1. Fire Service Accreditation: Are There Positive Outcomes On The Urban 10-Tear Accredited Community?

2. Why????

3. Why is the research important?
Emerging Standards, Assessments and accreditation models can standardized and define the disciplines that provide public service (Doerner & Doerner, 2012; Joly et al, 2007)
No empirical research of the nexus between public services and delivery outcomes (DeBritz & Pollak, 2006, Doener & Doerner, 2012)

4. Hearing Aids

5. Significance of the Study
Resources
Staff-hours
Equipment purchases
Fees (Consulting & Accreditation)
Local Level
Demonstrate the effective use of public resources
Broader Fire Service
Information to make educated decisions
Justification to Appointed and Elected Officials
Academia
Increases our base of knowledge

6. Theory or Argument
Theory/Hypothesis: If a fire service agency successfully completes the accreditation process over a 10 year period, then the subsequent effects on the community should be positive. Performance indicators should trend in a positive direction.
Hunch or suspicion motivates the research
Must be answered by statistical hypotheses

7. Research Questions
Research Question 1: Does fire service accreditation result in positive measurable community outcomes after an Urban fire service organization completes the second re-accreditation process?
Research Question 2: Does fire service accreditation result in a positive measurable community outcome within an Urban 10-year accredited agency’s community in comparison to an equivalent community where the fire service agency does not participate in accreditation?

8. Literature Review Fire Service Accreditation
Public Service Accreditation
Public Health Service
Law Enforcement
Public Works
Emergency Management
Public Safety Communications
Measurable variables that have a financial influence on the community

10. NOTHING!!!! Outputs, Outputs, Outputs!!! Public Health Services
(Joly et al, 2007, p352)

11. Nothing!!!!
When local government officials consider pursuing accreditation, they must keep several factors in mind. Traditional performance measures used by local government managers do not capture the benefits of the accreditation process. Proponents of accreditation have to anticipate this empirical problem and plan for new methods of measuring benefits. Based on this research, public works departments should seek out nontraditional means of assessing the benefits of organizational change from accreditation. (Tzoumis & Delaney, 1999, p. 342)

12. Literature Review Accreditation effect on performance
Determine if the treatment causes the difference
Determining Measurable Variables
What measurable variables reflect a significant effect on the community?
Fire Suppression (Core Function)
Casualties
ISO Rating
Property Loss
Insurance Premiums

13. Current Fire Service Benchmarking
ISO FSRS
Advantages
Well established – well known
Evaluates the community’s ability to prevent, respond and mitigate structure fires
Utilizes National Standards
Lower ISO Rating = economic development incentive
Disadvantages
Cost to improve rating
Evaluates structure fire suppression capabilities only
Focus is the insurance industry
A reduction of rating can become political

14. 117 accredited fire agencies rated under new schedule (Weber, 2016)

15. Current Fire Service Benchmarking
CPSE Accreditation
Advantages
Holistic evaluation of programs
Utilizes National Standards
Community Risk Analysis
Organization recognition
Economic development tool
Disadvantages
Resource commitment (personnel and funding)
Time commitment
Aspects that the fire service agency cannot control
Identifies areas of improvement (political tool)

16. Methods
Broad Research Questions must be answered by posing more specific research questions
What is the urban 10-year accredited community’s annual firefighter and civilian casualty rates before and after accreditation and how do these casualty rates compare to like non-accredited communities?
What is the urban 10-year accredited community’s annual fire property loss before and after accreditation and how do these causality rates compare to like non-accredited community?

17. Methods
What is the urban 10-year accredited community’s ISO FSRS rating before and after accreditation and how do these ISO FSRS rates compare to like non-accredited community?
What is the urban 10-year accredited community’s annual insurance rate on a 2600 square foot home of ordinary construction after accreditation and how do these insurance rates compare to like non-accredited community?

18. Population and Sample
Population to be study – 216 Accredited fire service agencies
Data set provide by CPSE of 216 agencies
US, Career, Urban, 2nd reaccreditation, rated under old ISO schedule
67 agencies meet criteria, 27 had two + accreditations, 19 rated under the old schedule
Spartanburg was excluded
Comparison departments selected from NFIRS Census Data
27,198 agencies, 745 meet criteria, sampling fraction developed by dividing by 19

19. Variables Casualties ISO Rating Property Loss Insurance Premiums
NFIRS – total casualties for civilian and fire personnel normalize by population of 1000
ISO Rating
Accredited agency provided rating and non-accredited agency provided by ISO
Property Loss
NFIRS – total property loss normalized by COL
Insurance Premiums
Quotes from national insurance companies normalized by COL

20. Accreditation Affect on the Organization
Could not be determined
Lack of data from 2004 and 2009
Four of the nineteen agencies could provide the data

21. Data Analysis of Comparable Agencies
Descriptive Summary Statistics
Diagnostic Testing
Type I errors, Outliers, Normality of Variables, Skewness/Kurtosis test for Normal Data
Bivariate Analysis of Independent Variable
Frequency Comparison Chart
T-Test
Correlation
Z-score

22. Results
Descriptive Summary and Diagnostic Testing reveal variables were within acceptable limits for statistical analysis
Frequency charts were consistent with descriptive statistics and provided a visual indication that accredited agencies frequency of values were lower overall than non-accredited agencies.

24. Statistically Significant
Concerned with the a research result or sampling variable, current research standard is 90% to 95% confidence level
T-Test in which a p-score is derived. P-score of less than .05 infers the probability the hypothesis is true at 95% confidence level
T-Test Result
Causality –
ISO Rating –
Property Loss –
Insurance Premiums –

25. Practically Significant
Is concerned with the whether the result is useful in the real world
Practical significance may be more effective in describing the difference in small sample as “small sample size requires a large absolute difference between groups to demonstrate statistical significance” (Daniel, 1977, p. 404)
Z-score is utilized in which .5 is the center of the variable range. The two comparison variables are compared and the closer both variables move toward the center, the less significant the difference is.

26. Practically Significant
Z-scores
Casualty – Accredited .01, Non-Accredited 0.99
ISO Rating – Accredited .03, Non-Accredited 0.97
Property Loss – Accredited .26, Non-Accredited 0.68
Insurance Premiums – Accredited .24, Non-Accredited 0.76

27. Conclusion
Research is inconclusive in regards to the theory that fire service accreditation results in positive measurable community outcomes after a fire service organization completes the re- accreditation process twice.
This research supports fire service accreditation results in a positive measurable community outcome within an urban 10-year accredited agency’s community in comparison to an equivalent community where the fire service agency does not participate in accreditation.

28. Recommendations Improved selection of comparable fire service agencies
CPSE benchmark selected variables of Registered Agencies which captures the data before the treatment of accreditation
Conduct research on same variables when population sample increases
Expand the scope of the research to measure EMS, Fire Prevention, Fire Education on community outcomes

29. Recommendations Examine the Qualitative side of accreditation
Examine the accuracy of NFIRS data
Examine the actual ISO scores to determine the exact areas of improvement provided by accreditation

30. Questions????
Wake The Person Next to You
Questions????