An empirical assessment of Niederhoffer's police cynicism scale

For some time there has been an intensive effort among police scholars to determine the attitudes of law enforcement personnel. Their efforts have focused particularly on the determinants of police cynicism. However, to date, there has only been one attempt to construct an index estimating that attitude—Niederhoffer's in 1967. Thus, all discussions of police cynicism rest on that index.This paper examines for the first time the reliability and validity of that instrument on a separate population of police personnel. The results were significant. First, it is shown that the index has an extremely low reliability and validity. Then, it is revealed that the index is tapping at least five separate dimensions of cynicism—not one, as police scholars so frequently assert.The implications from this research are great. The most obvious is that it is time to stop discussing the “cynical cop.” Instead, social scientist can begin specifying toward which dimensions of the occupation officers with particular traits are likely to become cynical. Second, the findings indicate the need to develop additional measures of police cynicism that are more reliable and valid than the sole existing index.