Police Perceptions of their Work Environment

Studies of early career experiences consistently emphasize the importance of initial socialization. During this process, employees build and revise their perceptions of their job environment. Using a multidimensional scaling methodology, the collective and individual perceptual responses of 130 patrolmen regarding various aspects of their work setting were represented on a two-dimensional configuration. Two major questions were then addressed: (])are the collective perceptions of the patrolmen organized around dimensions related to the Meadian notions of social time and social space, and (2) are there any attitude or performance differences among those patrolmen whose individual perceptions do and do not fit the collective mapping? These questions are examined at different career stages as measured by job tenure.