Chapter Five. Stress on patrol: Stress And Coping Among Police officers

Orientation: Stress is a social reality which does not exist in isolation, but in many social situations, especially work-related environments. Police officers in particular suffer from highly negative stress related outcomes.Research purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine how Moos's hypothesised stress and coping model (1994) fitted a sample of police officers.Motivation for the study: The study was an attempt to understand police officers' unique needs and how the frequency and/or intensity of perceived stress could be reduced so that they would be able to cope more effectively with stress.Research design, approach and method: A non-experimental survey design, following the quantitative tradition, was used in pursuit of the research objectives. A random sample of 505 participants was extracted from a population of serving male and female police officers reflecting the typical South African ethnic groups. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to establish the adequacy of between the hypothesised Moos model and the sample.Main findings: The hypothesised theoretical framework was disproved. A respecified model and inter-correlations confirm that some officers experience burnout, while, paradoxically, others continue to be unaffected because of the buffering effect of social support, personality factors and other resilience factors not revealed in this study.Practical/managerial implications: The study calls on police management for awareness of the negative health consequences of prolonged stressors. Simultaneously, employee assistance programmes could be directed to problem-solving strategies, perceived self-efficacy and learned resourcefulness to improve control over prolonged negative stress consequences among members.Contribution/value-add: This research provides a theoretical framework to understand, describe and assess individual well-being in the police work context.

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Perceived stress among police officers: an integrative model of stress and coping

Policing An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management ◽

10.1108/pijpsm-06-2014-0064 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 37 (4) ◽

pp. 839-857 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Jennifer H. Webster

Keyword(s):

Perceived Stress ◽

Police Officers ◽

Personal Characteristics ◽

Stress And Coping ◽

Integrative Model ◽

Interactive Process ◽

Content Type ◽

Complex Process ◽

Proposed Model ◽

And Coping

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose an original model of stress and coping as a complex interactive process between an individual and his or her environment. Design/methodology/approach – A preliminary test of the model is conducted using data from a meta-analysis of perceived occupational stress among police officers. Collapsing correlates into predictor domains that mirror the proposed model of stress and coping allowed for a preliminary analysis of some of the constructs in the proposed model. Findings – The findings suggest that each domain contributes to the perception of stress and that knowledge in this area might best be advanced by recognizing the importance of each in shaping an interactive process of stress and coping rather than attempting to rank individual correlates. Research limitations/implications – The data do not provide definitive conclusions that personal characteristics or job characteristics, for example, are more important than others in shaping stress perception among police officers. Clearly, these findings suggest that questions about what is most important in shaping police stress have remained unanswered because the variables of interest make equally important contributions to a complex process. Originality/value – Adopting the proposed integrative model of stress and coping may help researchers move beyond the flawed conceptualization of perceived stress among police officers as a simple operational/organizational dichotomy, allowing for a more rich understanding of stress and coping as a complex process.

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Applying Positive Psychology to Understand Police Officers' Stress and Coping

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e528002007-001 ◽

2006 ◽

Author(s):

Jennifer G. Carusone ◽

Susan R. Hall

Keyword(s):

Positive Psychology ◽

Police Officers ◽

Stress And Coping ◽

And Coping

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Stress and Coping in Police Officers

Police Quarterly ◽

10.1177/109861110000300405 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 438-450 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

Jeffrey D. K. Aaron

Keyword(s):

Police Officers ◽

Stress And Coping ◽

And Coping

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Occupational Stress and Coping among Portuguese Military Police Officers

Avances en Psicología Latinoamericana ◽

10.12804/apl34.1.2016.04 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 47-65 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

A. Rui Gomes, A. R. ◽

Jorge M. P. Afonso, J. M. P.

Keyword(s):

Occupational Stress ◽

Police Officers ◽

Stress And Coping ◽

Military Police ◽

And Coping

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The Coping Scales From the German Stress and Coping Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027/1015-5759/a000530 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 36 (4) ◽

pp. 545-553 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Heike Eschenbeck ◽

Uwe Heim-Dreger ◽

Denise Kerkhoff ◽

Carl-Walter Kohlmann ◽

Arnold Lohaus ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Children And Adolescents ◽

Internal Consistency ◽

Stress And Coping ◽

Self Report ◽

Partial Metric ◽

Confirmatory Factor Analyses ◽

Language Version ◽

English Speaking ◽

And Coping

Abstract. The coping scales from the Stress and Coping Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (SSKJ 3–8; Lohaus, Eschenbeck, Kohlmann, & Klein-Heßling, 2018 ) are subscales of a theoretically based and empirically validated self-report instrument for assessing, originally in the German language, the five strategies of seeking social support, problem solving, avoidant coping, palliative emotion regulation, and anger-related emotion regulation. The present study examined factorial structure, measurement invariance, and internal consistency across five different language versions: English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian. The original German version was compared to each language version separately. Participants were 5,271 children and adolescents recruited from primary and secondary schools from Germany ( n = 3,177), France ( n = 329), Russia ( n = 378), the Dominican Republic ( n = 243), Ukraine ( n = 437), and several English-speaking countries such as Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, and the USA (English-speaking sample: n = 707). For the five different language versions of the SSKJ 3–8 coping questionnaire, confirmatory factor analyses showed configural as well as metric and partial scalar invariance (French) or partial metric invariance (English, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian). Internal consistency coefficients of the coping scales were also acceptable to good. Significance of the results was discussed with special emphasis on cross-cultural research on individual differences in coping.

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