Association between the Inwald Personality Inventory Interpersonal Conflict Measures and Perceived Quality of Law Enforcement Officer Response to Domestic Disturbances

Abstract

We examined the association between the Interpersonal Conflict Measures of the Inwald Personality Inventory (IPI) and law enforcement officer performance during domestic disturbances. Seventy-six officers completed the IPI and had their performance rated by supervisors and peers. There were modest correlations between peer ratings and the GD, US, and SP scales. Similar analyses examining supervisor ratings were nonsignificant. Marital status and years of law enforcement experience were related to supervisor ratings. Findings suggest interpersonal difficulties may contribute to poor performance, while law enforcement experience as well as experience in managing conflicts in the context of an intimate relationship may enhance performance during domestic disturbances.

Keywords:

• Inwald Personality Inventory
• law enforcement
• domestic violence
• performance

Notes

¹ When the SP scale was entered in the second model, instead of US, the effect for SP was large enough to reach statistical significance. Thus, the SP or US scale add incremental validity to the GD scale, but the addition of both is not appreciably better than the addition of one, likely due to overlap between the US and SP scales (r = .49). Results from this alternate set of hierarchical regression models are available from the corresponding author.