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Introduction
The importance of the police selection process is well understood. Potential consequences of selection errors include both social and economic costs. The job of policing is unique in the amount of power and authority its entry-level employees are given. Thus, police agencies are expected to have hiring procedures in place that protect the community from unstable or incompetent police recruits. Policing personnel systems are fairly closed; almost all police promotions are done from within ([43] Pynes, 1994). Therefore, failing to select the best officers has important long-term personnel ramifications for police departments. Finally, the selection process is important financially for departments because they incur substantial up-front costs when hiring new officers ([11] Cascio, 1999; [35] Malouff and Schutte, 1986).
Selection procedures incorporate many steps such as a written test, background check, medical exam, psychological test, and oral interview ([44] Reaves and Hickman, 2004). This multiple-hurdle approach is not always based on choosing the best applicants, but rather on keeping out the most incompetent ([19] Gaines and Falkenberg, 1998). This negative selection process is referred to as "weeding out". While the desirability of "selecting in" is recognized by most police executives, many researchers would agree that current selection methods are based on eliminating the unfavorable candidates rather finding recruits with certain positive qualities. Selecting in has thus far proven to be considerably more difficult ([8] Burbeck and Furnham, 1984). As with many occupations, it is often easier to recognize bad performance than good.
For such an important topic, relatively few studies have been conducted and the bulk of them are over a decade old. The usefulness of psychological tests for screening out extremely unsuitable and emotionally unstable applicants is generally agreed upon ([8] Burbeck and Furnham, 1984; [9] Burkhart, 1980; [21] Hiatt and Hargrave, 1988a). However, the value of psychological tests for predicting successful job performance is less substantiated.
Part of the difficulty in tying psychological traits to job performance is the lack of consensus surrounding the identification of desirable traits of police officers. Certain personality characteristics related to good police work do appear more frequently than others in the police literature. Traits such as intelligence, dependability, and common sense have considerable support in the literature. In contrast, a host of other characteristics and skills...