Police Work Styles Inventory (WSI)

The Work Styles Inventory (WSI) is FPSI’s personality assessment designed specifically for entry-level police officer candidates. Developed through extensive research by Ph.D. and graduate-level professionals, the WSI measures the critical work behaviors that drive success in law enforcement, from integrity and ethics to teamwork, stress tolerance, and decision-making.

Unlike many personality-style assessments, the WSI was designed to measure these traits in subtle, less obvious ways, making it a highly valid and reliable predictor of performance. Another advantage is that personality inventories tend to produce little, if any, adverse impact. As a result, the WSI not only helps identify the most capable candidates but also gives departments a powerful tool for reaching their diversity and community representation goals in the final eligibility list.

By incorporating the WSI into your hiring process, your department can move beyond cognitive testing alone and ensure you are selecting candidates who are both technically prepared and personally equipped to serve the public with professionalism and respect. The WSI is a criterion-valid assessment backed by FPSI’s decades of expertise and is available in paper-and-pencil format.

The chart below graphically shows how the WSI can increase job performance (in these areas) in your department:

The WSI is a 20-minute paper-and-pencil examination, and is recommended that it be combined with other written tests. If the WSI is used in combination with other written police officer tests, weights can be created based on the score achieved on the test. If the WSI is not combined with other written tests, the WSI can be used to create band scores of applicants who pass an initial written test.