Using quantitative analysis to understand police officer attitudes towards police culture and rape myth acceptance across England and Wales.

Tools

Callon, Zoe, Davies, Kari and Horvath, Miranda (2026) Using quantitative analysis to understand police officer attitudes towards police culture and rape myth acceptance across England and Wales.

This dataset comes from study 1 of PhD research entitled: Exploring the culture of a police rape investigation unit: a mixed methods-case study. The purpose of the study was to understand the relationship between police culture and rape myth acceptance within an England and Wales police officer sample. The data comes from a quantitative survey, answered by 164 participants. The dataset is made up of participant demographics: officer gender (male/female/non-binary), officer age (younger/older officer), police force (DCP/other force), length of service (shorter/longer), and department (RASSO specialism/other specialism/other role); and the responses to two psychometric scales: the police culture scale (Terpstra & Schapp, 2013) and the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance (IRMA) scale (McMahon & Farmer, 2011).

Dataset Details

Research / Data Type:	Database
Creators:	Creators Email Callon, Zoe zcallon@bournemouth.ac.uk Davies, Kari kadavies@bournemouth.ac.uk Horvath, Miranda m.horvath2@uos.ac.uk
Groups:	Faculty of Media, Science and Technology Faculty of Science & Technology (Until 31/07/2025)
Collection period:	From To 22 September 2023 18 March 2024
Date:	2026
Date type:	Publication
Geographic coverage:	England and Wales
Data collection method:	An online survey was produced on the survey platform Qualtrics, and made up of two previously references/validated questionnaires: the police culture scale (Tepstra & Schapp, 2013) and the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance (IRMA) scale (McMahon & Farmer, 2011). The sample for the study was England and Wales police officers, and were recruited via a number of methods. An email was sent to all police Chief Inspectors across England and Wales, alongside established connections within policing. A recruitment advert was also published in Police Life newspaper, as well as via social media such as Linkedin.
Statement on legal, ethical and access issues:	Participant information sheets and agreement forms were signed prior to beginning the survey, to ensure that consent was given at each stage of data collection. As the survey was made up of two different scales, consent was also sought after the completion of each scale. This meant that if someone consented at the end of the first scale, the data relating to the first scale would be used in analysis, regardless of whether the completed/consent to the second scale. This was explained to participants at the beginning of the survey. The risk of disclosing participants' identities was mitigated by removing names and other identifying information. As police force, department, and any demographic information could have led to identification, the variables have been collapsed into broader categories to assist in anonymisation.
Keywords:	police, police culture, rape myth acceptance, police attitudes
Data processing and preparation activities:	The demographic variables were reformatted for anonymisation purposes. The age variable was split into two groups: younger/older officer using the mean age of officers (40.91) as a guide. The length of service variable was split into two groups: shorter/longer length of service using the mean length of service (13.58) as a guide. Police department was divided into Rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO) specialism/other specialism/other role.
Publisher:	Bournemouth University
Copyright holders:	Zoe Callon
Contact email address:	bordar@bournemouth.ac.uk

Record Details

DOI:	10.18746/bmth.data.00000559
Depositing User:	Zoe Callon
Year Deposited:	16 Jun 2026 15:16
Revision:	12
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2026 15:17

Available Files

Data

Study 1 - BORDaR data.csv

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