Professional Development Programmes as Correlates of Instructors’ Task Performance in Police Training Colleges in Southern Nigeria

The study investigated professional development programmes as correlates of instructors’ task performance in police training colleges in Southern Nigeria. Four research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a correlational research design. The sample size for the study was 340 instructors in Police Training colleges in Southern Nigeria selected from a population of 378 instructors. The proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to arrive at the sample size representing 90% of the population. Two instruments titled “Professional Development Programme Scale†(PDPS) with 34 items and “Task Performance Scale†with 20 items were used for data collection. The face and content validities were ensured. Internal consistency through Cronbach alpha was used to estimate the reliability indexes of 0.89 and 0.88 for PDPS and TPS respectively. Research questions 1, 2, and 3 were answered with the help of simple regression, while research questions 4, was answered using multiple regression. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 were tested with t-test associated with simple regression, while hypotheses 4 were tested using ANOVA associated with multiple regression. It was found that seminar, workshop, and conference significantly predict task performance of instructors in police training colleges in Southern Nigeria. It was recommended among others that promotion of instructors should be tied on the number of professional development programmes attended.