Cja 334 - Gathering Research Data

Gathering Research Data

Danee' Wright

CJA/334

September 21, 2015

Rhonda Grant

Gathering Research Data

In the modern society today, police officers are part of the American life to serve and protect, enforce laws, and prevent / reduce crime activity. Police officers within the United States come in contact with critical issues regarding policing. Most police officers will face some kind of danger in field ranging from internal and external. Police officers face dangerous situations daily. As an officer, one could face an active shooter, an emotionally disturbed person acting out, car accidents, or getting injured on the job. Wide-ranging law enforcement training in many areas such as defensive tactics, range training, autism awareness, and public safety are examples of training to learn to deal with these situations. Despite these dangers and more, people still choose to be a police officer. Officers puts their lives and safety in harm’s way to protect their community. Learning about the dangers of becoming a police officer, research will discover what the hazards through qualitative research. The type of interview structure as well as listing the questions that will be asked will illustrate how to achieve the goal of this research.

The Goal of the Research

The goal of the research is to discover the many dangers police officers go through during a daily basics. When people hear about the dangers of policing, they automatically refer to shootings in field. Though police involved shootings are at a high, with no shortages of online video footage and television shootings between police officers and criminals. But, is police shootings the only danger when it comes to policing? People need to know the other important dangers that police officers go through.

What Type of Interview Structure Would You Use?

The type of interview structure that I would use to conduct this research would be an unstructured interview. “Unstructured interviews have many variations depending on the purpose. Sometimes referred to focused, clinical or nondirective interviews, they generally provide for open-ended responses to questions” (Hagan, 2010). The nature of the research and the room for understanding by each officer answering the question, the unstructured interview is the way to go. By allowing officers to give his or her own responses, there is the opportunity for an in-depth explanation of their answers. In addition, the advantage of this type of interview also allows the feelings of each of the officers to come through that may not come across in other types of interviews. While the officers are discussing dangerous situations, being able to see and hear the emotions behind their experiences will bring more clarity to the replies that are given.