Educating the Public About Police Through Public Service Announcements in Lima, Ohio, 1995-1997

This study was designed to analyze the impact of four
 televised public service announcements (PSAs) aired for three months
 in Lima, Ohio. The researchers sought to answer three specific
 research questions: (1) Were the PSAs effective in transferring
 knowledge to citizens about the police? (2) Did the PSAs have an
 impact on resident satisfaction with the police? and (3) Did the PSAs
 have an impact on the behavior of citizens interacting with the
 police? To assess public attitudes about the Lima police and to
 determine whether the substance of the PSAs was being communicated to
 the residents of Lima, three waves of telephone interviews were
 conducted (Part 1). The first telephone interviews were conducted in
 April 1996 with approximately 500 randomly selected Lima
 residents. These were baseline interviews that took place before the
 PSAs aired. The survey instrument used in the first interview assessed
 resident satisfaction with the police and the services they
 provided. After completion of the Wave 1 interviews, the PSAs were
 aired on television for three months (June 5-August 28, 1996). After
 August 28, the PSAs were removed from general circulation. A second
 wave of telephone interviews was conducted in September 1996 with a
 different group of randomly selected Lima residents. The same survey
 instrument used during the first interviews was administered during
 the second wave, with additional questions added relating to whether
 the respondent saw any of the PSAs. A third group of randomly selected
 Lima residents was contacted via the telephone in January 1997 for the
 final wave of interviews. The final interviews utilized the identical
 survey instrument used during Wave 2. The focus of this follow-up
 survey was on citizen retention, over time, of the information
 communicated in the PSAs. Official data collected from computerized
 records maintained by the Lima Police Department were also collected
 to monitor changes in citizen behavior (Part 2). The records data span
 127 weeks, from January 1, 1995, to June 7, 1997, which includes 74
 weeks of pre-PSA data and 53 weeks of data for the period during the
 initial airing of the first PSA and thereafter. Variables in Part 1
 include whether respondents were interested in learning about what to
 do if stopped by the police, what actions they had displayed when
 stopped by the police, if they would defend another person being
 treated unfairly by the police, how responsible they felt (as a
 citizen) in preventing crimes, the likelihood of calling the police if
 they were aware of a crime, perception of crime and fear of crime, and
 whether there had been an increase or decrease in the level of crime
 in their neighborhoods. Respondents were also asked about the amount
 of television they watched, whether they saw any of the public service
 announcements and if so to rate them, whether the PSAs provided
 information not already known, whether any of the PSA topics had come
 up in conversations with family or friends, and whether the
 respondent would like to see more PSAs in the future. Finally,
 respondents were asked whether the police were doing as much as they
 could to make the neighborhood safe, how responsive the police were to
 nonemergency matters, and to rate their overall satisfaction with the
 Lima Police Department and its various services. Demographic variables
 for Part 1 include the race, gender, age, marital status, level of
 education, employment status, and income level of each respondent.
 Variables in Part 2 cover police use-of-force or resisting arrest
 incidents that took place during the study period, whether the PSA
 aired during the week in which a use-of-force or resisting arrest
 incident took place, the number of supplemental police use-of-force
 reports that were made, and the number of resisting arrest charges
made.

Tags: crime-prevention, fear-of-crime, police-citizen-interactions, police-performance, public-interest, public-opinion, public-safety, public-service-advertising
Organization: Department of Justice