Leadership characteristics of Police Cadets

Abstract

The purposes of this quantitative research were to study 1) leadership characteristics of police cadets, and 2) compare police cadets leadership characteristics and personal factors including gender, age, year of study, number of siblings, sequence of children, family income, and father/mother/guardian educational level, and police cadets leadership characteristics. The subjects were stratify randomly selected 400 from freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior police cadets. The research instruments were personal factors and leadership characteristics questionnaires which are personality, moral/ethic, justice facilitation, public service, and technology with the reliability coefficient (alpha) of .96. Two stages of data collecting were qualitative data by semi-constructed interview, and quantitative data by questionnaires. Statistical methods used to analyze data were percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, and One way ANOVA. The results of this research were as follows; the leadership characteristics of police cadets as a whole and each aspect were at a high level, by which the highest leadership characteristic was moral/ethic, and the lowest leadership characteristic was public service.  The comparative results of the police cadets leadership characteristics and personal factors were as follows; police cadets that were different in gender, year of study, and number of siblings found no difference as a whole and each aspect of leadership characteristics. Police cadets that were different in age found no difference as a whole of leadership characteristics. However, each aspect of leadership characteristics found difference in personality and moral/ethic with statistical significantly at level .01 and .05, respectively. While variables that were different in the sequence of children, family income, and father/mother/guardian education found difference as a whole and each aspect of leadership characteristics with statistical significantly at level .05.