The purpose of this aspect of the research paper is to discuss and outline the research methodology used to ascertain whether members of the police service believe proactive or reactive policing is the most influential policing style that should be adopted in British policing.
It is the objective of this chapter to ascertain what the thoughts and beliefs are of the policing family, by incorporating a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods to best achieve the desired outcome.  It is hoped that the data that is obtained from this study will help to broaden knowledge and understanding surrounding the different styles of policing.

Research Questions:

RQ1 - Response Policing: Is a reactive approach more effective than a proactive approach, and how the effectiveness of both can be improved.

Methodology Selected

In order to complete this area of study, the interpretivist paradigm will be utilised encompassing both ontological and epistemological approaches to glean the best possible results from the research that is being undertaken.
It is hoped that by utilising both aspects of research methodology, we can gather the facts and data gained and make the best and most useful inferences from this data gathered.

Researcher

The researcher has been a Police Officer for the last two and a half years, and during this time has worked primarily in the role of a response officer.  As a response officer, the main style of policing that has been utilised is that of reactive, as due to the high demand faced, there is very little time to be proactive.  However, the researcher wishes to gain knowledge from this study as to whether the level and amount of work that is experienced in this role can be changed or reduced by adopting a proactive style, or whether the nature of the job would not allow for that.

The researcher is hopeful that the data gathered by this study can be implemented into the daily role of a response police officer, and help to further develop the skills and methods that are utilised by the police service as a whole.

There is no known conflict of interest between the researcher and the subjects of this study.  Whilst the researcher will be using colleagues to be participants in the research, it is the underpinning ethos of a police officer to remain impartial at all times, so therefore any conflicts of interest are highly unlikely.

Study Participants

There are two main aspects to this piece of academic study.  One being the views and opinions of serving police officers, including their opinions on different policing styles, as well as quantitative figures on how much of their time is spent using reactive versus proactive methods.
The second aspect is the views and opinions of general members of the public.  It is the belief of the researcher that the opinions of both police officers and the public are equally as important as one another.

It is important when conducting a piece of research such as this that the opinions and perceptions of as many people likely to be affected by it are considered as possible.  Therefore, this is where the basis has arisen to include police officers and members of the public.  It will be the police officers who are using the policing style to go about their job, and it will be the members of the public who will be directly affected by said policing styles.

Therefore, it is believed that it is vitally important to consider both aspects of the case and to enable the most informed and productive conclusions to be drawn, thus meaning that the people involved in the study offer a wide selection of views (Fernandez, V et al, 2003).


Data Collection

In order to obtain the required data to allow the researcher to analyse the results effectively, it has been decided that the method used to collect the data will be through means of a questionnaire.

There will be two questionnaires that are utilised in this study, as there are two quite distinct groups of study participants; members of the police family and members of the public.  Therefore, it is necessary to utilise two different forms of questionnaire to facilitate the data gathering due to the nature of the questions that will be required to be asked to each group being studied. It would be inappropriate and unfair to ask members of the public the same questions that are asked to police officers, and the same applies in reverse.

Therefore, there will be two questionnaires set, and although they will have differences, there will be common ground in that the questionnaires will ask a variety of qualitative and quantitative questions to enable the best answers to be obtained from each, to enable the data to show a thick description (GEERTZ, 1976).

It is believed that the combination of qualitative and quantitative questions contained within the same document will afford the subjects of the research the opportunity to both express their opinion on the subject matter, as well as being able to provide the researcher with statistics and hard evidence regarding uses of different police techniques.

These different types of questions could be asking a police officer to explain their beliefs of the differences between reactive and proactive policing; or asking a member of the public to explain which method they believe to be used most by police services and why this is.  The questions could then lead the subjects being police officers to answer how many times they use proactive methods per month, which would give a quantitative figure; before asking the member of the public how effective they believe each method to be whilst utilising a sliding scale.

It is hoped that by utilising a combination of both of these techniques and forms of results will allow the data to be accurately and more comprehensively analysed to glean the best possible results from the data gained.

Ethical Concerns

In order to enable the researcher to have a fair, balanced and unbiased approach to the data collection, a number of ethical concerns have had to be taken into consideration.

One of these considerations can be likened to the basic ethical principles laid out in the Belmont Report (Ryan, K et al, 1979).

In order to do this, the researcher will need to ensure that when the questionnaire is distributed amongst police officers and therefore colleagues, they are notified that their participation is wholly voluntary and that there is no pressure to complete it.

On the matter of that, it should also be explained to the police officers the importance of conducting this research, and what the data collected will be used for, potentially improving the way in which they conduct their job.

On a similar note, when distributing the questionnaire to members of the public, more considerations need to be explored.

It was considered by the researcher to utilise the members of the public that are service users of the police force which the researcher would come into contact with through responding to calls.   However, when considered, this was deemed inappropriate by the researcher due to the potential of putting members of the public under pressure, or inciting unfair and unjust responses from them.

As a result, it has been decided by the researcher to only ask those who are known to the researcher, potentially friends and family, to ensure that fair and accurate results are obtained and that the data could not be skewed unfairly.

It should also be noted that the researcher will ensure that the questionnaires given to both members of the public and police officers will be completely anonymous and the subjects kept unidentifiable in every way possible (Saunders, B, 2015).

Conclusion:

Overall, it is hoped that the research undertaken by the researcher will allow for a better understanding to be developed into which policing style is most effective, and what could be done to improve them both.

It is the belief of the researcher that by incorporating both police officers and members of the public into this research will enable the results to show a fair proportion of society; as well as affording the opinions of two quite distinct groups of study subjects to be consulted.

Hopefully, the results will show a fair, balanced and unbiased opinion from both police officers and members of the public, but in turn the questions posed to all parties will ensure that the opinions of individuals can be expressed fully.















Bibliography

Fernandez, C et al. (2003). Informing Study Participants of Research Results. Available: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.467.7167&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Last accessed 30th August 2021.

Geertz, Clifford (1976), 'From the Native's Point of View', in K.H. Bassy and H.A. Selby (eds.), Meaning in Anthropology. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Ryan, K et al. (1979). The Belmont Report. Available: https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the-belmont-report/index.html#xbasic. Last accessed 30th August 2021.

Saunders, B. (2015). Anonymising interview data: challenges and compromise in practice. Available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4582834/. Last accessed 30th August 2021.