ABSTRACT
Conducting evaluation research in police organizations presents substantial challenges for researchers. Among these, the possibility that some factor outside the researchers’ control brings the project to a halt is particularly daunting. Well-designed evaluation projects, involving both process and outcome evaluation elements, can provide informative results that may be useful to researchers and practitioners even when the overall evaluation project cannot be completed. This is an example of one such evaluation, a planned evaluation of a mentorship program for female cadets in Austin Police Department's (APD) Training Academy that was placed on hold partway through the work due to external issues halting academy training for an extended period. Despite the inability to complete the outcome evaluation as initially planned, researchers were able to render important insights into the program from qualitative interviews conducted as part of the process evaluation. The results included findings about substantial variation in the way mentors mentored cadets, tensions that arose between mentors and the instructors, and structural issues arising from differences in rank between mentors and instructors. Moreover, the analysis uncovered important questions about the challenges of navigating organizational obligations when acting as a mentor.
