Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, Vol. 16, No.

1, March 2006 (

C 2006)

DOI: 10.1007/s10926-005-9006-z

Development of Work Stress Scale for Correctional

Officers
Emre Şenol-Durak,1 Mithat Durak,2 and Tülin Gençöz3,4
Published online: 11 May 2006

Introduction: This study aimed at examining the psychometric properties of Work Stress
Scale for Correctional Officers (WSSCO). Methods: One hundred nineteen correctional of-
ficers (109 males and 10 females) employed in Turkey participated in this study. In addition
to WSSCO, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Beck Hope-
lessness Scale (BHS), and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS)
were administered to the participants. Results: The internal consistencies and the item-
total correlations were acceptable both for the whole scale and for its subscales; namely,
“work overload,” “role conflict and role ambiguity,” “inadequacies in physical conditions
of prison,” “threat perception,” and “general problems.” Test–retest reliability coefficient
was 0.77 for total scale, and test-retest reliability coefficients ranged between 0.68 and
0.78 for the subscales. The total scale and most of the subscales were positively correlated
with depression, anxiety, and hopelessness, and negatively correlated with perceived social
support. Furthermore, all subscales significantly differentiated high depressive symptoma-
tology group from the low depressive symptomatology group. Conclusions: The present
results revealed that the psychometric properties of WSSCO were quite adequate. The scale
can provide a potentially useful tool for research on job stress in correctional officers.
KEY WORDS: correctional officers; work-stress; psychometric properties.

Work stress has been investigated by many researchers because of its deleterious
impacts on mental (1,2) and physical health (3). Specifically, the individuals exposed to
work-related stress reported behavioral and emotional problems, such as depression (2,4,5),
anxiety (6), burnout (5,7), and alcohol abuse (8).
In addition to mental and physical health problems, work stress can also cause certain
organizational problems, such as dissatisfaction (2,5), job turnover (3,5,9), high absenteeism
(2, 3,10), increase in job accidents (11), and decrease in job performance (9, 10). For these
reasons, clarifying the sources and understanding the causes of work-related stress are
crucial to improve stress reduction interventions (4,12), and to increase job satisfaction, job
performance, and quality of life.
1 Abant _
Izzet Baysal University, Bolu, Turkey.
2 Abant _
Izzet Baysal University, Bolu, Turkey.
3 Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.
4 Correspondence should be directed to Tülin Gençöz,
Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical Univer-
sity, Ankara 06531, Turkey; e-mail: tgencoz@metu.edu.tr.

157
1053-0487/06/0300-0157/1

C 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
158 Şenol-Durak, Durak, and Gençöz

Stress is defined as “a particular relationship between the person and the environment
that is appraised by the individual as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endan-
gering his or her well-being” (13, p. 19). In other words, not only the characteristics of
the environmental factors, but also the perception of the person about the demands of the
environment (9), his/her coping resources (4,14), his/her sources, and type of social support
(4) are important in defining stress. For example, increase in absenteeism and voluntary
turnover result from job stress that is at the same time an outcome of incongruence between
individual and organizational demands (15). Furthermore, stress is related with such per-
sonality characteristics as negative affectivity (16) and hopelessness (17). Therefore, such
personality and organizational factors should be considered in the examination of work
stress. Many factors and sources of work stress have been identified by several researchers.
Especially, lack of control (5), role ambiguity (3,18), role conflict (8), work overload
(7,19), lack of self-efficacy (9), and performance pressure (20) are extensively studied to
understand the nature of work stress. The other factors are noise (2), career development,
organizational climate and structure, ergonomics (1), participation in decision-making (18),
demands of job, security of job (14), relationship with others in work, physical environment
of the workplace (1,18), and work–family conflicts (20).
The specific characteristics of a particular job should be considered in the examination
of work stress. Different jobs possess different work environments and organizational struc-
tures, so that they have different sources of stress. The nature of some work environments
is found to be more stressful than others, such as business executives (21), lawyers (22),
bus drivers (23), police officers (4), and correctional officers (24,25).
Similarly, the demands of the prison environment require adaptation. Studies which
are conducted in the prison environment demonstrated that work stress is significantly
correlated with mental health (26); physical health, such as hearth diseases, hypertension,
ulcers, asthma, and bronchitis (14,25,27–29); burnout (25,30); turnover (15,31); sick leave
(32, 33), absenteeism (33), role difficulties (34); and job dissatisfaction (32,35,36).
Work stress among correctional officers is defined as “an occupational hazard in prison
environment” (37). Recently, in contrast to 10 or 20 years ago, experienced correctional
officers have reported greater stress due to cultural diversity, public research, increased
civil suits (37), increased negative advertisement of the job in society (37, 38), and shift
of expectations from the correctional institutions, towards being a treatment facility rather
than a punitive mechanism (24,38).
The term of correctional officers refers to many occupational groups. The label of
correctional officers includes adult or juvenile officers; officers working with day, evening,
or night shifts; officers working in rural or urban locations; officers in male or female
facilities; and officers working in facilities ranging from minimum to maximum security.
To the best of our knowledge, there has not been any study covering and comparing these
groups of work stress yet. On the other hand, there are studies examining the stress level of
a specific occupational group such as juvenile correctional officers (39), officers working in
maximum security placements (36), and officers working in day, evening, and night shifts
(28).
Correctional officers’ role includes various responsibilities. Correctional officers are
responsible for not only the custody of prisoners, but also the correction of their misbe-
haviors and the rehabilitation of them (15,24). Their role consists of various aspects. First,
correctional officers have an important and influential role in the lives of many inmates.
Second, they supervise both remand and sentenced prisoners, enforce rules and regulations
Development of Work Stress Scale for Correctional Officers 159

of prison, prevent disturbances, assaults, or escapes (37), and maintain security and safety
(40). Third, they deal with guiding, mentoring, facilitating, developing, and watching in-
mates (41). Fourth, they have to control mails and visitors for illegal imports (37). Fifth,
they are accountable for both creating and maintaining human environment within the walls
(42).
When considering the requirements of their work, correctional officers perceive their
roles as “being impotent key keepers” (32). Their daily working conditions range form
boring to dangerous (37). Evidence shows that those who perceive their work as dangerous
have been found to be most susceptible to stress (43).
Some work stressors of correctional officers are similar to work stressors of all occu-
pational categories, thus those are common sources of stress, such as health problems (44),
safety concerns, career development, qualitative role overload (45), lack of organizational
support (24,39), long working hours (39), negative interactions with co-workers (38), role
conflict, and role ambiguity (36). Still there are some work stressors that are specific to cor-
rectional officers, such as problems occurring in relation to prisoners (26,38), perceptions
of dangerousness (24,34,36,38,39), implementations of reforms (24,46), unpredictable and
traumatizing events (37), limited opportunity for utilizing talents (15), shift work (37,45),
difficulty in scheduling (26), and isolation from family (37) and co-workers (24,37). The
public image of the job boosts morale of the staff (46). It is not only work stressors by itself,
but also organizational structure that should be considered among the sources of stress (32).
Work stressors are often measured by self-report data (2). In literature, various scales
have been used to measure work stress. Though some researchers utilized general work-
stress measures (10), such as Perceived Stress Scale (47), others preferred to use the existent
scales specific to a particular job (48), such as Nursing Stress Scale (49) for measuring
nurses’ work stress.
Chen et al. (1) indicated that work stressors perceived by members of a specific occu-
pation could be different. This enabled various researchers to develop occupation-specific
instruments targeted at specific professions. Examples for job-specific stress instruments
include Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (5), Police Stress Survey (4), and Job Stress
for Information Technology Personnel Scale (3). In fact, Cole et al. (48) have gone much
further in their research and developed Post Code Stress Scale to measure stress level of
critical care nurses in the condition of the resuscitation attempts.
Tennant (2) stated that “. . . different occupational groups may differ in the nature
of their work environment . . .” (p. 699). In spite of the fact that there are many existing
job stress inventories (33,50), they are not designed for specific work populations. Some
researchers have used general work-stress inventories for correctional officers (30), such
as Maslach Burnout Inventory Human Services Survey (51) and Job Stress Index (39).
However, these are not designed specifically for correctional officers and most of them are
adapted from various other inventories, which is a handicap for the correctional officers
who feel a heavy psychological burden of their work.
To the knowledge of the authors, there is no research carried out on the examination
of work stress designed specifically for correctional officers. However, correctional officers
are exposed to high level of stressful conditions while doing their work, which results
in a need to handle work stress of correctional officers separately and to assess their
stressors using a measure developed specially for their job. Through some interviews
with correctional officers, a pilot study (52) was conducted and various stress sources
experienced by correctional officers were obtained. On the basis of this preliminary study,
160 Şenol-Durak, Durak, and Gençöz

the sources of work stress for correctional officers can be grouped under five different
domains, namely, “work overload,” “role conflict and role ambiguity,” “inadequacies in
physical conditions of prison,” “threat perception,” and “general problems.” These five
domains of stress were covered by the use of 35 items, which were again determined on the
basis of the interviews conducted by the correctional officers. The present study examined
the psychometric properties of the Work Stress Scale for Correctional Officers (WSSCO).

METHOD

Participants

The sample included 109 males and 10 females, and their ages ranged from 23 to 47
(X = 30.44, SD = 4.17). Thirty-nine participants (32.8%) were high school graduates, and
80 participants (67.2%) were university graduates. Thirty five percent of the participants
worked in medium security prison and the others (65%) worked in maximum security
prison. All participants participated voluntarily in this study.

Materials

Work Stress Scale for Correctional Officers (WSSCO)

WSSCO is designed particularly for correctional officers (52). This scale is a self-
report instrument and consists of 35 items referring to the effects of given conditions
upon the workers. The scale is scored on a 5-point Likert type scale ranging from 0 (it
has no effect at all) to 4 (it has a very strong effect). Items of WSSCO were developed
by interviewing 15 correctional officers on the potential stressful conditions in their work
environment. Those participants were asked 13 open-ended questions related with their job,
such as “what are your feelings and thoughts about your job?”, “what are the difficulties
you encounter in your job?”. Following the interview, the answers were sorted out with
the joint agreement of three psychologists with at least master’s degrees. In case of any
discrepancies among the psychologists, these were carefully discussed and then resolved.
The number (i.e., the number of individuals who referred to a certain thematic unit) and
frequency (i.e., the total number of reference to each thematic unit) of each statement were
considered while the forming of the scale items. Consequently, on the basis of the themes,
which have high number and frequency values, 35 items were generated. On the basis
of their contents, these 35 items can be grouped under five different categories, namely
“work overload,” “role conflict and role ambiguity,” “inadequacies in physical conditions of
prison,” “threat perception,” and “general problems.” For the details of the process related
to the development of this scale, see Durak et al.’s study (52).

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; 53).

BDI is a reliable and well-validated 21-item self-report measure of depressive symp-

toms. This inventory is adapted into Turkish By Tegin (54) and Hisli (55, 56) with reliability
and validity coefficients that are comparable to the original values.
Development of Work Stress Scale for Correctional Officers 161

Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; 57)

BAI is a 21-item self-report measure of general anxiety symptoms; each item is rated
on a 3-point scale. BAI is a reliable and validated measure (57, 58). This inventory is
adapted into Turkish by Ulusoy et al. (59), with reliability and validity coefficients that are
comparable to the original values.

Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS; 60).

BHS is a reliable and well-validated scale and comprises 20 true–false items that
assess the degree of pessimism or a person’s negative view of future. Turkish adaptation of
this scale was made by Durak (61).

Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS; 62).

The MSPSS is a 12-item self-report scale which is used to assess the person’s percep-
tion of the adequacy of social support from three sources: friends, family, and significant
others. The scale is scored on a 7-point Likert scale from 0 (disagree very strongly) to 7
(agree very strongly). The MSPSS is a reliable and validated measure (see 62). The adap-
tation of the scale into Turkish sample was made by Eker et al. (63, 64). They examined
the psychometric properties of the scale in psychiatry, surgery, and normal samples. The
psychometric properties of the Turkish form of this scale were found to be satisfactory.

Procedure

All measures were administered to the correctional officers individually within work
hours. The measures were distributed to 130 correctional officers, but were not returned
from 11 subjects all of whom were males. Subjects were informed about the study and their
consents were taken. It took about 30 min to complete the questionnaires. To obtain the
test-retest reliability, after 21-day interval, conveniently accessible seventy-one participants
were asked to complete WSSCO for the second time.

RESULTS

Reliability

Considering the reliability analyses for the total scale and its subscales, internal con-
sistency coefficients (i.e., Cronbach alpha) and item-total correlations were examined (see
Table I). The internal consistency of the total scale was found as 0.94, and the item-total
correlations ranged from 0.31 to 0.75. For the first subscale named “work overload,” the
internal consistency was found as 0.75, and for this subscale the item-total correlations
ranged from 0.34 to 0.58; for the second subscale named “role conflict and role ambiguity”
the internal consistency was 0.87, and the item-total correlations ranged from 0.43 to 0.68;
162 Şenol-Durak, Durak, and Gençöz

Table I English Translation of the Items Under Each Domain of Work Stress and the Reliability Coefficients
ICC ITCWS ITCED

I. Work Overload 0.75 0.43 0.34

2. Insufficient division of labor in the work place 0.54 0.57
3. Work overload 0.61 0.58
6. Having to control prisoners’ inappropriate behaviors 0.53 0.45
26. Being inspected by various committees in the work place 0.50 0.43
29. Night shifts leading to additional workload 0.57 0.58
35. Excessive responsibilities of my position
II. Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity 0.87
4. Intentions of the personnel’s, prisoners’, and visitors’ breaking down the rules 0.47 0.44
of prison
9. The prison managers’ ignorance of the needs and ideas of the personnel 0.63 0.67
11. Being held responsible for someone else’s misconduct at work 0.585 0.61
14. Not being able to work in the area that I’m proficient in 0.55 0.43
15. Prisoners, visitors, and lawyers not agreeing with the correctional officers’ 0.59 0.53
body search
19. Arbitrary decisions and frequent changes of decision 0.59 0.67
21. Ambiguity of instructions at work 0.54 0.65
22. Not being able to declare my opinions anywhere 0.64 0.64
27. Managers’ differences in their attitudes and behaviors towards prisoners 0.60 0.63
31. Obstruction of performing my routine work by the commands of the prison 0.54 0.68
authorities
III. Inadequacies in Physical Conditions of Prison 0.70
7. Insufficiency of the working environment to meet such needs as drinking, 0.31 0.41
eating, etc
24. Insufficiency of the physical conditions (e.g. ventilation, lightening, heating) 0.43 0.48
in the work place
25. Feeling myself as a prisoner 0.69 0.52
34. Insufficient communication means (e.g. TV, radio) in the work place 0.50 0.54
IV. Threat Perception 0.83
8. The risk of being threatened particularly due to my position 0.71 0.61
12. Being involved in arguments and fights with prisoners 0.64 0.61
16. Fearing crime report about myself 0.48 0.61
18. Being under suspicion on a misconduct 0.64 0.61
23. Having to be cautious all the time at work 0.71 0.61
30. In the community, my job is referred to as “key keeper” rather than “prison 0.38 0.43
guard” (implying the applications of harsh discipline)
32. Encountering unusual events (e.g. run away, rebellion, fire) in the work place 0.51 0.60
V. General Problems 0.86
1. Economic problems 0.33 0.32
5. Not being able to participate in social activities (e.g. sports, reading, cinema) 0.50 0.61
due to my work
10. Not having enough quality time with family due to my work 0.64 0.75
13. Having health problems due to my work 0.75 0.69
17. Ignoring the needs of my family due to my work 0.61 0.74
20. Reflecting my work problems on my family 0.58 0.60
28. Transportation problems when commuting to and from my work 0.48 0.49
33. Having insufficient time with my friends and relatives due to my work 0.58 0.65
Whole Scale 0.94

Note. ICC: internal consistency coefficient; ITCWS: item-total correlations for the whole scale; ITCED: item-total
correlations for each domain of work-stress

the third subscale named “inadequacies in physical conditions of prison” had an internal
consistency of 0.70, and the item-total correlations ranged from 0.41 to 0.54; the fourth
subscale named “threat perception” had an internal consistency of 0.83, and the item-total
correlations ranged from 0.43 to 0.61; finally for the fifth subscale named as “general
Development of Work Stress Scale for Correctional Officers 163

problems,” the internal consistency was 0.86, and the item-total correlations ranged from
0.32 to 0.75.
The test-retest reliability coefficients were also examined by the administration of
the scale to 71 correctional officers following a 21-day interval. For total scale, test-retest
reliability was found as 0.77, p < 0.001, and for the subscales the test-retest reliability coef-
ficients were 0.73, 0.71, 0.68, 0.68, and 0.78, ps < 0.001 for “work overload,” “role conflict
and role ambiguity,” “inadequacies in physical conditions of prison,” “threat perception,”
and “general problems” subscales, respectively.

Concurrent Validity

To examine the concurrent validity, scores obtained from WSSCO and its subscales
were compared with the scores obtained from Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxi-
ety Inventory, Beck Hopelessness Scale, and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social
Support.
As can be seen in Table II, the correlations were generally consistent with the expec-
tations. Work-stress revealed significant positive correlations with depression (r = 0.50, p
< 0.001), anxiety (r = 0.43, p < 0.001), and hopelessness (r = 0.26, p < 0.005) measures,
and significant negative correlation with perceived social support (r = − 0.21, p < 0.05).
Considering the subscales of the measure, all subscales significantly correlated with de-
pression, anxiety, and hopelessness measures. For perceived social support, though “work
overload,” “role conflict and role ambiguity,” and “inadequacies in physical conditions
of prison” subscales revealed significant negative correlations, the correlations were not
significant with “threat perception,” and “general problems” subscales.

CRITERION VALIDITY

To examine the criterion validity of the scale, initially two extreme groups were gen-
erated on the basis of the participants’ BDI scores. The BDI scores within the highest and
the lowest 25th percentile were grouped as “high depressive symptomatology” and “low
depressive symptomatology” categories, respectively. In the “high depressive symptoma-
tology” group, there were 30 participants, who had a mean BDI score of 24.13 (SD = 6.73),
and in the “low depressive symptomatology” group, there were 35 participants who had a
mean BDI score of 4.31 (SD = 2.35).
Regarding the criterion validity, WSSCO including all subscales was expected to dif-
ferentiate between the groups with high versus low depressive symptomatology. For this
aim, a 2 (depressive symptomatology: high versus low depressive symptomatology) × 5
(work stress: mean scores of five subscales of WSSCO) ANOVA with repeated measures
on the last factor was conducted. The main effects for depressive symptomatology, F(1,
63) = 26.661, p < 0.001, and work stress, F(4, 252) = 9.629, p < 0.001, were significant.
The interaction effect was not significant, F(4, 252) = .946, ns. Consistent with the expec-
tations, the depressive symptomatology main effect revealed that those participants having
low level of depressive symptomatology reported less work stress (M = 2.13) than those
with high depressive symptomatology (M = 3.05). As additional information, according
to the work stress main effect, participants reported more work stress on the domains of
“role conflict and role ambiguity” (M = 2.85) and “inadequacies in physical conditions of
 164

Table II Correlations Among the Variables of the Present Study

WSSCO WO RCRA IPCP TP GP BDI BAI BHS MSPSS

WSSCO 86.70 (26.74) 0.85∗∗∗ 0.88∗∗∗ 0.71∗∗∗ 0.87∗∗∗ 0.86∗∗∗ 0.50∗∗∗ 0.43∗∗∗ 0.26† − 0.21 ∗
WO 2.26 (0.89) 0.69∗∗∗ 0.63∗∗∗ 0.67∗∗∗ 0.64∗∗∗ 0.40∗∗∗ 0.38∗∗∗ 0.23 ∗ − 0.21 ∗
RCRA 2.68 (0.86) 0.56∗∗∗ 0.73∗∗∗ 0.63∗∗∗ 0.40∗∗∗ 0.33∗∗∗ 0.22 ∗ − 0.25∗∗
IPCP 2.63 (0.96) 0.50∗∗∗ 0.52∗∗∗ 0.42∗∗∗ 0.32∗∗∗ 0.30∗∗∗ − 0.19 ∗
TP 2.33 (0.96) 0.70∗∗∗ 0.43∗∗∗ 0.39∗∗∗ 0.20 ∗ − 0.15
GP 2.44 (0.90) 0.46∗∗∗ 0.40∗∗∗ 0.18 ∗ − 0.10
BDI 12.87 (8.39) 0.63∗∗∗ 0.48∗∗∗ − 0.29†
BAI 13.49 (10.46) 0.35∗∗∗ − 0.31∗∗∗
BHS 7.93 (5.57) − 0.30∗∗∗
MSPSS 57.54 (14.53)

Note. Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) are presented on diagonal. For all correlations, N = 119. WSSCO: Work Stress Scale for Correctional Officers; WO:
Work Overload; RCRA: Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity; IPCP: inadequacies in physical conditions of prison; TP: Threat Perception; GP: General Problems; BDI: Beck
Depression Inventory; BAI: Beck Anxiety Inventory; BHS: Beck Hopelessness Scale; MSPSS: Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. For the subscales of
WSSCO, mean values are given
∗ p < 0.05;∗∗ p < 0.01;∗∗∗ p < 0.001; †p < 0.005
Şenol-Durak, Durak, and Gençöz
Development of Work Stress Scale for Correctional Officers 165

prison” (M = 2.77) than on the other domains of work stress (Ms = 2.36, 2.40, 2.55 for
“work overload,” “threat perception,” and “general problems,” respectively). Thus, consid-
ering the criterion validity, as suggested above, these findings imply that WSSCO including
all its subscales successfully discriminated high versus low depressive symptomatology
group.

DISCUSSION

This study aimed at examining the psychometric properties of Work Stress Scale
for Correctional Officers (WSSCO). Results revealed that the psychometric properties of
WSSCO were quite satisfactory. In terms of reliability, the total scale and its subscales
were found to be internally consistent, and the item total correlations for the total scale
and its subscales were in acceptable ranges. The test-retest reliability coefficients were also
satisfactory.
In terms of validity, the scale has good concurrent and criterion validity values. Stress
is expected to be positively correlated with depression (2,4,5), anxiety (6), and hopeless-
ness (17); while negatively correlated with perceived social support (65–67). The results
of the present study were consistent with these findings; the scores of WSSCO and its
subscales were positively correlated with depression, anxiety, and hopelessness. Consid-
ering the correlations with perceived social support, total WSSCO and the subscales of
“role conflict and role ambiguity,” “inadequacies in physical conditions of prison,” and
“work overload” were moderately and negatively correlated with perceived social support,
however, “threat perception,” and “general problems” subscales were not significantly cor-
related with perceived social support. It seems that the adequacy of social support helps
correctional officers to cope with organizational problems resulting from role definition,
work overload, and physical environment of the prison more than the perception of threat
and general problems. A possible explanation may be that perceived social support works
better in more stressful environments like “role conflict and role ambiguity,” and “inade-
quacies in physical conditions of prison” which were the domains that were found to be
more stressful than the other domains of stress.
It was interesting that hopelessness was strongly correlated with “inadequacies in
physical conditions of prison” while the correlations between hopelessness and other sub-
scales of WSSCO were not strong to this extent. The possible explanation of the strong
relationship between the correctional officers’ pessimism and “inadequacies in physical
conditions of prison” is that, the correctional officers’ negative views of the future are
especially affected by inadequacies of physical conditions. The hopelessness might be
linked with the features that are more prone to change rather than those that are more
stable.
Concerning the criterion validity, the scale was able to differentiate between the groups
with low versus high depressive symptomatology. It is demonstrated that depressive people
report more stressful events than do normal people (68). Consistent with this expectation,
the participants with high depressive symptomatology reported more work stress than those
with low depressive symptomatology.
These findings suggest that WSSCO is a relevant work stress measure that is specific
to correctional officers. Nevertheless, the results of this study should be considered in
166 Şenol-Durak, Durak, and Gençöz

the light of some methodological limitations, such as the relevance of WSSCO only for
Turkish correctional officers. For this reason, studies focusing on cross-cultural utility
of this scale are strongly encouraged. Future studies concerning the examination of the
relationship between work stress of correctional officers as assessed by WSSCO and their
job performance, absenteeism, turnover, or job satisfaction rates will further assess the
efficacy of this measure.
In conclusion, the results revealed that the psychometric properties of WSSCO were
quite satisfactory. Furthermore, in practice, it might be conducive to the development
of certain prevention and intervention programs which aim at the maintenance of the
psychological health of correctional officers working under great stress.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work has been supported by the Turkish Academy of Sciences, in the framework
of the Young Scientist Award Program (TG-TUBA-GEBIP/2002-1-11)

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