Systematic Social Observation of Police-Citizen Encounters: Coding and Measurement Through Body-Worn Cameras

Research based on systematic social observation (SSO) methods and instruments have added immeasurably to the body of knowledge about discretionary police behavior. Until recently, SSO has provided for in-person observation of police work in its natural setting. The advent and proliferation of body-worn cameras (BWC) have enabled researchers to conduct SSO through BWC recordings, which affords advantages and disadvantages relative to in-person SSO. This paper first reviews the strengths and limitations of in-person SSO and outlines the relative merits and likely drawbacks of BWC-based observation. Then, questions about the quality of the measures formed from data coded from BWC recordings are addressed through the analysis of SSO data coded from BWC recordings of 2071 police-citizen encounters in Albany, NY. The findings concern sample bias, criterion validity, inter-observer reliability, and the effects of observers’ characteristics and outlooks on measures of police behaviors, citizen characteristics and behaviors, and encounter characteristics.