In this study, we investigated the effects of wearing a police uniform and gear on officers’ performance during the Physical Competence Test (PCT) of the Dutch National Police. In a counterbalanced within-subjects design, twenty-seven police officers performed the PCT twice, once wearing sportswear and once wearing a police uniform. The results showed clear indications that wearing a police uniform influenced the performance on the PCT. Participants were on average 14 seconds slower in a police uniform than in sportswear. Furthermore, performing the test in uniform was accompanied by higher RPE-scores and total physiological load. It seems that wearing a police uniform during the test diminishes the discrepancy between physical fitness needed to pass the simulated police tasks in the PCT and the job-specific physical fitness that is required during daily police work. This suggests that wearing a police uniform during the test will increase the representativeness of the testing environment for the work field.
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This paper proposes and showcases a methodology to develop an observational behavior assessment instrument to assess psychological competencies of police officers. We outline a step-by-step methodology for police organizations to measure and evaluate behavior in a meaningful way to assess these competencies. We illustrate the proposed methodology with a practical example. We posit that direct behavioral observation can be key in measuring the expression of psychological competence in practice, and that psychological competence in practice is what police organizations should care about. We hope this paper offers police organizations a methodology to perform scientifically informed observational behavior assessment of their police officers’ psychological competencies and inspires additional research efforts into this important area.
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The After-Action Review (AAR) in Virtual Reality (VR) training for police provides new opportunities to enhance learning. We investigated whether perspectives (bird’s eye & police officer, bird’s eye & suspect, bird’s eye) and line of fire displayed in the AAR impacted the officers’ learning efficacy. A 3 x 2 ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of AAR perspectives. Post hoc pairwise comparisons showed that using a bird’s eye view in combination with the suspect perspective elicits significantly greater learning efficacy compared to using a bird’s eye view alone. Using the line of fire feature did not influence learning efficacy. Our findings show that the use of the suspect perspective during the AAR in VR training can support the learning efficacy of police officers.Practitioner summary: VR systems possess After-Action Review tools that provide objective performance feedback. This study found that reviewing a VR police training scenario from the bird’s eye view in combination with the suspect perspective enhanced police officers’ learning efficacy. Designing and applying the After-Action Review effectively can improve learning efficacy in VR.
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