Police Officers’ Perception of Stress Levels across Different Law Enforcement Duties & Relation to Self-Reported Stress-Related Illness Maria Korre, M.S Sc.D Candidate Environmental & Occupational Medicine &Epidemiology Program Department of Environmental Health Harvard School of Public Health

Frontline officers

Police chiefs Chiefs Vs Officers: ?Agreement? Job-strain

Stress-related illness

Time spent per duty

Survey

Law enforcement duties

Law Enforcement & Stress One of top 3 occupations most commonly reported to the Occupational Disease Intelligence Network system for Surveillance for Occupational Stress and Mental Illness

Law Enforcement Duties & Stress stress that is perceived or experienced in each type of task

time spent across different law enforcement duties

Knowledge gaps

LEO Duties & Stress-Methods • Literature and internet search • Draft survey: 1)time spent by an average police officer across different duties, 2) average perceived stress level during each duty

• Experienced Police Chief Review • Pilot survey-anonymous- 17 Massachusetts police chiefs

• Further review, comment and suggestions from several large national law enforcement organizations • Edited & formatted into its final electronic and print formats

Mean Stress Levels by Duty

Participants were asked to rank 22 different law enforcement duties/situations regarding stress on a scale from 0-10 as in the examples below.

Kales et al (2013)

6

Law Enforcement & Stress-Methods

Two national surveys investigating the typical frontline officer’s experience police chiefs perceptions of staff officers

frontline officers Own average experience

Duty time

Duty time

Stress distribution

Stress distribution

We also explored the associations among self-reported stress-related illness, perceived stress levels and time-weighted job stress exposures

Law Enforcement & Stress-Methods Survey #1: Police Chiefs ™ August 2012, mailed the paper questionnaire to all 340 US police departments represented in a composite SCD database. ™ October 2012, follow-up mailing with an invitation (only for those departments who had not previously completed survey) to complete an on-line version via an electronic survey link (SurveyMonkey®). Survey #2: Frontline Officers ™ August 2012, separate electronic survey link (SurveyMonkey®) to the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA) and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) ™ The two police unions repeatedly emailed the electronic link to members with available email addresses.

Law Enforcement & Stress-Methods Estimate Time Spent in each duty 9 In hours per year 9 Assumptions: o an average of 4 days or shifts per week o an average of 48 weeks or 11 months working yearly to account for vacation and holidays.

Law Enforcement & Stress-Methods ‰grouped similar duties ‰ percentages of time by duty types ‰ the time-weighted average of job strain for each subject ‰ prevalence ratios (PRs) for self-reported stressrelated illness

Results-Population Characteristics

Results- Perceived Stress Across Duties Spearman’s rho 0.95, 95%CI 0.82–0.99

Results-Prevalence Ratios of Self-Reported Stress-Related Illness

Results- Total Stress by the Self-Reported Stress levels Vs Total Stress by the Population Average

Results-Professional Time across LEO Duties

Results-Professional Time across LEO Duties for an average police officer by self-reported stress-related illness

Results-Professional Time across LEO Duties for an average police officer with self-reported stress-related illness by location of the department

Results- Mean Stress Levels with and without Self-Reported Stress-Related Illness

Discussion First study to investigate the relative time spent and perceived stress experienced across LEO Duties. Highly significant correlations between estimates of the chiefs and of the officers for a typical officer’s experience. The scores for duty specific stress levels were significantly higher among LEOs reporting a stress-related illness. No association between self-reported stress-related illness and the time-weighted job strain was observed when using the population average stress levels. Altercations, witnessing traumatic events and pursuits as the three most stressful duties are supported by previous studies of heart rate monitoring in on-duty police officers.

Discussion Major strength -use of 2 independent surveys Independence of the two populations and the consistency of the results increase the validity Limitations: -not necessarily representative samples -self-reported illness -cross-sectional reporting

Thanks!!! PI: STEFANOS N. KALES

Study Team Vasileia Varvarigou Andrea Farioli Sho Sato Issa Dahabreh

Frontline officers

Police chiefs Chiefs Vs Officers: ?Agreement?

Survey

Job-strain

Stress-related illness

Time spent per duty

Law enforcement duties

THANK YOU!

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