Adjunct Professor Liqun Cao‘s recently published article in Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management offers a useful conceptual clarification of key terms commonly used to describe public attitudes towards police, namely – confidence in police, trust in the police, and satisfaction with the police.
The article highlights how the interchangeable use of these concepts throughout existing empirical literature is ‘irritating’ and reflects a level of imprecision and carelessness amongst social-scientific inquiries. By providing a clear differentiation of the three terms – confidence, trust, and satisfaction – the article is able to effectively identify a number of inconsistencies and differences that can exist between such synonymous concepts. It is suggested that criminological literature moves towards producing more consistent, standardised and widely agreed upon concepts and terminologies to enhance the validity and status of the discipline’s empirical research.
Read the full article here: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/PIJPSM-12-2014-0127
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