The Development of a Semantic Differential Scale for Assessing the Perceived Image of Citizens about Romanian Police Forces

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is the development and validation of a Semantic Differential Scale in order to assess the public perception of Romanian police officers’ image. Following the two phases (construction and refinement of the instrument) resulted a 22 item scale, with a three-factorial structure, that accounts for 61.8% of the variance, with Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients greater than .87. With good indices on reliability and validity, the instrument is likely to be useful to both academic and practitioners interested in the assessing the image of a professional category, especially the police forces.