Innovative training programs can provide police departments with junior officers who have demonstrated competency in a large number of specific police skills. Lacking measures of field performance and programs to maintain performance standards, the ultimate effectiveness of training cannot be assessed. Process measures of performance are generally too obtrusive and disruptive to be useful. Outcome measures are less obtrusive. Such measures can sample either readily observable performances (report writing, crisis intervention, and court appearance measures) or typically unobserved activities (tachograph/activity sheet measure and the citizen survey measure). Maintenance of performance standards based on these measures can be assessed through a system of frequent supervision and feedback. Indeed, the measures can be used to empirically establish realistic performance standards for officers in the field. Finally, development of several outcome measures can provide field sergeants with adequate tools for active supervision and can form the basis for objective performance-based personnel evaluations.

A program for elementary school-aged youth, designed for and implemented by a retail business, was evaluated. The program included visual instructions to youth, tokens (exchangeable for special prizes) for appropriate verbal behavior, visual feedback to youth, and rewards for reducing merchandise loss, all continued to a criterion level. A 54% reduction in losses of popular youth merchandise was achieved.