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Explorations of the police work world in the USA typically involve non-random, unrepresentative samples of widely dispersed law enforcement agencies. Questions about officer selection, training and performance standards make comparisons of agency-based studies - especially among large city, small town, and rural law enforcers - difficult. In the present study, unique region-specific comparisons (i.e. metropolitan vs small-town vs rural duty stations) of the New Zealand Police (NZP) add to this body of knowledge for several reasons. First, the sample includes both sworn and non-sworn personnel, a rarity in US policing studies. Second, the "police agency" under study is a unified, national policing organization. This fact minimizes the vagaries of recruitment, selection and training found in the USA. Third, the data represents a random stratified sample of all official personnel who provide a wide range of police-related services in New Zealand, achieving a level of representativeness that is rare in police studies. Fourth, the shared common law tradition and more recent focus on community-oriented policing provide a unique opportunity to examine topics relevant to both New Zealand and the USA. The policy and practical implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]