Police-Related Stress:
A Critique
For Future Research
M a r k L. Dantzer, Institute of Urban Studies, UT - Arlington
Introduction
For years police work has ranked
among the top five most stressful
occupations. Recently, the amount of
research into the area of police-related
stress has grown. A variety of studies have
been conducted with various conclusions
being reached. Regardless of the findings,
one predominant notion is prevalent--stress
is omnipresent in law enforcement. Who it
affects the most and why seems always to
be an underlying theme in these studies.
However, the ultimate conclusions seem to
sidestep the issue and do not provide a very
solid answer.
Terry (1981) best summarizes the
problems with previously published works
related to police-stress: "current work in the
area of police stress reveals the great
conceptual and methodological
complexities involved in establishing causal
linkages between individual, organizational,
and environmental effects (p. 71)." Although
Terry examined studies conducted before
1981, his conclusions are justifiable for
those studies conducted since his report.
The purpose of this paper is to review
43 Journal of Potice and Criminal Psychology, October 1987, Vol. 3 No. 3
several such studies on police-stress in an
attempt to support Terry's conclusions.
Another purpose is to attempt to better
understand current problems in conducting
research in this area and hopefully provide
ideas and recommendations for future
research. This will be accomplished
through the review of the purposes,
methodologies/samples, and conclusions of
several studies published since 1981
(except for Kroes et al. 1974 which probably
can be considered the pioneer study and
starting block for studies in this area).
Purposes
No matter what type of research is
conducted, regardless of the discipline, the
researcher must have a purpose for
conducting this particular research.
Obviously, with the topic of police-stress, the
purpose should support some type of
relationship between stress and a police-
related variable. However, before this can
occur, it should be established whether or
not there is relevancy. As Terry points out,
the research should first answer the
questions "is police work stressful and to
III
what extent (p. 61)?". Kroes, Margolis, and
Hurrell (1974) provided the ground-work
necessary to start looking for the answers.
Their study attempted to determine what
police officers felt were job-related stressors
by asking policemen from Cincinnati several
questions concerning those thing that
bother them and fellow officers most about
their job.
The following "purposes" are examples
from studies conducted since Kroes et al.:
Fell, Richard, and Wallace (1980) examined
mortality and morbidity data from pre-
recorded health records to determine
whether psychological job stresses
incapacitate police at abnormally high rates.
White and Marino (1984) attempted to
provide information on the causal linkages
between specific job stressor categories
and the levels of police officer job stress.
Lawrence's (1984) study was one of a
limited number which attempted to follow
the path of Knoes et al, in accordance with
Terry, by addressing some key
methodological issues in the identification
and measurement of police stress. Here
Lawrence pursued three main objectives:
(1) to test the generalizability of the results
of Kroes et al's study: (2) to develop an
instrument which measures objectively a
police officer's responses to various sources
of stress and provides quantifiable results;
and (3) to examine relationships between
police job-stress and personality factors,
and to propose a model which attempts to
explain differential responses to stressors.
The goal of the study by Violanti,
Marshall, and Howe (1985) was to examine
the impact of occupational factors (job
demands, stress, and coping) on police
officers as it relates to alcohol use. Moyer's
(1986) study centered upon the examination
of the occupational stress that police officers
experienced during their variety of
encounters with citizens and other officers.
Moyer explored the various strategies used
by police officers in handling stressful
situations while performing their given
duties.
Graf (1986) investigated the relationship
between police officers' perceived social
support and their perceived job stress.
Specifically, he examined social support in
terms of sources of support (work-related
and outside of work), levels of support
(number of supportive persons), and
satisfaction with existing support. He
measured stress as the level of perceived
occupational stress rather than the officer's
objective life experiences.
Up to this point seven different purposes
were introduced, all of which examine a
pertinent aspect of police-related stress. Yet
there appears there is little correlation or
support amongst them and all seem to rely
on the initial assumption that stress exists
extensively enough to merit researching. A
final purpose that introduces yet another
aspect is found in Mullin's (1986) study
where stress and burnout was examined.
His purpose was to more directly assess the
effect of burnout on police behavior.
There is nothing wrong with any of
these purposes. Research allows for
differential approaches toward the
establishment of a topic. The contention
here was simply to demonstrate the number
of different approaches being applied while
a major gap seems to exist between the
abstract and concrete. Perhaps a consistent
line of research should be conducted to fully
establish that police-related stress actually
exists as a quantifiable, researchable entity.
Methodologies/Samples
Once the purpose of a study is
Police-Related Stress 44