The APP Citizen Survey was built on the following foundations:

Conceptual Framework

Environmental perceptions, personal experience and social media influence perceptions of policing.  The result of this relationship is a positive or negative view of policing.

Operational Framework

Educational attainment, economic stability, number of police interactions, and commonalities with administrative priorities affect individuals' perceptions of policing effectiveness and legitimacy.

Survey Approach.

the app survey utilizes a hybrid opinion mining approach. 

There are some areas where there is correlation with prior research, but many of the sentiments that the APP survey explores have not been probed academically.  Thus, in the areas where there is prior research, our post-survey work will include merging our survey data with published research. However, our survey questions will not be constrained to those areas of prior research.

Outcome v. Correlation.  

"How satisfied are you with police in general"

Analysis of the outcome is aided by questions that probe: 

• Shared experiences and beliefs 
• Respondents' objective knowledge of their communities
• The relationship between community beliefs and relevant metrics
  • Through merging relevant empirical data and survey responses in Fusion Tables  

Sampling Frame

The survey will be sent to a pool of national professional organizations in the following fields:

• Police (including unions)
• Judges (including minority-focused groups)
• Lawyers (both criminal and non-criminal, with a heavy focus on access to justice organizations)

And you.  Regular, every day people will be presented the survey through social media outreach.