.286, p = .038. Our last hypothesis, again, dealt with exposure to the criminal justice system. We hypothesized that participants of the survey who had been victims of crime would have a more positive perception of police. We formed this hypothesis because police generally help victims of crime and affect them in a positive way and our hypothesis was supported by the data.
| Sex | M | SD | N | p |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male | 3.89 | 0.97 | 13 | .297 |
| Female | 3.49 | 1.23 | 38 | |
| Victim | M | SD | N | p |
| Yes | 3.88 | 1.24 | 26 | .047* |
| No | 3.24 | 1.02 | 27 | |
| Political | Mean | SD | N | p |
| Liberal | 3.76 | 1.08 | 35 | .086 |
| Conservative | 3.16 | 1.3 | 17 |
Table 1. Views of Police by Variable
*. Significant at the .05 level
We also explored the relationship between sex and perception of the police. Our hypothesis was that females would score lower on the perception scale (more positive) and males would be more likely to score higher (more negative). We considered this relationship because it is likely that police would be nicer to females than males. However, this hypothesis was not supported, p = .297, ns. We also hypothesized that political affiliation would affect an individual's score on the perception aspect of the survey, but this hypothesis also had no factual support, p = .086, ns. Two other hypotheses we generated dealt with with an individual's exposure and experience with the criminal justice system. We believed that if an individual had been arrested or convicted of a crime, they would feel more negative towards the police due to the negative context surrounding their interaction. However, this hypothesis did not have any support from our data.
This research could be further expanded to reach a wider, more diverse audience in the future to provide a greater range of variation. More participants would mean more data to analyze that could lead to more supported hypotheses or more unsupported.