Menard and Arter, Police Officer

¶ … Menard and Arter, Police officer alcohol use and trauma symptoms; Associations with critical incidents, coping, and social stressors. The focus of the article was police officers who use alcohol as a means of coping with on-the-job stressors. Valerie correctly identified the population as police officers, although I would state that the population is all police officers, because the goal is to determine what percentage of police officers turn to alcohol to deal with on-the-job stressors. I disagree with Valerie's idea that you can separate the population into officers who abuse alcohol and officers who do not abuse alcohol. That would not separate the population. The population is the large group that the research is expected to provide information about; in this instance, the population is police officers. Separating the population into groups of alcohol abusing and non-alcohol abusing groups would not provide insight into the overall police population.

However, Valerie does discuss what appears to be a valid method of testing the sample population identified for the study. The sample population might be all of the officers in a single police department. Administering a confidential survey to them would allow the researcher to discover how many of them report using alcohol as a means of coping with on-the-job-stressors. The random sampling that Valerie refers should refer to how the officers are selected for participation in the study, if it is impossible to administer surveys to the entire organization. To my understanding, randomization is not a means of ensuring confidentiality in research results, but, instead, of ensuring a representative group from the sample population. The research does show a good sample from the population, but I am not confident that it shows a well-randomized sample of the population.