Health Behaviour, Stress, and Police Trainees
Occupational stress has adverse effects on the health of police officers which may have a negative impact on their work in the long run. The same may apply to police trainees who have been less studied in this respect so far. To investigate this issue, we performed a cross-sectional study in probationer police officers in their second school year in two grades at one of the Hungarian law enforcement schools. The study was performed in two waves in 2016 (N = 138) and 2018 (N = 94). We explored the connection between stress exposure as measured by the Occupational Stress Questionnaire for Law Enforcement Services, and health-related behaviours, particularly alcohol consumption, smoking, and physical activity as measured by a custom-made questionnaire. Variance analysis showed that police stress factors have a connection with health behaviours in the two grades: relations between smoking status, alcohol consumption, and binge drinking on the one hand and Individual, Personal factors on the other in 2016 and between the frequency of physical activity, alcohol consumption and binge drinking on the one hand and Workload factors on the other in 2018. The findings obtained in 2016 and 2018 are different in many respects. Overall, the relationship between stress exposure and health-related behaviours was more obvious in 2018 than in 2016. Our study revealed important connections between stress exposure and health-related behaviours in police trainees, but the differences observed in the two waves indicate the complexity of the relationship and require further – preferably longitudinal – studies on the issue.