Karen Amendola

Karen L. Amendola, Ph.D.

Chief Behavioral Scientist

Science & Innovation Division

Bio

Karen L. Amendola has more than 30 years of experience in public safety research, training, technology, and assessment. With the National Policing Institute for over 25 years, Dr. Amendola currently serves as the Chief Behavioral Scientist. Karen earned both her Ph.D. and M.A. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from George Mason University, as well as an M.A. in Human Resources Management from Webster University. She has worked with numerous local, state, and federal agencies.

Dr. Amendola has led scientific investigations of eyewitness identification procedures and practices, organizational stress and its impact on various outcomes, community policing and procedural justice in jails, and is currently a principal investigator on a study of supervisory modeling of internal justice. With her colleagues, Amendola’s experiment on compressed work schedules in policing was published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology and was awarded the 2012 Outstanding Field Trial by the Division of Experimental Criminology of the American Society of Criminology.

Dr. Amendola is an Associate member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and its Sections of Police Psychological Services and Officer Safety and Organizational Wellness; the International Association of Applied Psychology; and the American Society of Criminology and its Divisions of Policing and Experimental Criminology.

Appointed to the APA’s Presidential Task Force on Use of Force Against African Americans in 2022, Amendola also previously served for more than five years on the Scientific Review Committee of the National Center

for Credibility Assessment (at the time, Department of Defense Polygraph Institute) and as the Chair of the National Partnership for Careers in Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security, and as a member of the research advisory board of the Innocence Project in New York.

Publications

A selection of Dr. Amendola’s publications is included below. Additional titles may be viewed here.

Amendola, K. L., Hill, C., Valdovinos Olson, M., &  Gorban, B. Jails Compendium: Adapting community-oriented policing strategies and procedural justice for jail communities (2023). Washington, DC. COPS Office, National Policing Institute, and National Sheriffs’ Association.

Amendola, K. L., Valdovinos Olson, M., Grieco, J., & Robbins, T. G. (2021). Development of a Work–Family Conflict Scale for Spouses or Partners of Police Officers, Policing: An International Journal, 44(2), 275-290. Link

Owens, Emily G., Weisburd, David, Amendola, Karen L., and Alpert, Geoffrey (2018). Can You Build a Better Cop? Experimental Evidence on Supervision, Training, and Policing in the Community. Criminology and Public Policy, 17(1), 41-87. doi: 10.1111/1745-9133.12337 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9133.12337

Amendola, K. L., & Wixted, J. T. (2017). The role of site variance in the American Judicature Society field study comparing simultaneous and sequential lineups. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 33(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9273-6

Taniguchi, T., Vovak, H., Cordner, G., Amendola, K., Yang, Y., Hoogesteyn, K., & Bartness, M. (2022). The Impact of Active Bystander Training on Officer Confidence and Ability to Address Ethical Challenges. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac034

Amendola, K. L., & Wixted, J. T. (2015). No possibility of a selection bias, but direct evidence of a simultaneous superiority effect: a reply to Wells et al. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 11(2), 291-294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-015-9227-x

Amendola, K. L., & Wixted, J. T. (2015). Comparing the diagnostic accuracy of suspect identifications made by actual eyewitnesses from simultaneous and sequential lineups in a randomized field trial. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 11(2), 263-284. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-014-9219-2

Amendola, K. L., Hill, C., Valdovinos Olson, M., & Gorban, B. Jails Compendium: Adapting community-oriented policing strategies and procedural justice for jail communities (2023). Washington, DC. COPS Office, National Policing Institute, and National Sheriffs’ Association. https://www.policinginstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Compendium-Community-Policing-and-Procedural-Justice-in-Jails-Part-4.pdf

CRP Incorporated (2019). District of Columbia Police-Community Relations Report (FY 2018). Amendola, K. L., lead consultant and part of the study team (see p. i). https://cjcc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/cjcc/Police%20Community%20Report.pdf

Amendola, K. L., Valdovinos, M., & Perea, C. (2019). Reducing dog shootings in police encounters: Regulations, policies, practices, and training implications. Washington, DC: National Police Foundation. https://www.policinginstitute.org/publication/reducing-dog-shootings-in-routine-police-encounters-regulations-policies-practices-and-training-implications/

 

Areas of Focus

  • Applied psychology in policing
  • Evaluating evidentiary strength
  • Eyewitness identification procedures
  • Hiring, selection, and promotion
  • Officer safety, health, and wellness
  • Organizational stress
  • Performance measurement
  • Police culture and climate assessment
  • Psychological measurement and psychometrics
  • Psychology and law
  • Shift length and compressed work schedules

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