Assessing cross-national differences in police officers' domestic violence attitudes

Abstract

PurposeComparative research provides a mechanism to understand how justice systems throughout the world operate. McPhedran et al. (2017) conducted a comparative examination of police officer attitudes about domestic violence (DV) in the USA and Australia and reported fairly high levels of agreement among male and female officers within each country. The current study builds on these findings by examining officer attitudes toward DV among male and female officers cross-nationally. This was accomplished by examining whether American and Australian male and female officers agree with one another on a number of DV issues.Design/methodology/approachTwo-way ANOVA was used to examine the effect of two factors (gender and country) on law enforcement officer attitudes about DV.FindingsThe results suggest that male and female officers from the USA and Australia significantly differ on 14 of 24 attitudes about DV with the greatest number of attitudinal differences found between American and Australian male officers.Research limitations/implicationsScholars who conduct future research examining police officer attitudes about DV should use the instrument from this study as a springboard to develop an updated survey in terms of content and one that would be applicable to cross-national analyses. Methodological study limitations are described in depth in McPhedran et al. (2017).Originality/valueWhile gender differences in attitudes have received scholarly attention, questions remain regarding the degree to which attitudes align among male and female officers across different countries. The current study seeks to fill these gaps in knowledge by examining attitudes about DV between American and Australian law enforcement officers.