The relationship between job status, interviewing experience, gender, and police officers' adherence to open-ended questions

Purpose : The current study examined whether several factors related to the job and demographic profile of police officers are associated with adherence to best-practice guidelines when interviewing children.

Method : One hundred and seventy-eight police officers completed a standardized (simulated) interview regarding an allegation of abuse by a 5-year-old child. Immediately prior to this interview, details were obtained from the officers' regarding their job status, gender, interview experience, the timing and nature of prior training/supervision, and experience outside the policing profession with young children.

Results : The results showed that timing of training was the only factor that related to interview performance. The proportion of open-ended questions among participants who completed their interviewer training course less than 1 month prior to the simulated interview was better than those who completed the training earlier. Interestingly, the performance of the latter group was identical to that of a group of participants who had not yet received any formal interview training. The implications of the findings are discussed, along with directions for future research.

Improving the competency of police officers in conducting investigative interviews with children

Despite the provision of 'best-practice' guidelines regarding conducting interviews with children, research indicates that most investigative interviews do not adhere to these guidelines. To date, there has been little discussion in the literature of the conditions that are needed to promote and sustain expertise in forensic interviewing. The current paper addresses this limitation by describing the main factors preventing the adoption of 'best-practice' interview guidelines. A description of these barriers (and the literature that supports them) forms the basis for the review component of this paper as well as the subsequent recommendations for change.

An examination of police officers' notes of interviews with alleged child abuse victims

This study provided a critical examination of handwritten records (notes) of interviews contained in a sample of 89 police case files about alleged child abuse. Some of the notes examined related to initial disclosure (complaint) interviews which were not electronically recorded and were meant to be recorded verbatim. Notes of electronically recorded interviews, which merely constituted a convenient summary of the case details, were also examined. Collectively, the analyses focused on the accessibility, completeness and accuracy of the notes, and the degree to which the interviewers' questions and witnesses' answers were differentiated. In relation to the disclosure interviews, a substantial proportion of these were not accessible. Of those where the notes were obtained, the detail recorded was not a complete record of conversation, and there was often poor delineation of questions and responses. Analysis of the electronically recorded interviews showed that these were not an entirely accurate summary of event details even though the note takers' sole task was to document the interview. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Police stress : the role of psychological contract and perceptions of fairness

Purpose – The overall purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which breaches in psychological contracts and perceptions of organizational fairness account for variations in job stress experienced by operational police officers (as measured by psychological distress and employee performance), after controlling for the variance associated with more established job stressors (i.e. job demands, job control and social support).

Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on data collected through a self-report survey involving operational members of a large Australian police force (n=582).

Findings – Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicate that vast majority of explained variance in psychological distress and extra-role performance is attributed to the additive effects of demand, control, and support. Furthermore, only one of the social exchange dimensions (interpersonal fairness) is predictive of either target variable.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations that need to be taken into account are the cross-sectional nature of the study design and the focus on a single police service.

Practical implications – Despite the generally weak support for the social exchange variables, there are signs that dimensions of justice (particularly interpersonal justice) should be included in future police-stress investigations. The results also suggest that job characteristics such as job demand, job control and social support should be taken into account when developing strategies to prevent and/or reduce chronic job stress in policing services.

Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to examine the relationships between psychological contract breach, perceptions of fairness and police stress.

The emergence of battery electric vehicles : A NZ manufacturing opportunity?

Personal passenger transport faces several challenges in the coming decades: depletion of cheap oil reserves, increasing congestion, localised pollution, the need for reduced carbon emissions and the long term goal of sustainability. One way of solving some of these problems could be to introduce comfortable, energy efficient, battery electric vehicles.

Currently, hybrid vehicles have been presented as a means to reducing the transportation related oil demand. New developments in materials and technologies have made them, cleaner and safer as well as more fuel efficient. However, hybrids will only prolong the use of oil until alternatively fuelled vehicles are developed.

One long term alternative is the battery electric vehicle (BEV). A BEV designed to be light, aerodynamic with high efficiency drive train and latest battery technology would have a performance comparable to a typical internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV). Recent developments in virtual engineering, rapid prototyping and advanced manufacturing might enable low-cost development of niche market BEV’s designed and built in New Zealand for export markets.

This work examines the collaborative development of a twin seat BEV using new materials and latest technologies by the University of Waikato’s Engineering Department and a group of NZ and foreign companies. The car will be used to research the potential of BEVs and will also compete in the Commuter Class of the World Solar Challenge in 2007.

State police in a state of change : remaking the entrepreneurial officer

Questions concerning how to govern police practice have never been more pressing or more fluid. This study locates contemporary developments in police accountability techniques within a broader analysis of the historical circumstances shaping the changing techniques for governing police. The recent pluralisation of police accountability pr.ocesses and structures is examined through the application of governmentality studies. Drawing on a comparative analysis of two Australian States the book provides a detailed account of the development of governmental techniques for 'making up' the entrepreneurial officer. While such a governmental project is not implemented unproblematically the book concludes that the attempt to shape the development of the entrepreneurial officer through the managerialisation of governing presents distinct possibilities for a new 'politics of policing' that fosters deliberative and reflective police practice.

Police officers' questioning of children about repeated abuse

This thesis examined the perceptions of police and legal professionals regarding how police officers should and do interview children about repeated abuse. It also examined the actual performance of police interviewers in mock and field interviews to understand the reason for interviewer's difficulties and how interview strategy can be improved. The portfolio examines and discusses the complexities associated with assessing the risk of sexual recidivism among different sex offender populations - adult sex offenders, sex offenders with an intellectual disability, adolescent sex offenders and indigenous sex offenders. Four case studies are presented.

Detection of vehicles with monolithic classifier vis-à-vis a boosted cascaded classifier

This paper describes the comparison of accuracy and performance of two machine learning approaches for visual object detection and tracking vehicles, from an on-road image sequence. The first is a neural network based approach. Where an algorithm of multi resolution technique based on Haar basis functions was used to obtain an image with different scales. Thereafter a classification was carried out with the multilayer feed forward neural network. Principle Component Analysis (PCA) technique was used as a dimension reduction technique to make the classification process much more efficient. The second approach is based on boosting which also yields very good detection rates. In general, boosting is one of the most important developments in classification methodology. It works by sequentially applying a classification algorithm to reweighed versions of the training data, followed by taking a weighted majority vote of the sequence of classifiers thus produced. For this work, a strong classifier was trained by the adaboost algorithm. The results of comparing the two methodologies visà-vis shows the effectiveness of the methods that have been used.

Intelligent energy management in hybrid electric vehicles

The modelling and simulation approach is employed to develop an intelligent energy management system for hybrid electric vehicles. The aim is to optimize fuel consumption and reduce emissions. An analysis of the role of drivetrain, energy management control strategy and the associated impacts on the fuel consumption with combined wind/drag, slope, rolling, and accessories loads are included.

A study on plug-in hybrid electic vehicles

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), which is a hybrid vehicle whose batteries can be recharged by plugging into an electric power source, is creating many interests due to its significant potential to improve fuel efficiency and reduce pollution. PHEVs would be the next generation of vehicles that are expected to replace conventional hybrid electric vehicles. This paper presents a study on PHEV. It gives a review of different drivetrain architectures associated with PHEVs. In addition, different control strategies that could bring about realization of advantages of PHEV capabilities are discussed and compared.

A study on look-ahead control and energy management strategies in hybrid electric vehicles

Fuel efficiency in a hybrid electric vehicle requires a fine balance between usage of combustion engine and battery power. Information about the geometry of the road and traffic ahead can have a great impact on optimized control and the power split between the main parts of a hybrid electric vehicle. This paper provides a survey on the existing methods of control and energy management emphasizing on those that consider the look-ahead road situation and trajectory information. Then it presents the future trends in the control and energy management of hybrid electric vehicles.

Drive cycle analysis of the performance of hybrid electric vehicles

 

Compounding factors and their effect on the design of long range battery electric vehicles

 It is well known that the one of the main problems concerning battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is their short range compared to conventional petrol and diesel vehicles. In this work the technical factors that will enable long range BEVs are investigated. The concept of Compounding Factors is presented and shows that if certain parameters can be met then BEV’s can have a comparable performance to conventional petrol cars. The development and initial testing of a long range BEW prototype is presented and discussed.