Faculty characteristics and course content in college programs for police officers

This study measures and attempts to account for variation in the conceptual abstraction of course content in college programs for police officers. The indicator of course content is the type of books assigned in courses in policing as reported in a mail survey of college programs. The books are classified on a six-category ordinal scale of abstraction, from prescriptive texts to explanatory research reports. The median abstraction level of the books used in the programs responding varies moderately, but it is generally low. Faculty education level is positively related to the abstraction level of the books, although the relationship is specified by controlling for institutional characteristics and student vocational orientation. Faculty criminal justice agency experience and the percentage of the faculty serving on a part-time basis are negatively related to book abstraction level, but these relationships generally disappear when institutional characteristics and student vocational orientation are controlled. The Law response rate of 25.2 percent requires great caution in interpretation of the findings. Nonetheless, the findings suggest that police education courses might be made more conceptual and less perspective by employing more educated faculty to teach them.