Quality assessment in police university training: contributions from the experiences of its actors

Abstract

Objective: to analyze, through the experiences of actors linked to a university police education program in Panama, the particularities that become relevant to the evaluation of its quality. Methodology: a qualitative study was conducted as the qualitative component of a broader doctoral investigation. Thirteen participants were purposively selected across five profiles: one director, administrative staff, faculty members, student cadets, and graduates. Data were generated through individual semi-structured interviews. The corpus comprised 106 response records and 663 meaning segments, examined through two coding cycles, within-profile and cross-profile comparison, preservation of discrepant cases, and control of interviewer interventions. Results: four findings were identified: differentiated articulation between university education and professional police preparation; relationships between the training routine and conditions of the academic experience; the need to contextualize teaching and evaluation processes; and heterogeneous meanings of discipline associated with external pressure, conviction, internalization, legality, and professional responsibility. Actor perspectives revealed convergences, tensions, and discrepancies that require comparison with other forms of evidence. Conclusions: professional specificity can be incorporated as an interpretive condition of program quality without constituting an exception to higher education standards. Qualitative evidence strengthens self-evaluation when its situated scope is preserved, perceptions are distinguished from institutional verification, and questions requiring documentary, regulatory, and academic triangulation are identified before judgments about quality are supported. The study offers a context-sensitive evaluative reading that preserves common university standards and defines actor voices as diagnostic evidence for continuous institutional improvement, while deliberately avoiding causal, statistical, or institutional claims that the interview corpus cannot independently substantiate.

Keywords: quality assurance; self-evaluation; higher education; police education; educational stakeholders.