Preliminary Studies for a Research Police Café, Part 1

Analysis of Research Reflections from a National Police Study

Abstract

The author is pursuing his doctoral studies at the Doctoral School of Law Enforcement at the National Public Service University. His research topic is the effectiveness of the internal and external communication of the Hungarian police. When preparing his research plan, the doctoral student, in agreement with his supervisor, placed great emphasis on the precise choice of research methodology. Given the multidisciplinary nature of policing, he continues his research in the field of management theory and communication science, during which he is the first to conduct a historical overview in the field of policing. In the second stage, he plans to conduct focus group interviews with the police and crime leaders of the Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok and Pest county police headquarters, as well as a qualitative survey among the police and crime specialists of the two counties using the researcher's police café method. In the third stage, the population of the two counties is involved in a questionnaire survey by compiling an adequate set of questions following the summation of the previous two parts. The series of dialogues based on the Police Café method, which is becoming more and more widespread nationwide, can be considered a milestone not only in everyday law enforcement cooperation, but also in the field of research on policing issues. The author's fellow doctoral student, he interviewed dr. Erika Gál, who recently conducted a nationwide research among law enforcement and criminal experts using the police café method. The topic of the research conducted within the framework of the Doctoral School of Law Enforcement was the investigation of the impact of open policing measures used to prevent terrorism, the implementation of which was supported by both the Research Coordination Committee of the Ministry of the Interior and the National Police Headquarters. After the interview, the author collected the experiences of the participating topic leaders in a focus group interview. He summarizes what they said in this study and uses it as a guide for his own research.