Assistant Professor of Sociology Shannon Harper recently published a study titled, “Assessing Cross-national Differences in Police Officers’ Domestic Violence Attitudes,” in Policing: An International Journal. Harper’s co-authors include Angela Gover, University of Colorado, Denver; Samara McPhedran, Griffith University, Australia; and Paul Mazerolle, University of New Brunswick, Canada.
Comparative research provides a mechanism to understand how justice systems throughout the world operate. In 2017, the researchers conducted a comparative examination of police officer attitudes about domestic violence in the U.S. and Australia, and reported fairly high levels of agreement among male and female officers within each country. The current study builds on these findings by examining officer attitudes toward domestic violence among male and female officers cross-nationally. This was accomplished by exploring whether American and Australian male and female officers agree with one another on a number of domestic violence issues.