Abstract
Background: Police need to rely on the members of the society in order to be effective in keeping law and order, and hence securing communities. According to the theory of planned behavior, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control make their relative contributions to the prediction of behavioral intentions depending on the behavior and the population being investigated.
Aim: Although the theory has important challenges, it performs reliably well in the prediction of intention. The present study was designed to investigate the ability of the attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control to predict the intention to cooperate with the police.
Participants: The study was conducted using 161 (106 female; 55 male) high school and university students aged 16 through 54 years old.
Materials: The measures were assessed using seven-point rating scales
Results: Attitudes toward the behavior and subjective norms concerning the behavior, were found to significantly add to the model that could be used to predict the intention to cooperate with the police. However, perceived behavioral control did not make significant contributions to the model.
Conclusions: Attitudes, subject norms, and perceived behavioral control may contribution to prediction depending on the population in question. Perceived behavioral control does not seem to be powerful in predicting intention to cooperate with the police among young people.
Introduction
Security cannot prevail when the police and the communicate act alone. Police need to rely on the members of the society in order to be effective in keeping law and order, and hence securing communities. Theory of planned behavior has been used to predict intent to engage in behaviors such as cooperation. The theory proposes that a person’s intention to engage in a certain behavior is influenced by intention and behavioral control. In other words, accomplishment of behavior depends on the attitude concerning the possibility that the behavior will produce expected outcomes, as well as the subjective evaluation of the risks associated with the outcome.
Key constructs of the model-attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control have been found to influence intentions to perform behaviors. Subjective norms refer to the belief on the question of whether many people would support or reject the behavior. Attitudes are concerned with the extent to which an individual holds a favorable or unfavorable evaluation of the behavior. The third component, perceived behavioral control, is related to how much a person perceives performing behavior as easy or difficult (Boston University School of Public Health, 2016).
Taken together, theory suggests that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control make their relative contributions to the prediction of intentions depending on the behavior and the population being investigated. Although conceptually independent, these components may correlate with each other. The reason is that the decisions related to these components may be made based on the same information (Ajzein & Fishbein, 2005).
However, the theory has received some criticism. First, it has been accused of assuming that people have the opportunities and resources required to perform behavior successfully, regardless of intention (Boston University School of Public Health, 2016). In addition, the theory fails to account for other variables that might contribute behavioral intention and motivation, like mood, previous experience, and fear. It has been argued that variables that are not part of the theory account for significant variances in the predicted intention to perform behavior (Godin & Kok, 1996).
Despite the identified challenges, the theory has a reliable efficiency in the prediction of intention (Godin & Kok, 1996). In their review of the studies making use of the theory, Godin and Kok (1996) found that the averaged R2 for the intention was .41 while that for behavior was .34. Most of the studies that have been conducted to predict intention to cooperate with the police have been using adult participants. In this light, the present study was designed to investigate the ability of the theory to predict cooperate with the police among the youth. The following was the research question: How well do control, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control predict the intention to cooperate with the police.
Method
Participants
Participants in this study were high school and university students aged 16 to 54 years old. There were a total of 161 participants (106 female; 55 male). Participants belonged to various ethnicities, including the White British (28%), British (10.6%), White Irish (3.1%), other white background (36.6%0, and mixed background (3.7%). Most of the (74.5%) participants were from the UK. Majority had at least a secondary school education (67.1%) while only 32% had university education. A few participants said they had close family or friends who were serving in the police.
Design
The study adopted a cross-sectional, non-experimental research design to find out whether the intentions to cooperate could be predicted using attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and perceived behavioral control.
Measures
Intentions to cooperate with the police were assessed using 3 vignettes. The categories were call the police, provide witness statements, and give evidence in court, all of which were rated on a scale of 1-7. Attitudes were assessed using a seven items, each rated on a seven-point scale assessing the strength of agreement. Subjective norms were assessed using five statements rated on a seven-point agreement scale. Perceived behavioral control was assessed on scale that rated strength of agreement from 1 to 7.
Results
The purpose of this study was to predict intentions to cooperate using attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. The value of R was .584, which suggested a moderate level of prediction. The coefficient of determination (R Square) indicated that the extracted model was able to explain 34.1% of the variance in the intention to cooperate with the police. Therefore, the independent variables were able to account for 34.1% of the variation in the dependent variable, intention to cooperate with the police. The regression model was a good fit of the data because the independent variables statistically significantly predicted the intention to cooperate with the police, F (3, 157) = 27.073, p < .000.
Findings show that attitudes and subjective norms statistically significantly contributed to the model. For every one point increase in the rating of attitudes, there would be corresponding increase of .539 in the likelihood of cooperating with the police. Similarly, an increase in the rating of subjective norms would produce a corresponding increase of .605 in the likelihood of cooperating with the police. However, perceived behavioral control did not contribute significantly to the model for predicting intention to cooperate with the police (p = .093).
Discussion and Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to determine how well attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control predict a person’s intention to cooperate with the police. The theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), holds that intentions to engage in a certain behavior are dependent on the beliefs that an individual holds regarding the outcome of the behavior. The extracted model was a good fit for the data as the three variables statistically significantly predicted the intention to cooperate with the police. The variation explain in this model is consistent with previous research. For instance, Godin and Kok (1996) found that the explained variance for intention averaged about .34.
Previous research suggests that attitudes towards the behavior, subjective norms, concerning the behavior, and perceived behavioral control influence an individual’s intention to perform a given behavior. Having a positive belief in relation to the three factors might be associated with an increased likelihood of performing the behavior. The relative contributions of the three factors might change as function of the behavior. Two components of the planned behavior theory seemed to influence a decision to cooperate with the police in a meaningful way. These components, attitudes toward the behavior and subjective norms concerning the behavior, were found to significantly add to the model that could be used to predict intention to cooperate with the police. However, perceived behavioral control did not make significant contributions to the model.
These finding are consistent with the observations of Ajzen and Fishbein (20050. Azein and Fishbein (2005) argued that the relative contribution of each of the components to the intention could be subject to the behavior being predicted and the population being studied. Given that majority of the participants in this study were young people, it was not expected that the findings would be entirely consistent with the research findings done with adult participants.
In conclusion, the findings of this study show that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control may significantly predict intention to corporate with the police. Attitudes and subjective norms contributed significantly to the model, unlike control. The findings suggest that the predictive power of the three components may be dependent on the population in question.
References
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211.
Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (2005). The influence of attitudes on behavior. The handbook of attitudes, 173, 221.
Boston University School of Public Health. (2016). The theory of planned behavior. Retrieved from http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/SB721-Models/SB721-Models3.html
Godin, G., & Kok, G. (1996). The theory of planned behavior: a review of its applications to health-related behaviors. American Journal of Health Promotion, 11(2), 87-98.
