Abstract
Selection biases present a fundamental challenge for research on ethics and misconduct. This issue is well understood at the individual level, where lab studies are often employed to sidestep it at the potential expense of external validity. However, much archival field data on ethics and misconduct are at risk of selection bias originating from within organizations, because organizations are typically responsible for evaluating and ultimately documenting who commits misconduct. In this paper I explore the nature and potential scope of this particular form of selection bias, its potential impact on the interpretation of extant findings from the literature, and how studying allegations may help detect it in specific contexts. Using detailed data on formal allegations of police misconduct in Chicago, I highlight how status characteristics such as race and gender may bias the creation of archival data. For example, black officers received allegations at rates similar to white officers but were more likely to have them sustained, and allegations made by black complainants were less likely to be sustained than those made by white complainants—even when including extensive sets of control variables. These findings indicate that accounting for allegations may be a fruitful methodological approach to better understand the optimal use of archival behavioral field data for research on ethics and misconduct.
Highlights
Archival field data are often readily available and represent mea sures of “natural” behavior that may be impossible to replicate in the laboratory
In this paper I highlight the organizational nature of this problem, given that organizations are responsible for evaluating behavior and creating the archival samples used by researchers
Each investigated allegation resulted in one of four find ings (City of Chicago Independent Police Review Authority, 2016). 6,745 allegations (23.6% of the total sample) had both an affidavit filed and already one of these four known outcomes. 11.2% of these 6,745 allegations were “Sustained”: “The allegation was supported by suffi cient evidence to justify disciplinary action
Summary
Archival field data are often readily available and represent mea sures of “natural” behavior that may be impossible to replicate in the laboratory. In this paper I highlight the organizational nature of this problem, given that organizations are responsible for evaluating behavior and creating the archival samples used by researchers. I introduce allegations as a separate unit of analysis that may help detect the scope of organizational selection bias problems in specific archival data. This is because allegations are typically a necessary but not sufficient condition for in dividuals to be labeled “wrongdoers” in the type of official archival data created by organizations and studied by researchers. Studying allega tions may help researchers detect whether an organization has nonrandomly evaluated and recorded behavior, which would produce false negatives or false positives in the data
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
