The study’s primary research question is whether the officer perceptions about organizational justice have an impact on officer attitudes towards body-worn cameras (Kyle & White, 2017). The research questions include the following:
- What are the most and less significant perception variables of organizational justice that influence officer attitudes regarding BWCs?
- How do officer attitudes towards body-worn cameras change before and after the introduction of BWCs?
- Whether the demographics and the position of officers have a significant effect on differences in the officer perceptions of the organizational justice that might impact officer attitudes towards BWCs?
The null hypothesis states that the officer perceptions about organizational justice have no significant effect on officer attitudes towards body-worn cameras. The research hypotheses indicate that the officer perceptions of organizational justice substantially impact officer attitudes considering BWCs. Second, the position of officers and demographics have a significant effect on differences in the officer perceptions of organizational justice towards BWCs. Third, specific perception variables influence officer attitudes regarding BWCs.
The concepts that will be explored in the study consider several essential issues. These are the officer perceptions of the organizational justice, officer attitudes regarding body-worn cameras, benefits, and drawbacks to BWCs, differences in officer behavior before and after BWCs introduction. Methods used to operationalize the concepts include analyzing the survey with a 1-5 Likert scale question about variables that define the concepts. Structural equation modeling will be used to identify whether the null hypothesis can be rejected or not (Kyle & White, 2017). The main variables that will be mentioned in the survey about the officer perceptions of organizational justice are “officer behavior, officer effectiveness, evidentiary impact, privacy, safety, use of force, impact on citizens, and public/media impact” (Smykla et al., 2016). Results are expected to prove the significance of the relationship between officer perceptions of organizational justice and their attitudes towards BWCs.
References
Kyle, M.J., & White, D. (2017). The impact of law enforcement officer perceptions of organizational justice on their attitudes regarding body-worn cameras. Journal of Crime and Justice, 40, 68-83.
Smykla, J., Crow, M., Crichlow, V., & Snyder, J. (2016). Police body-worn cameras: Perceptions of law enforcement leadership. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 41, 424-443.