Measuring Diversity in Police Agencies

Abstract

Despite numerous studies on minority and female integration into police agencies, the use of diversity indices to benchmark and assess changes in the ethnic and racial composition of police workforces has been limited. This study applies the Simpson, McIntosh, and measure of variation indices to data on the New York City Police Department's police and civilian workforces to obtain workforce diversity measurements. Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses show that the 3 indices produce diversity measurements that are consistent with one another. Although the indices produce similar scores, the Simpson index is more efficient at measuring diversity and less sensitive to the number of ethnic or racial categories used by the New York City Police Department in comparison to the McIntosh and measure of variation indices.