Confidence in the police between America and Japan: Results from two waves of surveys

Purpose - To re-test the hypothesis that that the public in Japan have a higher confidence in the police than their counterparts in the USA. Design/methodology/approach - Data from the national representative samples were analyzed to compare the levels of confidence in the police between the USA and Japan. The new analysis addressed four methodological limitations found in the previous study. Findings - With more updated data and more appropriate method, the results confirmed the previous study that the US public have a significantly higher confidence in the police than the Japanese public. Originality/value - Many qualitative studies have found or argued that the public in Japan have higher confidence in their police than their counterparts in the USA. Only one quantitative analysis has found the opposite. One safeguard against overgeneralization in social science is through replication of the inquiry. The duplication of the previous research findings is important because a strong scientific conclusion is based on the one that examines the theoretically deduced hypothesis at one of the indefinitely large number of times and places that it could be tested, and because duplication is critical in social sciences based on cross-sectional surveys which are time-dependent and time-sensitive.