Stress in a Police Force
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X9606900108 |
| Author | Dean Juniper |
| Date | 01 January 1996 |
| Published date | 01 January 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
DEAN JUNIPER
The Centre for Stress Research. University
of
Reading. UK
STRESS IN A POLICE FORCE
The
Stress-Survey
In 1991 the Centre for Stress Research was asked by a medium-sized
police force to organize a comprehensive stress-survey which would
investigate: (a) the degree of occupational stress experienced by its
officers; (b) the methods they adopted to cope with this; and (c) the
possible range of factors causing their stress. A substantial questionnaire
was designed to answer these main and subsidiary questions, and every
officer in the force, together with some civilians, was asked to complete
it, anonymously. Considering its length and complexity, there was a
remarkably good response, and the returns constituted arepresentative
sample.
What
was
the
Degree
of
Occupational
Stress?
To answer this question, we extracted from the sample every questionnaire
with a state or symptom score of 15 and above. This was an arbitrary level
to choose, but the product was remarkably interesting. By this criterion,
some 15
per
cent of the force was significantly stressed with a typical
pattern of ailments, symptoms and signs as shown in Figure I (see article
Appendix).
It
must be emphasized that we are only displaying a picture of a
typically stressed officer. There are no serious, disabling diseases or
conditions on this picture (which does
not
mean that no officer in the
stressed group suffered from them). The physical health of police officers
is, of course, taken very seriously indeed, which probably accounts for the
relative mildness ofthecomplaints. But 'relative' isa relative term. In the
context of policework, the effect on individual efficiency of suffering any
combination of these typical symptoms must be daunting. That they are
suffered incombination we cannotdoubt, although the officers were asked
only to note their occurrence, not their frequency.
Several explanatory points are essential here. The questionnaire has
not been given to any other police force, so we are ignorant of how
precisely representative this stressedgroup is, in terms of comparative size
or range of reported ailments. Nor do we know how police work
compares, in these respects, with other occupations. Intuition, and an
awareness of specific circumstances place the results about the middle of
the range in police force terms, but we must recognize that the police, in
general, work in an unusually stressed occupational setting, and are
particularly handicapped in operational terms by certain stress-associated
conditions and complaints.
We make one final point: subsidiary tests of
job
satisfaction and morale
on the stressed group showed that it was very demoralized, and under the
strongest demotivational pressure. Again, intuition would suggest that it
January 1996 The Police Journal 61
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