Imperial Research Proposal Example: Police analyst to security and public policy (Score 93)

Intelligence-led policing (ILP) has been the dominant organisational framework for UK constabularies since the National Intelligence Model was mandated in 2000, yet the relationship between the analytical products that ILP generates and the operational decisions those products are intended to inform remains poorly specified in the empirical literature. Forces invest substantially in crime analysis units, strategic threat assessments, and problem profiles, but the mechanisms by which frontline commanders and neighbourhood inspectors actually use — or discount — that output are rarely examined at the level of individual decision episodes. This proposal addresses that gap through the following primary research question: To what extent, and under what organisational conditions, do structured analytical products influence operational policing decisions in English constabularies? Two subsidiary questions follow. First, what factors — including time pressure, rank culture, and analytical credibility — moderate the relationship between product quality and decision uptake? Second, does the format of analytical output (written assessment versus verbal briefing versus dashboard visualisation) affect the probability that a recommendation is acted upon? The practical stakes are direct. If analytical products are systematically underused, the resource case for expanding force intelligence units weakens, and the evidence base for policing reform becomes harder to sustain. Conversely, if specific presentational or organisational conditions reliably increase uptake, that finding has immediate implications for how forces structure their analytical functions — a question with clear relevance to the Home Office's ongoing review of police productivity. Two bodies of scholarship bear on this question, and they have not been adequately connected. The first is the ILP and evidence-based policing literature. Ratcliffe's foundational work on the 3-i model (intelligence, influence, impact) provides the clearest theoretical account of how analysts are supposed to translate data into commander decisions, but the model is largely normative: it describes what should happen rather than testing what does. Subsequent empirical work — including evaluations of hotspot policing and problem-oriented interventions — tends to assess outcome effectiveness rather than the decision process that preceded deployment. Sherman's broader evidence-based policing programme similarly focuses on what works rather than on how analytical evidence enters the command chain. The second body of work is organisational and behavioural: research on how public-sector professionals use evidence in high-stakes, time-pressured environments. Studies of clinical decision-making and military intelligence consumption suggest that format, source credibility, and institutional trust are stronger predictors of evidence use than technical quality alone. Weick's sensemaking framework has been applied to emergency services, but its application to routine policing command decisions is limited. The gap is specific: no published study, to my knowledge, systematically traces the pathway from a completed analytical product to a documented operational decision within a UK constabulary, controlling for rank, time pressure, and format. Qualitative accounts from practitioners — including my own experience drafting strategic assessments and problem profiles — suggest that verbal briefings routinely displace written products in command meetings, but this observation has not been tested with structured data. This proposal aims to provide that test. The study will use a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design in two phases. Phase one will be a structured survey of operational decision-makers across a sample of English constabularies. The target population is inspectors and chief inspectors who regularly attend tactical or strategic tasking meetings — the primary forums at which analytical products are presented. A purposive sample of approximately 120 respondents across four to six forces will be sought, using a validated instrument adapted from the Evidence-Informed Decision-Making scale developed in the public health literature. The survey will measure self-reported frequency of product use, perceived analytical credibility, format preferences, and organisational barriers. Ordinal logistic regression will be used to identify predictors of uptake, with format type and rank as primary independent variables. Phase two will be semi-structured interviews with approximately 20 participants drawn from the survey sample, selected to represent variation in force size, geographic context, and self-reported uptake scores. Interviews will focus on specific recent decisions — not general attitudes — using a critical incident technique to anchor responses to concrete episodes. Thematic analysis will follow a framework approach, with the 3-i model providing an initial coding structure that will be revised inductively. The two phases are sequenced so that survey findings identify the organisational conditions most associated with low uptake, and interviews then probe the mechanisms behind those conditions. This design is appropriate because the research question has both a distributional component (how widespread is the problem?) and a processual one (why does it occur?). Document analysis of a small sample of redacted tactical tasking meeting minutes — where force access permits — will provide a third, triangulating data source. This element is treated as contingent on access negotiations and is not load-bearing for the core argument. Access is the principal feasibility risk. Constabularies are not obliged to participate, and force research governance processes can extend over several months. To mitigate this, initial scoping conversations with two forces have been identified as a starting point, and the survey instrument will be designed to require no access to operational or intelligence data — only to decision-makers' self-reported experience. This significantly reduces the governance burden compared with studies requiring document or system access. Ethics approval will be sought through Imperial's standard Research Ethics Committee process. The study involves no vulnerable populations, no covert methods, and no personal data beyond professional role and force area. Participants will be fully informed, and all responses will be anonymised at the point of analysis. The document analysis strand will require a separate data-sharing agreement with each participating force; if this proves unachievable within the project timeline, that strand will be dropped without compromising the primary findings. Provisional timeline across a twelve-month research period: months one to two, literature consolidation and instrument development; months three to five, survey deployment and data collection; months six to seven, survey analysis and interview sampling; months eight to ten, interview fieldwork and transcription; months eleven to twelve, integrated analysis and write-up. This schedule is tight but achievable for a dissertation-scale project, provided force access is confirmed by month two. The scope is deliberately bounded. The study does not attempt to evaluate ILP effectiveness or to compare forces on performance metrics. It asks only whether and how analytical products influence decisions — a question answerable within the resource constraints of a taught master's dissertation. Imperial's MSc Public Policy sits within a department that takes seriously the relationship between evidence generation and policy implementation — a framing directly relevant to this proposal. The programme's applied project component provides a structured vehicle for the empirical work described above, and the quantitative methods training embedded in the curriculum will support the survey analysis phase. The research draws on publicly available policing data, published Home Office statistics, and HMICFRS inspection reports, all of which are accessible without special permissions. The College library provides access to the key journals in this field, including Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice and the Journal of Experimental Criminology. No specialist laboratory or archival access is required. The question sits at the intersection of public administration, organisational behaviour, and security policy — a combination that aligns with the programme's stated interest in evidence-based governance. The expected contribution is modest and specific: a tested account of the conditions under which analytical products do and do not influence policing command decisions, with practical implications for how forces design and present intelligence outputs. That is a tractable, defensible research aim for a twelve-month programme, and one that builds directly on the analytical and policy work I have undertaken in a professional context.