Police cynicism in Serbia: prevalence, nature and associations with job satisfaction

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the first research on prevalence, nature and correlates of the police cynicism in Serbia, with particular attention to the associations of cynicism with job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected using a paper-based survey, and obtained from 472 police officers from five police departments across the country. For the purpose of measuring of organizational and work aspects of police cynicism a new developed 24 five-level Likert-type items scale was used. Findings The results show that cynicism is normally distributed. No statistically significant gender, education or police rank differences were identified, and the length of service does not appear to influence cynical attitudes significantly. Cynicism scores statistically significantly varied across police departments and predicted job dissatisfaction. The underlying four-factor structure of police cynicism was identified. The factors include: general organizational cynicism; cynicism toward police hierarchy/superiors; cynicism toward public/citizen cooperation; and cynicism toward modernization of policing in the crime control field. Research limitations/implications The generalizability of the sample is limited, giving that participants come from only five out of a total of 27 police departments in the country, while the female police officers and officers with education higher than high school were somewhat overrepresented. Originality/value This research provides some more evidence on the nature and determinants of police cynicism that might inspire future research in this important but under-researched area. It implies that the need to explore more deeply relations between police cynicism and stress, burnout and particularly contextual and departmental factors that might be influential to police cynicism. It might also incite future research on the internal structure of police cynicism.