On duty, police officers are exposed to a variety of acute, threatening stress situations and organizational demands. In line with the allostatic load model, the resulting acute and chronic stress might have tremendous consequences for police officers’ work performance and psychological and physical health. To date, limited research has been conducted into the underlying biological, dynamic mechanisms of stress in police service. Therefore, this ecological momentary assessment study examined the associations of stress, mood and biological stress markers of a 28-year-old male police officer in a N-of-1 study over three weeks (90 data points). Four times a day (directly after waking up, 30 minutes later, 6 hours later, before going to bed), he answered questions about the perceived stress and mood using a smartphone application. With each data entry, he collected saliva samples for the later assessment of salivary cortisol (sCort) and alpha-amylase (sAA). In addition, data was collected after six police incidents during duty. sCort and sAA were not related to perceived stress in daily life and did not increase in police incidents. Regarding mood measures, deterioration of calmness, but not valence and energy was associated with perceived stress. The results suggest continued police service to constitute a major chronic stressor resulting in an inability to mount a proper response to further acute stress. As an indicator of allostatic load, psychological and biological hyporesponsivity in moments of stress may have negative consequences for police officers’ health and behavior in critical situations that require optimal performance. Prospectively, this research design may also become relevant when evaluating the efficacy of individualized stress management interventions in police training.
This paper proposes and showcases a methodology to develop an observational behavior assessment instrument to assess psychological competencies of police officers. We outline a step-by-step methodology for police organizations to measure and evaluate behavior in a meaningful way to assess these competencies. We illustrate the proposed methodology with a practical example. We posit that direct behavioral observation can be key in measuring the expression of psychological competence in practice, and that psychological competence in practice is what police organizations should care about. We hope this paper offers police organizations a methodology to perform scientifically informed observational behavior assessment of their police officers’ psychological competencies and inspires additional research efforts into this important area.
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Purpose: Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, police officers are confronted with various novel challenges, which might place additional strain on officers. This mixed-method study investigated officers' strain over a three-month-period after the lockdown. Methods: In an online survey, 2567 police officers (77% male) from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Spain participated at three measurement points per country in spring, 2020. Three-level growth curve models assessed changes in strain and its relation to stressor appraisal, emotion regulation, and preparedness through training. To add context to the findings, free response answers about officers' main tasks, stressors, and crisis measures were coded inductively. Results: On average, officers seemed to tolerate the pandemic with slight decreases in strain over time. Despite substantial variance between countries, 66% of the variance occurred between individuals. Sex, work experience, stressor appraisal, emotion regulation, and preparedness significantly predicted strain. Risk of infection and deficient communication emerged as main stressors. Officers' reports allowed to derive implications for governmental, organizational, and individual coping strategies during pandemics. Conclusion: Preparing for a pandemic requires three primary paths: 1) enacting unambiguous laws and increasing public compliance through media communication, 2) being logistically prepared, and 3) improving stress regulation skills in police training.
