| Throughout the history of law officer selection, city officials and law enforcement agency personnel have struggled to select candidates who will serve the community in an exemplary fashion. Law enforcement agency personnel recognize the importance of eliminating undesirable candidates who may have personality characteristics that are inappropriate for police work. The personality inventories currently used by law enforcement hiring personnel were not developed to select excellent candidates for law enforcement employment. In this quantitative exploratory study, associations among self-reported law enforcement officer strengths, as measured by the Clifton StrengthsFinder, and job performance, as measured by officer performance evaluations, were investigated. The theoretical framework for the study was founded on the social constructs of positive psychology, person-centered psychology, and strengths-development theory. The Clifton StrengthsFinder was administered to a sample of 135 law enforcement officers serving in Central Florida. Departmental administration personnel in their agencies reported the total number of positive commendations as well as total years of service for each officer completing the assessment. StrengthsFinder is an assessment instrument developed by The Gallup Organization to assist individuals in discovering their strengths. The 34 strength themes served as predictor variables and the annual mean for adequate to superior officer performance evaluations based on years of service served as the criterion variable. Stepwise regression analysis was performed for hypothesis testing. The Achiever and Activator themes were found to be positively related to adequate to superior job performance, and the themes of Consistency, Individualization, and Self-Assurance themes were negatively correlated with adequate to superior job performance. Stepwise regression identified five themes (Achiever, Consistency, Activator, Individualization, and Self-Assurance) that explained a significant proportion of variance in job performance, R2 = .398, F(5,129) = 18.708, ρ < .001. The results of the study may be used to offer foundational research to begin to identify a predictor of officer talents and/or strengths, which may better inform hiring of officers and quality performance of duties, and to determine use of pre-employment assessments in officer hiring. |
