Abstract
We applied the “informed citizen” thesis to public confidence in the police in the Philippines—a topic that has surprisingly received little research attention. We analyzed four waves of survey data from the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS), and we applied propensity score matching (PSM) method and regression models to the data. We operationalized education, interest in politics, and Internet usage as indicators of an informed citizen. We tested whether they are predictive of confidence in the police. Confidence in the Philippine police has gradually improved from 2002 to 2014. Regression analysis found that citizens with more education and more Internet usage displayed lower levels of confidence in the Philippine police. We also found that an interaction effect between education and political interests, with education having a stronger connection to confidence in the police among those with greater political interests. Our findings support the informed citizen thesis and shed new light on the study of confidence in the Philippine police.
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Notes
In other countries, the ABS surveys were conducted in slightly different years within the same wave. The first wave of surveys was carried out in 2001–2003, the second wave in 2005–2008, the third and the fourth in 2010–2012 and 2014–2016, respectively.
The variable “self-reported income status” was excluded in our later data analysis because of its high missing rate and non-significance. To ensure robustness, we fitted the models both with and without income levels, and the main findings did not differ in either condition. Data and codes are available upon request.
R package “Amelia II” employs EMB (expectation maximization with bootstrapping) methods. We reported the descriptive and regression results based on the pooled, complete data with 72,118 observations for the entire ABS data and 4800 observations from the Philippines; this means all the original data were retained in the analysis.
From the very few cases who reported “do not understand the question,” most of them are from less-educated groups (less than elementary school) or the elder cohorts. Therefore, we assume they choose this item because they sincerely do not understand and it implies, they do not use the Internet. This step is taken for ensuring higher valid response rate; and we tried both with and without these respondents, which does not change our main findings at all.
In preliminary analyses, we fitted the models with age and age’s quadric term; the results of an ANOVA showed age was sufficient.
The respondent could give the following responses as well: “Do not understand the question,” “Cannot choose,” and “Decline to answer.” These responses would be considered missing information.
Codes and results of ordered probit models are available from the authors upon request.
Codes and results are available from the authors upon request.
The variables of marital status and religious affiliation were used in the propensity score matching steps, so we included them in the descriptive analysis; they were excluded from the final regression models because of lack of significance.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the editor Professor Jianhong Liu and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Dr. Tony Huiquan Zhang’s contribution to this paper is supported by a research grant (Grant Number: SRG2019-00171-FSS) provided by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Macau.
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Zhang, T.H., Sun, J. & Cao, L. Education, Internet Use, and Confidence in the Police: Testing the “Informed Citizen” Thesis in the Philippines. Asian J Criminol 16, 165–182 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-020-09323-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-020-09323-2