投资于昂贵的后续邮件。对于警察实践，调查结果不排除关于程序正义的不变性断言。在某种程度上，迟到的反应者与无反应者相似，