Attitudes of British police officers: A rejoinder

Waddington’s comment on ‘Conservatism, Dogmatism, and Authoritarianism in British Police Officers’ by Colman and Gorman is motivated, in part at least, by overtly political considerations. None of his specific criticisms bears close scrutiny. One is based on a selective misquotation which conveys the opposite meaning to that of the original; a second focuses on a supposed ‘lack of illiberalism’ among police officers which is clearly contradicted by the data, and a third arises from an elementary blunder in the interpretation of a statistically non-significant difference.