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What is the National Police Research Platform?

Beginning in 2009, a team of leading police researchers and police executives, with support from the National Institute of Justice (Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice) began to develop a new, more productive and efficient way to learn about policing in the United States. This initiative, called the National Police Research Platform, is being implemented in selected jurisdictions
 around the country. The project is headquartered at the University of Illinois at Chicago under the leadership of Dr. Dennis Rosenbaum, but involves a consortium of leading police researchers at other major universities. (See Researchers).

The Platform focuses on changes that occur within and across police organizations and police officers. The Platform is currently structured around measuring the responses of four key groups - new recruits, new supervisors, employees of police agencies, and members of the community with recent police encounters. The primary method of data collection is the web-based survey, which provides enormous efficiencies in time and cost. This electronic approach will be supplemented with existing police records, census data and telephone interviews, as well as periodic observations and in-depth interviews.

During Phase 1 (2009-2011), a wide range of methods and measures were field tested and validated. During Phase 2 (2012-2014), the Platform’s framework will be applied to a larger national sample of agencies. The methodological components will be integrated to provide a coherent picture of the life course of police organizations across the nation and explore new directions in the science of policing.