Table 3.

Final police-youth engagement survey exploratory factor analysis pattern matrix.

Survey Item	Factor 1: Calm and Respectful Intentions	Factor 2: Police Responsibility for Positive Youth Interactions	Factor 3: Sensitivity to Youth Perspective
Try to keep another officer calm if you see him or her getting worked up	.73	.05	−.08
Work to remain calm when young people get upset	.71	.02	.04
Say hello and talk to young people in your district even when not responding to a call	.62	.12	−.05
Explain to the young person why you stopped him or her	.56	.06	−.07
Try to talk to one young person at a time away from the group	.50	−.09	.23
Approach the young person differently than you would an adult	.40	−.17	.31
Young people are more likely to take risks with a group of friends than when alone	.25	.09	.06
Having positive interactions with young people in the community is an important part of my job	.14	.61	−.11
Police should show respect when interacting with young people	.11	.59	−.11
Police have a role to play in keeping young people out of the justice system	−.05	.53	.22
Relationships between police and young people can be improved	.04	.49	.13
There are techniques I can use to make stopping young people safer	.06	.49	.25
I have some control over whether young people show me respect	−.01	.38	.09
I trust many of the young people that live in my district	−.04	.26	.14
Police often overreact when dealing with young people	−.04	.08	.62
Young people are often afraid when they interact with police	.07	.18	.42
Race/ethnicity affects interactions between police and young people locally	.01	.07	.41
Young people often overreact when dealing with police	.09	−.10	.18

Note: Loadings ≥ .30 are bolded. Factor scores were extracted using the pattern matrix shown in this table, allowing for representation of any cross-loadings and without dropping low-loading items to compute the final scores.