Relationship between Pre-service Training and Service Delivery by the National Police Service in Bungoma County, Kenya

Abstract

Service delivery is the combination of customers experience and their perception of the outcome of the services provided. In order for governments to succeed in delivery of their services to the public, they must equip their employees with among other skills, resources and values. However, in order to achieve this, there are many challenges because of having many customers. The prime objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between pre-service training and service delivery. This is training that takes place before a person is placed on the job or assignment. The study was guided by the following specific objective, to establish the relationship between pre service training and service delivery by the National Police Service. A descriptive correlational research design was used to cover all the 14 police stations in Bungoma County. Simple Random sampling was used to cover 50% of the Police Stations in Bungoma County to come up with 7 Police Stations. Purposive Sampling was carried to come with selected categories of staff from the 7 Police Stations upon whom questionnaires were administered. These officers included Officers Commanding Police Stations, Officer-in charge of Crime and officers in charge of Scenes of Crime. 5 consumers and 5 police constables were randomly selected from the service points within the Police Stations in order to come up with 35 consumers and 35 police constables respectively. This service centres are offices including those of the Officer Commanding Station, Officer Charge-Crime, Children and Gender Desk, Report Office, and Customer Desk. Primary data was collected using open and closed ended questionnaires. Secondary data was collected using Government reports, Kenya Police bulletins, Police Strategic Plans and other relevant documents from authoritative sources on the topic under study.  The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential/statistical analysis. The descriptive analysis included central measure of tendencies such as the mean, mode, standard deviation, percentages and pie charts. The analysis of inferential statistics was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences and the conclusions were then drawn. The author expected that the outcome of the study will be used as a point of reference in improving police services. Police Officers will in future be kept abreast, be informed, get motivated and thereby benefit the National Police Service towards effective service delivery to the public. The government will in future be enabled to plan on organizational resources. The general public also appreciates the services rendered by the National Police Service. The research generated new knowledge and hence contributes to existing literature. The regression results also shows that 46.8 percent of the service delivery of the national police service can be explained by Pre-service training (R squared = 0.468).