Traffic Police Effectiveness and Efficiency Evaluations, an Overview of Methodological Considerations

Authors

1 Department of Epidemiology, School of Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran

2 Department of Epidemiology, Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Center, School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran

3 Department of Epidemiology, School of Health, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran

4 Traffic Police of Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, Iran

5 Department of Management, Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

10.5812/atr.36927

Abstract

Context
Every government implements various policies to mitigate road traffic injuries (RTIs). Many of these interventions are performed by traffic police. To evaluate effectiveness and efficiency of police enforcement, numerous studies have been conducted. Potential capabilities of epidemiology could get opportunity to improve these studies. The aim of this study was to extract and discuss some related methodological points of traffic police effectiveness and efficiency from related studies, in view of epidemiology discipline.


Evidence Acquisition
Related articles were searched with “traffic police”, “effectiveness”, “efficiency” and “road safety” keywords in ScienceDirect, PubMed and Safetylit databases. Related papers were selected and read carefully to summarize and discuss the epidemiological points with aims of giving clues to improve quality of studies.


Results
From a total of 797 articles, 20 were eligible which among them 17 articles were about effectiveness and 3 of them were about efficiency evaluations. Discussed points were the method of study, taking a holistic view to all positive and negative side effects, desired inputs and outputs, relation pattern between police enforcement and outcome and potential confounders.


Conclusions
Better understanding of the effectiveness and efficiency mechanism and having valid evaluation required considering specific theories and points in this field. Applying a dynamic approach with considering epidemiological concepts and sophisticated statistical models could improve quality of studies in this field.

Keywords

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Archives of Trauma Research
Volume 6, Issue 1
January 2017
Pages 1-12

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