Dr. David C. Bueno - Operational and organizational stressors experienced by police officers at t

Operational and Organizational Stressors Experienced by Police Officers at the Station B of Olongapo City Police Department David Cababaro Bueno Columban College, Inc. Olongapo City Abstract The study focused on the assessment of operational and organizational stressors among police officers at the Station B of Olongapo City Police Department. The researcher used the descriptive method of research using a survey-questionnaire, interview and observation. The data were collected from a non-probability (convenience) sample of sworn incumbent police officers from police department, who were actively working in the patrol division; superior officers and civilians were not included. The top three ranked operational stressors were fatigue, no enough time available to spend with friends and family, and shift work. The three lowest ranked stressors included making friends outside the job, working alone at night, and risk of being injured on the job. The top three ordered organizational stressors were the feeling that different rules apply to different people, feeling like you always have to prove yourself to the organization, and inconsistent leadership style. The three lowest ranked stressors included internal investigations, if you are sick or injured your co-workers seem to look down on you, and lack of training on new equipment. There was a significant relationship between organizational stressors and operational stressors. The current study provided a relatively positive outlook on the actual feelings of stress reported by police officers. The police officers were not experiencing excessive amounts of stress, though they were slightly more stressed by organizational stressors than operational stressors. The administration should find ways to reduce operational stressors such fatigue, no enough time available to spend with friends and family, and shift work among police officers. The administration should exert efforts on how to reduce organizational stressors such as the feeling that different rules apply to different people, feeling like you always have to prove yourself to the organization, and inconsistent leadership style among police officers. The administration should provide stress management activities especially on organizational stressors. A parallel study should be conducted in broader perspectives to fully identify the stressors as experienced by police officers in the field.

Keywords - Operational and organizational stressors, police officers, descriptive-survey design, Olongapo City INTRODUCTION Police work continues to be viewed as a high stress occupation with investigators often reporting higher rates of morbidity and mortality than observed in many other occupations. Evidence from large sample surveys indicates that police officers have high rates of marital disruption, health problems, and alcohol abuse. Moreover, police officers also appear to be less likely to make use of public mental health facilities, and some observers believe that this reflects the role of an occupational culture that discourages officers from admitting that they need assistance in handling the stresses of their work.

Police officers, therefore, might doubly suffer to the extent that they are exposed to a high level of work stressors that are risk factors for health and well being while at the same time are discouraged from seeking medical

or counseling assistance. Despite the general acceptance of the "police stress hypothesis," however, some critics have questioned the claim that work stress is necessarily the cause of the mental and physical health symptoms exhibited by police (Malloy & Mays, 1984).

Indeed, it is overly simplistic to assume that police work represents a homogeneous occupation with respect to the factors that most likely account for its experienced stressfulness. The thrust of this study, then, is to examine the specific factors that are hypothesized to be significant causes of stress and strain in police work. In addition, our aim is to focus especially on those factors internal to the police bureaucracy and which therefore might be amenable to control and management by the organizational hierarchy. Following Malloy and Mays (1984), the researcher assumes that these stressors vary significantly across different roles and assignments within the police organization.

Although there is relatively little research examining the topic of stress among police officers, the small amount of research that does exist suggests that officers are exposed to a wide range of operational and organizational stressors and experience a high degree of stress as a result (Anderson, 2002). Operational stressors are caused by work-related tasks (officer-involved shootings), whereas organizational stressors are generated by the police agency it-self (inadequate departmental support) (Abdollahi, 2002). It may be argued that the degree of stress experienced by police officers is cause for significant concern, not only for the individual officer and their family, but also for the police agency (Tangri, 2003). Indeed, exposure to police stressors can lead to serious physical and psychological health problems, and these problems can result in reduced work productivity, increased absenteeism, higher turnover, and so on.

While there is a vast literature that has examined the issue of police stress (Abdollahi, 2002), this research is limited in several ways. First, the majority of research conducted in this area does not examine actual feelings of police stress (the stress that has been felt when certain situations are encountered), preferring instead to focus on perceived stress (the stress that might be felt if certain situations were encountered). Second, when research has examined actual feelings of police stress, a narrow range of stressors has typically been focused on (either operational or organizational stressors). Third, and related to the first two problems, research remains mixed as to what factors moderate the actual stress felt by officers.

FRAMEWORK The scientific community has not reached a consensus on the definition of stress, which complicates uniform research efforts and theoretical construction (Hart & Cooper, 2001). The debate among scholars about whether stress should be defined from the human (Individual) perspective, the environmental (Macro) perspective or both (Interactive) (Brown & Campbell, 1994), causes fragmentation in the literature (Cooper, 1998) and is a threat to construct validity (Shadish, Cook & Campbell, 2002). Selye's (1974) pioneering work in biological stress conceptualized the term to mean the human body's non-normal reaction to any demands placed upon it.

The demands Selye referenced can be thought of as a collection of aversive stimuli that accumulates over time and leads to emotional states and cognitive adaptations that accompany the stressors. The aversive stimuli Selye referenced represent “stressors,” the environmental factors that are perceived by someone that result in psychological strain (stress). Identifying the source of aversive stimuli and the extent of their relationship to performance provides a theoretical basis for how humans interact with and respond to their environment.

In the organizational setting, aversive stimuli may arise from the structural characteristics of, or adverse experiences in the workplace that upset the normal operating environment a person is accustomed to, thus leading to negative behavioral, physiological and psychological responses (Gershon et al., 2009). Inside a police department, aversive stimuli may emanate from the organization's design (Bureaucratic and hierarchical), as well as life within that structure. This interaction between the person and their environment (Interactive theory) has its roots in the physical sciences, specifically physics. In the physical sciences, stress is defined as “…the distortion produced by an external force placing strain on an object. The amount of damage that results will depend on both the strength of the force and the ability of the object to withstand it”. In the policing context, the distortion that results is reflected in the variance in police performance.

The interactive approach is embedded in Folkman et al.’s (1986) derivative theory known as the transactional model of stress and coping, which establishes the individual and their environment are entwined in a “dynamic, mutually reciprocal, bidirectional relationship.” They caution that this model is not necessarily linear, but is

cyclical, which accounts for the nuances and intricacies of human behavior. Within this conceptual framework, stress results when the person-environment relationship is appraised by an individual as exceeding or taxing that individual's personal resources and endangering one's well-being. The translation from the physical sciences to the social sciences is that stress results from the many intricate, complicated and interrelated environmental forces that are exerted upon a person, where the person exercises little or no control over them. This gives rise to abnormal or unhealthy physical, psychological, psychosocial conditions (Cherniss, 1980). The implication is that stress emanates from the conditions that are imposed on police officers under circumstances beyond their control.

The job of police officer is often characterized as high demand and low control because of the authoritarian, quasi-military structure and bureaucratic nature, which fails to recognize the autonomy and decision latitude of individual officers (Brown, 1996). These workplace constraints reduce the amount of control a police officer has over many aspects of career success and daily life. Police departments are bureaucracies with rigid hierarchical power (Control) structures, where the greatest degree of control resides at the top of the organization. Therefore, employees at the lowest level of the organization who have the highest demands and the least amount of control may suffer from the highest levels stress ( Morash, 2009).

Examining how stress arises inside the police agency requires an overview of the organizational and social structure of policing. Organizational antecedents are precursors of the occupational environment, those pervasive and enduring features of the workplace that may adversely affect the working psychology of police officers (Regoli & Hewitt, 2007). They reside in the characteristics of police departments insofar as police departments are structured in ways that inhibit autonomy, flexibility and participation in decisions that affect the employees. Two broad phenomena that are subsumed under this rubric are bureaucracy and organizational capacity.

Bureaucracy is characterized by the excessive formality and routine required before official action can be taken or decisions rendered, and has been recognized as an impediment to organizational effectiveness and to the ideology of professional autonomy (Harrison & Pelletier, 1987). Most, if not all police departments, but especially larger ones, tend to be designed along bureaucratic lines (Manning, 1977). Because of the tall structure, characterized by a high degree of specialization (separate divisions for narcotics, homicide, gang enforcement, robbery, vice, sexual assault, juvenile) and the hierarchical rank structure, the design increases the social distance between ranks (Violanti & Aron, 1995). This creates a highly impersonal atmosphere, where police officers at the lowest level rarely, if ever, communicate or interact with superior officers beyond their immediate supervisor.

This distance may impede internal communication that is critical for feedback and decision-making, as well as breeding leadership/ management styles that do not appreciate the contribution individual employees may make to the goals of the agency (autocratic leadership).

There is often a misconception that larger police organizations have the capacity to handle the volume of work. Reiss (1992), speaking about the number of police officers required to adequately staff modern police departments noted that, per capita, the bureaucratic police models in place today require “twice as many police officers� than the foot-beat systems of years past. As the agency grows more heterogeneous due to the division of labor, economies of scale are lost due to coordination and communication problems (Scott, 1975). The more diversified (complex) the organization the fewer personnel there are to handle the majority of the work and fill personnel shortages due to vacations, days off and unplanned absences (sick days, emergency excusals). This creates a situation where officers may be denied discretionary excusals (request for a personal day off) since they are needed to fill shortages created by the expanding bureaucracy.

As the division of labor expands, so does the administrative overhead that is necessary for support, such as supervision and support services (dispatching, recordkeeping), but which do not directly produce organizational output (Langworthy, 1985).

This too leaves fewer personnel to handle the bulk of the work. Since the largest drawing pool for administrative and support personnel is the patrol force, patrol is rapidly depleted and left with the bare minimum number of personnel to handle ever-increasing service demands. When organizational capacity is strained, performance may decrease because officers are overworked or burned out.

The conditions that precedes stress envelope the workforce and are coupled with conditions that are characteristic of life inside the organization that may exact negative physiological and psychological consequences.

Psychosocial aspects of police work refer to the interaction between a police officer's psychological state and their social environment. Psychosocial properties describe the unique internal cognitive processes that occur inside an

individual that may be shaped by their environment. This typically includes relations with coworkers, supervisors and top administrators and the accountability structure. While police officers recognize they must be held accountable for their actions, the internal affairs process is fraught with issues that leave some officers feeling like they agency does not give them a fair chance to prevail (Mulcahy, 1995).

The internal affairs function of a police department bears a stigma that may impair an officer's performance.

Three aspects of policing: the subculture, level of support during an internal investigation and broad rules—converge to create an accusatorial environment, where police officers may view internal affairs as an extension of an autocratic uncaring management structure instead of a mechanism to promote integrity and performance.

The differences and problems between police management and line officers are characterized by incongruent value systems and variable job expectations (Reuss-Ianni, 1984). The police subculture looks upon internal affairs with disdain because, as representatives of management, internal affairs investigators must breech the solidarity that binds the subculture. Breeching solidarity means breaking the “code of silence” and potentially revealing operating secrets, forcing police officers to testify against fellow police officers and perhaps having the internal affairs investigator testify against fellow officers in a criminal trial or administrative hearing (Wechter, 2004).

In their zeal to ferret out misconduct and hold police officers accountable, internal affairs investigators may be perceived by patrol officers as “enjoying” their work, thus intensifying the animosity between them. While this image of internal affairs may not be entirely accurate, it is nonetheless embedded in the subculture (Reuss-Ianni, 1984).

Defining “support” and how much to grant an officer under internal investigation varies based on who is making the determination (the police chief, the mayor, a community leader, fellow police officers, union leaders).

Support for the organization may fade if police officers believe the administration acted unfairly during an internal investigation or when dispensing punishment.

Police officers may feel the department will not give them a fair chance to prevail against the complaint. This may be rooted in the structural differences between investigating criminal conduct and investigating an internal complaint, where criminal conduct is investigated as part of the adversarial process and internal investigations are part of the inquisitorial process (Wechter, 2004).

Police administrators (upper management, mid-level management and supervisors) and to some degree the parent government's elected leaders (mayor, city manager, council representatives) serve a paternalistic role, part of which includes counseling or reassuring officers in the face of negative situations or traumatic events. When officers run afoul during a citizen encounter, they expect to be able to turn inward for support. Officers attach considerable importance to the knowledge and wisdom of their superior officers.

This may derive from the element of co-dependence inherent in police work, where officers rely heavily on each other for safety and to pass along the cues, customs and traditions of their vocation. When officers are confronted with an internal investigation, they look to their superior officers for guidance, emotional and moral support. When officers perceive support to be less than desired, a sense of betrayal and desertion may arise, perpetuating the “Us” (Line officers) against “Them” (Management) dichotomy (Ruess-Ianni, 1984).

Excessive regulation has encroached on officer discretion, which is necessary for efficient policing. While written directives are essential to channel discretion, policies and rules have become redundant and oppressive to the degree that they often limit creative solutions to complex situations and may insulate incompetence.

Much of the language in policies is permissive, thus leaving decisions to the best judgment of the officer.

When an officer's conduct is in question and the conduct does not fit within an established rule or policy, internal affairs may resort to a “catchall” rule that could potentially cover any conduct that someone simply “feels” was not appropriate. Some catchall rules govern obligations to duty such as “Neglect of Duty,” “Bound by Duty” and “Performance of Duty;” others govern various aspects of individual conduct such as “Conduct,” “Conduct Unbecoming an Officer,” and “Conduct in Public or Private” (Rojek & Decker, 2009). The internal affair investigator determines the officer somehow did not exercise “good judgment,” sustains the allegation and then recommends discipline. Internal affairs plays a game of “gotcha” with these broad rules to signal they have caught or defeated the officer in a perverse and trifling game of accountability that reinforces the authoritarian structure of the agency, but does little to improve performance.

The police subculture subjects its members to a strict operating code laden with discretion, secrecy and solidarity in an attempt to insulate the officer from an uncaring and generally unsupportive management structure, as well as a hostile public (Van Maanen, 1978).

The chief requirement of these interpersonal relations is loyalty, which is police argot for supporting fellow officers by ignoring or otherwise keeping silent in the face rule violations or law breaking behavior. In other words, being a real “stand up guy,” one who can be trusted not to reveal anything during questioning by superior officers, a seemingly irreconcilable demand between the formal and informal cultures of the agency (Brown, 1981).

Because police officers spend nearly all their time working with each other, very little time interacting with supervisors and almost no time interacting with top administrators, peer relations typically reign supreme, which may create conflict between the what the formal and informal agency cultures demand (Hunt, 1976). When an officer violates the norms of the informal subculture, they may be subject to harassment, sarcasm, a lack of support and ultimately group rejection for what the group characterizes as untrustworthiness and disloyalty.

Leadership and supervision may be viewed as a source of larger systemic organizational problems.

Supervisors act as delegates of the organization who are responsible for controlling and directing subordinates’ activities (Iannone, 1987). Favorable or unfavorable impressions of supervisors by their subordinates reflect the organization's level of support (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). Perceived organizational support (POS) positively influences performance when the agency's formal and informal policies and decisions reflect concern for the employee as a valuable and productive member of the organization and when strong employee-supervisor relations exist. When officers perceive a lack of leadership and supervisory support, particular when the agency's management philosophy is autocratic and negative, there are increased feelings of suspicion toward supervisors and administrators and concurrent decreases in performance (Talarico & Swanson, 1983).

Another leadership and supervision shortfall is disparate treatment and favoritism, especially when dispensing discipline (e.g., reprimands and suspensions). Favoritism has been cited by scholars as an organizational stressor and by investigative commissions as a corrosive management practice that leads to corruption (Mollen Commission, 1994). Favoritism tends to arise from personal relationships and alliances that naturally arise in organizational life between superior officers and subordinates, particularly when each shares the other's viewpoint (Senger, 1971). Tension and criticism among the workforce may arise when the organization makes personnel decisions, especially decisions that have adverse employment consequences involving extraneous factors such as age, race, gender, kinship or political affiliation (Rojek & Decker, 2009).

Although favoritism surfaces in many areas of police life (coveted training, requests for transfer, promotion, performance ratings), one aspect where it may have particularly damaging effects is during the disciplinary process (Hickman, Piquero & Greene, 2000).

When supervisors render a sanction with bias based on circumstances other than the facts of the matter, the effects tend to be damaging, a practice revealed by two well publicized investigative commissions (Mollen Commission, 1994).

The result may be a downturn in morale, where police officers lose trust and confidence in their supervisors eventually leading to lower performance.

The most common method for researching police stress is to have officers rank the level of stress associated with various police stressors using self-report questionnaires. Historically, these questionnaires have focused on measuring perceived stress experienced by officers by asking them to rank various stressors in terms of how much stress they would cause if the stressors were in fact encountered by the officer. For instance, in a representative study, Crowe and Stradling (1993) measured perceived stress in a sample of police officers by asking them to rate the degree of stress that would be caused by various operational tasks. Results indicated that the main factors described were dealing with death and distressed relatives, routine deployments, dealing with people “not like us” (drug users), violent disturbances, and public disorder.

Similarly, Violanti and Aron (1994) sampled police officers regarding their perceived stress by having them rank police stressors using the Police Stress Survey (Spielberger, 1981). Results revealed that traumatic operational stressors were perceived as the most stressful, with the highest-ranked stressors including killing someone in the line of duty, a fellow officer being killed, and being involved in a physical attack. Many other studies of perceived stress have also been conducted (Band & Manuele, 1987).

While studies of perceived stress may have some value, they are not without their limitations. Most obviously, these questionnaire studies reveal little about how much actual stress is caused by particular stressors.

Indeed, many of the stressors included in perceived stress surveys may relate to things that police officers rarely ever experience (killing someone in the line of duty; Police Services, 1998).

Thus, it is difficult to know how much weight to put on findings from these surveys. Perceived stress ratings may indicate how much stress an officer would experience when they do encounter a particular stressor, but the ratings could just as likely reflect wild guesses on the officer’s part, socially desirable responding, or conformity with police culture (Crowe & Stradling, 1993). The practical value of these findings is therefore questionable, as they say little about the genuine day-to-day stress experienced by officers.

More recently, questionnaire in this area has begun to shift toward measuring actual police stress. While such research has the advantage that it provides information that may be of significant practical value, the problem with much of this research is that it tends to focus on a narrow range of police stressors in any single study.

In other words, the emphasis in this research tends to be on a particular type of stressor (traumatic or nontraumatic operational stressors). Rarely do studies examine the actual stress levels that are associated with stressors from various categories. For example, Mitchell, Cowan, and Hamilton (1998) focused on ranking the most dangerous experiences for police officers using a questionnaire and subsequent interview with officers who had recently experienced threatening incidents. These researchers explicitly stated that they would pay very little attention to nonthreatening incidents, even though it was acknowledged that these types of stressors also have the potential to cause stress. Findings showed the top three ranked stressors amongst this group of officers were injury and physical danger, negative consequences (being the subject of a complaint), and incidents get- ting out of control.

In contrast to the study by Lau, and Torgersen (2006) recently examined the severity and frequency of police stress in the last six months using the 9-point rating scale from the Job Stress Survey (Vagg & Spielberger, 1999).

This survey examines two main factors relating to job pressure and to lack of support. While these two potential sources of stress were extensively examined, and their relation to police personality and coping investigated, the results say nothing about a wide range of other potential police stressors, such as the operational tasks focused on by Mitchell et al (1998).

Although studies of the type discussed above do indicate the degree to which certain stressors cause actual stress among police officers, by focusing on a specific category of stressors it is not possible to determine whether certain types of stressors cause more stress than other types. One potential way around this problem is to conduct a study like that by Crank and Caldero (1991), where they used an open-ended questionnaire format to determine officers’ actual sources of stress. Such an approach certainly helps to minimize problems associated with closed-ended surveys, and has resulted in several interesting findings, such as the fact that organizational stressors seem to account for most of the actual stress experienced by officers. Another possible approach, and the approach that will be adopted in the current study, is to distribute close-ended surveys to officers, but to ensure that a variety of stressors are included as survey items.

Previous research has demonstrated that certain factors moderate the level of stress experienced by police officers, though it is not always clear as to the type of stress (operational or organizational) that is moderated (Zachar, 2004). Many of these moderators are best characterized as demographic characteristics, while others can be characterized as personal characteristics. The results from studies examining the role of these moderators mirror results from studies that have examined police stress more generally. That is to say that support for many potential moderators is mixed, though some general trends have emerged in relation to others.

For example, with respect to demographic moderators, gender of the officer has produced mixed results.

Some research (Patterson, 2003) has found that, compared to their male counterparts, female officers experience higher levels of work-related stress.

However, other research (Griffin, 2006) finds little to no gender differences in relation to stress. Similarly, in regards to the age of officers, some research has found that age is negatively correlated with job stress, perhaps because older officers possess higher ranks (Patterson, 2003) or because older officers possess more adaptive coping mechanisms (Burke, 1993).

However, other research has shown a curvilinear relationship between age and stress (Violanti & Aron, 1995).

In contrast to these inconsistent findings, rank has been found to be a fairly stable moderator of police stress, with certain ranks reporting significantly higher levels of stress (Merle, 2003). Sergeants appear to be particularly stressed (Garcia, 2004), perhaps because, compared to officers at other ranks, officers at this rank are exposed to a wide range of operational and organizational stress- ors (Brown & Campbell, 1994). Alternatively, it is possible that Sergeants experience more stress because these officers are most likely in the middle of their career,

and thus at the peak of the potential curvilinear relationship between age and stress.

With respect to personal moderators, family variables such as marital status and having children have occasionally been found to relate to police stress (Morash, Haarr, & Kwak, 2006). Such forms of social support can potentially help officers deal with stressful events (Kirkcaldy et al., 1998). However, other aspects of police work (shift work) make it difficult to balance the job with family responsibilities, which can cause increased feelings of stress on the part of officers with families (Burke, 1993). Likewise, physical exercise has not been found to be a consistent moderator of police stress, with some research indicating that exercise can help alleviate stress (Alexander & Walker, 1994), and other research indicating that it is not an effective coping mechanism (Iwasaki, Mannell, Smale, & Butcher, 2005).

Education-level as a moderator of police stress has come under greater scrutiny recently (Scott, 2004), perhaps because of the increasingly higher demands for educational credentials amongst police candidates (Roberg & Bonn, 2004). Research in this area remains mixed, whereby some findings suggest a positive relationship between education-level and stress (Chen et al., 2006) and other findings suggest no relationship (Burnett, 2001).

Interestingly, Kirkcaldy et al. (1998) found that officers with the most education do typically experience the highest levels of stress. However, this education-stress link seems to be an indirect one, with the amount of education impacting job satisfaction (the degree to which an individual is content with their job), which in turn influences levels of stress (those officers that are most satisfied with their job experience the lowest levels of stress).

In contrast to the mixed results associated with the previously mentioned personal moderators of police stress, research has consistently shown that there is a positive relation between certain health problems and stress, though the direction of causality in this relationship is still a matter of debate (Parsons, 2004).

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The study focused on the assessment of operational and organizational stressors among police officers at the Station B of Olongapo City Police Department.

Specifically, it answered the following questions: 1. How may the operational stressors experienced by the police officers be described?

2. How may the organizational stressors experienced by the police officers be described?

3. Is there significant relationship between operational and organizational stressors experienced by the police officers?

4. What implications can be drawn from the findings to reduce stress among police officers?

METHODOLOGY This study utilized the descriptive method of research. Participants included 20 police officers currently employed at the Station B of the Olongapo City Police Department. The sample consisted of 15 males and 5 females, aged between 24 to 58 years (x = 38.94), with an average of 10 years of police experience, were conveniently selected.

A two-part questionnaire was used to assess officer stress. The first section included questions regarding demographic variables and personal information. The second section contained the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Op) and the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Org), both of which were created

by Dr. Donald McCreary (McCreary, 2004). These questionnaires consist items each and participants are required to circle how much stress each item caused them within the past six months. The scale for each item ranges from 1 (no stress at all/ strongly disagree) to 5 (a lot of stress/ strongly agree). Participants also had the choice of selecting “not applicable” for each item (note that this is not a feature inherent in McCreary’s surveys, but was included by the authors in this particular study). McCreary and colleagues have validated both questionnaires using samples of police officers (McCreary, 2004). The questionnaires have acceptable internal consistency scores (Cronbach’s alphas > 0.90), high levels of validity. Thus, minor revision was done by the researcher. Only the reconstruction of the instruction/ direction was done.

Police administration at the department consented to have their officers participate in the completion of the questionnaires. Copies were subsequently distributed to all officers, requesting officers to follow and complete the questionnaires. After the completion of the questionnaires, participants were prompted to personally return the same to the researcher after one week.

The data gathered were recorded, tabulated, and analyzed by means of Percentage, Mean, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The operational stressor rankings were reported in order from most to least stressful. The top three ranked stressors out of a possible 5-point rating were fatigue (x = 4.47), not enough time available to spend with friends and family (x = 4.09), and shift work (x = 4.04). The three lowest ranked stressors included making friends outside the job (x = 2.60), working alone at night (x = 2.47), and risk of being injured on the job (x = 2.13). The overall mean operational stress ranking was 3.29. There are several possible explanations for this finding. First, it is highly likely that when officers are asked about actual feelings of stress, rather than perceived stress, stressors that may be mildly frustrating, but frequently occurring, cause more stress than highly traumatic, but extremely rare, incidents.

The conditions that proceed stress envelope the workforce and are coupled with conditions that are characteristic of life inside the organization that may exact negative physiological and psychological consequences.

Psychosocial aspects of police work refer to the interaction between a police officer's psychological state and their social environment. Psychosocial properties describe the unique internal cognitive processes that occur inside an individual that may be shaped by their environment.

This typically includes relations with coworkers, supervisors and top administrators and the accountability structure. While police officers recognize they must be held accountable for their actions, the internal affairs process is fraught with issues that leave some officers feeling like they agency does not give them a fair chance to prevail.

The top three ranked stressors out of a possible 5 rating were the feeling that different rules apply to different people (x = 4.78), feeling like you always have to prove yourself to the organization (x= 4.41), and inconsistent leadership style (x= 4.36). The three lowest ranked stressors included internal investigations (x= 2.63), if you are sick or injured your co-workers seem to look down on you (x= 2.53), and lack of training on new equipment (x= 2.50). The overall mean organizational stress ranking was 3.55. The study revealed the main finding in regard to stress experienced by police officers organizational stressors ranked significantly higher than operational stressors. This finding is extremely interesting and is inconsistent with much previous research, especially perceived stress research, where very high levels of stress are often reported. It indicates that officers at this police agency do not experience excessive amounts of stress in relation to any of the stressors included on the surveys, or at least they do not report such feelings when asked to do so.

The organizational stressors, on average, were ranked significantly higher than operational stressors, which accords well with other research. To investigate whether organizational stressors and operational stressors correlate in a statistically significant way, a correlation value was computed. Individual scores for each participant on the organizational and operational stress subscales were summed into an aggregate score for organizational and operational stressors. As predicted, the correlation value of .978 revealed there is a statistically significant relationship between organizational stressors and operational stressors. Therefore, the researcher rejected the null hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between organizational and operational stressors.

This study relied solely on a self-report questionnaire of police stress. The advantage of collecting data in this way is the ease with which the survey can be distributed and responded to by participants. However, with selfreport questionnaires there is always the potential for response biases, especially for reasons of social desirability.

This problem is especially relevant in the police culture as the desire to conform (report low levels of stress in order to appear resilient or to avoid admitting weaknesses) is typically high. In the future, it may be beneficial to combine subjective measures of stress (self-report questionnaires) with objective measures (cortical levels). As highlighted in the discussion, there were some potential problems with the use of stress surveys, including the questionable designation of certain stressors as operational instead of organizational, the provision of examples for specific stressors when those examples were also provided as separate stressors, the use of very similar stressors as separate items, and a lack of clarity associated with other stressors, most notably the traumatic events item. The

impact of these issues on the results of the findings in the current study was unclear, but an examination of their impact in the future is warranted if the PSQ-Op and PSQ-Org are going to be extensively used to examine police stress in the future.

CONCLUSIONS Based on the results, the researcher concluded the following: 1. The top three ranked operational stressors were fatigue, no enough time available to spend with friends and family, and shift work. The three lowest ranked stressors included making friends outside the job, working alone at night, and risk of being injured on the job.

2. The top three ranked organizational stressors were the feeling that different rules apply to different people, feeling like you always have to prove yourself to the organization, and inconsistent leadership style. The three lowest ranked stressors included internal investigations, if you are sick or injured your co-workers seem to look down on you, and lack of training on new equipment.

4. There was a significant relationship between organizational stressors and operational stressors.

5. The current study provided a relatively positive outlook on the actual feelings of stress reported by police officers. The police officers were not experiencing excessive amounts of stress, though they were slightly more stressed by organizational stressors than operational stressors.

RECOMMENDATIONS Based on the conclusions, the researcher recommended the following: 1. The administration should find ways to reduce operational stressors such fatigue, no enough time available to spend with friends and family, and shift work among police officers.

2. The administration should exert efforts on how to reduce organizational stressors such as the feeling that different rules apply to different people, feeling like you always have to prove yourself to the organization, and inconsistent leadership style among police officers.

4. The administration should provide stress management activities especially on organizational stressors.

5. A parallel study should be conducted in broader perspectives to fully identify the stressors as experienced by police officers in the field.

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