The Interrelationships of Psychological Testing, Psychologists’ Recommendations, and Police Departments’ Recruitment Decisions

Abstract

The application of a battery of psychological tests intends to “weed out” police applicants who are deemed mentally and psychologically unfit in terms of abnormality of personality traits and deficiency in psychometric measures (e.g., intelligence). This study employed various statistical analyses on a battery of psychological tests to analyze the interrelationship between psychologists’ recommendations and police departments’ recruitment decisions. This study's results showed that the applicant's general intelligence and police-oriented vocational profiling in a variety of social activities or interests demonstrated a significant effect on psychological assessment and hiring recommendation in terms of the applicants’ fitness for being a police officer. Another important finding of this study was that the effect of the applicants’ race was not statistically significant on police departments’ recruitment decisions and psychologists’ recommendations of hiring, while controlling for other factors. © 2001, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.