1. Method
 Participants:
 34 police officers
 18 officers were from the rural department
 16 officers from the suburban department
 5 female, 29 male.
 Predominantly Caucasian officers (94%) took
part in the study.
 Age range was 26 years old to 57 years old
 Mean—about 38 years old
 The most experience was 33 years
 Mean—about 13 years experience
 Procedure:
 Anonymous survey on Survey Monkey
 75 questions long—scale and fill in
 The survey included the Operational Police
Questionnaire (Page & Jacobs, 2011), the
Organizational Police Questionnaire (Page &
Jacobs, 2011) example pictured below, and
the Survey of Perceived Organizational
Support (P.O.S.) (Eisenberger, Fasolo, &
Davis-LaMastro, 1990)
 P.O.S. was a 36 question survey with a 0-6
scale including reverse coding
 Additional inquiries were made, such as: age,
ethnicity, years of work experience, and the
department
DIFFERENCES IN POLICE STRESS LEVELS
ERIN LAW, SIMONE ARENT, AND JESSICA CARLSON
Introduction
 Stress—high levels of occupational or operational
stressors that create physical ailments and
psychological problems that may affect the officer’s
work performance (Morash, 2006; Liberman, et. al.,
2002).
 Geographical location of the department can affect
stress levels of officers. Police in rural or suburban
settings are depicted as encountering less dangerous
and macabre scenes than those employed in an
urban department (Shane, 2010).
 Officers whom work excess hours often fall victim to
higher stress levels (Shane, 2010). Overtime in any
respect—police work, business managers,
professors—can overwhelm an individual.
 Adams and Buck (2010) observed community
members (outsiders) affecting police in comparison to
their own peers and supervisors (insiders). Both
insiders and outsiders affect the stress levels of police
officers. In terms of insiders causing stress, a
negative coworker impact often leads to stressors in
officers.
 Job context stressors are unnecessary, and can lead
to excessive buildup of stress on officers due to the
inability to escape or oppress the complication
(Shane, 2010).
 Hypothesis 1 for the study predicts that the
suburban department, compared to their rural
counterpart, will yield higher stress levels based on
geography of the department in terms of a higher
population.
 Hypothesis 2 anticipates that officers, between
both departments, whom work more overtime than
other officers will have higher stress levels.
 Hypothesis 3 foresees that officers dealing with a
negative coworker relationship will score higher on
the stress inventory.
Results & Discussion
 Results:
 F(2) = 0.51, p = n.s.
 Results of the stress inventories elicited no
significance between departments.
 Limitations:
 Sample size (n)
 Gender variation
 Be more distinct in geographical location
 Variation in race and ethnicity
 Future Research:
 Personal interview instead of online survey
 Test and retest structure
 Add to stress inventories
References
Adams, G. A., & Buck, J. (2010). Social stressors and
strain among police officers: It’s not just the bad
guys. Criminal Justice And Behavior, 37(9), 1030-
1040.
Eisenberger, R., Fasolo, P., & Davis-LaMastro, V.
(1990). Perceived organizational support and
employee diligence, commitment, and innovation.
Journal Of Applied Psychology, 75(1), 51-59.
Liberman, A. M., Best, S. R., Metzler, T. J., Fagan, J.
A., Weiss, D. S., & Marmar, C. R. (2002). Routine
occupational stress and psychological distress in police.
Policing: An International Journal Of Police Strategies &
Management, 25(2), 421-439.
Morash, M., Haarr, R., & Kwak, D. (2006). Multilevel
Influences on Police Stress. Journal Of Contemporary
Criminal Justice, 22(1), 26-43.
S., & Jacobs, S. C. (2011). Surviving the shift:
Rural police stress and counseling services.
Psychological Services, 8(1), 12-22.
Shane, J. M. (2010). Organizational stressors and
police performance. Journal Of Criminal Justice, 38(4),
807-818.
Operational and Organizational Police Stress
Questionnaire
Below is a list of items that describe different aspects of
being a police officer. After each item, please circle how
much stress it has caused you over the past 6 months,
using a 7-point scale (see below) that ranges from “No
Stress At All” to “A Lot of Stress”
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1.Shift Work
2.Working alone at night
21. Dealing with co-workers
26. Staff shortage