Virtual Reality Training for Police Officers: A Comparison of Training Responses in VR and Real-life Training 3 53 Participants In total, 237 street patrol officers of the Dutch National Police with additional tasks in the Dutch special intervention unit (227 male, 8 female, and 2 other; M age = 39.39, SD = 7.82) participated in this study. The participants’ experience on the job ranged from 3 to 42 years (M years = 15.16 years, SD = 6.78). Participants provided informed consent before the start of the experiment. Ethical approval was obtained from the Social and Societal Ethics Committee of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as part of the SHOTPROS project which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant number: 833672). Design We utilized a within-subject study design. All participants completed RL SBT and the VR SBT in their respective training groups. To counterbalance the training order, half of the training groups in this study completed the RL SBT followed by the VR SBT; the other half of the training groups completed the VR SBT followed by RL SBT. The training groups consisted of 12 to 16 participants depending on the size of the operational unit. For the RL SBT, the training group of 12 to 16 participants executed one large training scenario. The training scenario took on average 40 minutes. For the VR SBT, the operational unit was split into two training groups consisting of six to eight participants (depending on the initial size of the operational unit). This was done to allow sufficient computing power in the VR. Each group of six to eight participants completed a sequence of three VR SBT scenarios which on average took six minutes each (total VR SBT time on average 18 minutes). In this study, we assessed three main measures: physical training responses (HR, physical activity), psychological training responses (perceived stress, mental effort), and VR experiences (participant characteristics, sense of presence). Due to the training schedule of the Dutch police, the set-up of the study was such that some participants were unable to complete all three study measures (without causing a delay in the training schedule). In addition, due to limited availability of measurement equipment (i.e., Zephyr Bioharness devices), we could not monitor the physical activity and heart rate of all participants. Thus, we utilized three distinct sub-samples for the three measures we recorded in this study. A total of 210 participants completed the VR experience measures, a total of 114 participants completed the measures of psychological response measures, and a total of 54 participants took part in the measures of physical responses. The overlap of participants taking part in the measures can be found in Figure A1 in the Appendix; descriptive statistics of the sub-samples can be found in Table A1 in the Appendix. There are no notable differences in the demographic distribution of the sub-samples (see Table A1).
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