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International Journal of
Environmental Research
and Public Health
Article
Job Stress, Burnout and Coping in Police Officers:
Relationships and Psychometric Properties of the
Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire
Cristina Queirós1, * , Fernando Passos 2, Ana Bártolo 3, Sara Faria 1,
Sílvia Monteiro Fonseca 1, António JoséMarques 4, Carlos F. Silva 5and Anabela Pereira 5
1Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal;
up201403461@fpce.up.pt (S.F.); mipsi11157@fpce.up.pt (S.M.F.)
2Psychology Unit of the Portuguese National Police, 2605-000 Belas-Sintra, Portugal; fmpassos@psp.pt
3
Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS), Department of Education and Psychology,
University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal; anabartolo@ua.pt
4School of Health, Polytechnic of Porto, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal; ajmarques@ess.ipp.pt
5Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal;
csilva@ua.pt (C.F.S.); anabelapereira@ua.pt (A.P.)
*Correspondence: cqueiros@fpce.up.pt
Received: 22 August 2020; Accepted: 11 September 2020; Published: 15 September 2020
Abstract:
Policing is a stressful occupation, which impairs police officers’ physical/mental health and
elicits burnout, aggressive behaviors and suicide. Resilience and coping facilitate the management of
job stress policing, which can be operational or organizational. All these constructs are associated,
and they must be assessed by instruments sensitive to policing idiosyncrasies. This study aims
to identify operational and organizational stress, burnout, resilient coping and coping strategies
among police officers, as well to analyze the psychometric properties of a Portuguese version of
the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire. A cross-sectional study, with online questionnaires,
collected data of 1131 police officers. With principal components and confirmatory factor analysis,
PSQ-org revealed adequate psychometric properties, despite the exclusion of four items, and revealed
a structure with two factors (poor management and lack of resources, and responsibilities and burden).
Considering cut-offpoints, 88.4% police officers presented high operational stress, 87.2% high
organizational stress, 10.9% critical values for burnout and 53.8% low resilient coping, preferring
task-orientated than emotion and avoidance coping. Some differences were found according to
gender, age and job experience. Job stress and burnout correlated negatively with resilient coping,
enthusiasm towards job and task-orientated coping. Results reinforce the importance to invest on
police officers’ occupational health.
Keywords:
job stress; organizational stress; burnout; coping; police officers; questionnaire validation
1. Introduction
Nowadays, policing is considered a stressful professional occupation [
1
–
4
] requiring police officers
to cope with danger, uncertainty and unpredictability. Thus, their job stress is increasing, leading
to burnout, mental/psychological disorders or even police suicide [
4
–
8
], forcing police officers to be
resilient and to develop coping strategies to face all job demands.
Despite policing stress sources being multiple [
4
,
9
], they can be divided in operational and
organizational stressors, being operational and organizational stress two distinct and specific constructs
for police forces [
10
]. According to several authors [
4
,
10
–
15
], operational stressors are related with
policing specificities such as working in shifts, danger and risk of injury, critical incidents, traumatic
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718; doi:10.3390/ijerph17186718 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 2 of 19
events, citizen criticism of police officers’ behavior, perception of policing by society, fear of excessive
use of force, aggressive interactions, work–family conflict, etc. On the other hand, organizational
stressors are related with Police as an institution/organization, including stressors such as conflicts with
supervisors/colleagues, lack of material/human resources, work overload, excessive administrative
tasks, leadership problems, etc., as well each police department/command/police station specific way
of functioning.
When job stress becomes chronic, it strongly affects physical and mental health [
16
,
17
],
and nowadays stress is considered as a psychosocial risk at work [
18
,
19
]. When the response
to chronic job stress is inadequate, burnout appears as an occupational phenomenon [
20
,
21
] defined
as a “prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, [expressed on]
three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy” [
22
] (p. 397). Regarding police officers’
burnout, innumerous studies found high levels of exhaustion and depersonalization, relationships
between burnout and mental/psychological problems such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic
stress disorder [
4
,
23
–
26
], as well as depersonalization as a coping strategy, emotional suppression and
difficulties to express true emotions [
27
]. Furthermore, police officers’ burnout can be related with
internal or external aggression, a current social and political concern. Regarding external aggression,
excessive use of force among police forces can be a result of high levels of stress [
2
,
13
,
16
,
28
–
30
],
which can make police officers assess the situations as more threatening than what they really are [
31
].
Regarding internal aggression, several studies [
7
,
8
,
32
,
33
] alerted for suicide among police officers
due to the easy access to a gun, due to situations which elicit post-traumatic stress disorder, stressful
conditions during policing, depression and burnout. Heyman et al. [
34
] (p. 7) concluded “police
officers ( . . . ) are more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty”.
Considering policing hazards and stressful working conditions, police officers need to be resilient
and to use adequate coping strategies to manage stress, burnout and psychological consequences
of critical incidents. Resilience can be viewed as a process of positive adaptation during and after
a significant adversity, as well as a stress-coping ability allowing to deal with the adverse situation
and to recover and grow after that [
35
,
36
]. Coping consists of cognitive and behavioral efforts to
manage/cope/reduce stress elicited by significant events, using problem-focused or emotion-focused
strategies [
37
]. Problem-focused strategies try to modify stress sources through problem solving,
decision-making, confrontation, social support seeking and/or direct action. Emotion-focused strategies
try to regulate/reduce/manage distressing emotions by modifying the cognitive meaning of the stressful
situation, without changing the situation itself, seeking emotional support or using self-control,
distancing, positive appraisal, acceptance and/or avoidance. Resilient persons frequently use more
problem-focused strategies than emotion/avoidance-focused strategies since resilient coping implies
a positive adaptation in stressful situations, combining the longitudinal process of resilience with
the specific moment were a coping strategy is used to solve the stressful situation [
38
,
39
]. Research
about resilience and coping among police officers showed that coping strategies are related with job
stress [
40
–
42
], and police officers preferred to use problem-focused strategies [
43
–
45
], which increased
with job experience [
40
] and are related with resilience [
46
,
47
]. Moreover, avoidance strategies are
related with substance/alcohol use to cope with stressful situations [
48
,
49
], while emotion-focused
strategies are related with depression, anxiety and poor mental health [
50
], as well with burnout [
51
].
Research about stress, burnout and coping refers to the influence of individual characteristics.
Gender and age are the most frequently examined, showing that women experienced more emotional
exhaustion, less depersonalization [
52
] and more stress; they preferred to use emotion-focused
strategies [
53
] and seemed to be more resilient [
54
] than men. Older people also showed to be more
resilient [
54
]. Among police officers, some studies found no differences [
3
,
55
], while others found that
women experience more burnout [
56
], more emotional exhaustion and less depersonalization [
57
,
58
],
more stress [
59
] and feel policing stressors differently than men [
60
,
61
]. Regarding age, some studies
found older police officers presented more stress [
62
], while others found more stress among young
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 3 of 19
police officers [
63
]. Police officers with higher educational level used more emotion-focused coping,
including seeking support [64].
As demonstrated above, job stress, burnout and coping are crucial psychological constructs,
which influence police officers’ tasks and their physical/mental health. Thus, researchers must
study these constructs and their relationship, but using questionnaires sensitive to policing tasks
idiosyncrasies. This study aims to identify operational and organizational stress, burnout, resilient
coping and coping strategies among police officers, as well as to analyze psychometric properties of a
Portuguese version of the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Study Design and Participants
This study is part of a larger cross-sectional project aiming to adapt questionnaires sensitive to
Portuguese police tasks. The sample was composed of 1131 police officers of the Portuguese National
Police (Pol
í
cia de Segurança P
ú
blica, PSP), a police force working only in urban areas of Portuguese
cities. All districts and Azores/Madeira islands were represented, despite Lisbon and Porto having
a larger contribution, reflecting the national distribution of this police force. The sample represents
approximately 5% of this force, which is representative for a confidence level of 95% and 3% margin of
error (the needed sample was 1020 participants). The participants’ age varied between 20 and 63 years
old (M =42.30; SD =8.713), with 52.4% having between 20 and 43 years and 47.6% between 44 and
63 years. Job experience in the Portuguese National Police varied between 1 and 40 years (M =19.12;
SD =8.982
), with 51% of the sample having between 1 and 20 years and 49% between 21 and 40 years.
Regarding gender, 91% were men, and 9% were women, while in this police force, women are nearly
10%. To avoid the possible identification of individuals from the matching of age, gender and city,
no statistical analyses were performed combining these data, and no other sociodemographic data
were collected.
2.2. Data Collection
This study was approved and carried out in accordance with the authorization/ethic
recommendations of the Directorate of the Portuguese National Police (Process 1479-4F05), with online
informed consent from all participants. An online questionnaire was prepared on Google Forms,
with a link inviting participation in a study of burnout and occupational stress among police officers.
The Directorate disseminated this link to police officers using their professional email addresses,
and data was collected between September and November 2019. There was no direct contact
between participants and researchers, no exclusion criteria existed, and participation was voluntary.
The participation rate was nearly 15% of the number of police officers in this police force, and researchers
were unable to identify how many police officers read the email, followed the link and decided not to
participate. Before responding to the questionnaire, participants were asked to provide their informed
consent, with the notification that data would be gathered anonymously. Data were accessed by one
researcher only, who downloaded the Excel file, converted it to SPSS format, confirmed the anonymity
and created a code for each questionnaire to allow separate studies inside the project.
2.3. Questionnaires
The questionnaire was composed of five major groups of questions, and the first group allowed
to characterize sociodemographic data (age, sex, job experience and district). The second group was
composed of the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire, developed by McCreary and Thompson [
10
,
65
]
to assess the specificities of job stress among police officers, both for operational and organizational
stress sources (PSQ-Op and PSQ-Org). This questionnaire is free for non-commercial, educational and
research purposes. After the adaptation of the PSQ-Op [
4
], this study used only the organizational
stress sources. The PSQ-Org questionnaire is composed of 20 items evaluated on a 7-point scale ranging
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 4 of 19
from 1 (“not at all stressful” or “no stress at all”) to 7 (“very stressful” or “a lot of stress”), with 4
indicating moderate stress. In 2017, McCreary and colleagues [
66
] established norms and cut-offvalues,
with values below 2.0 indicating low stress, between 2.1 and 3.4 indicating moderate stress and above
3.5 indicating high stress. The same procedure was used to create the Portuguese version of the PSQ-Op
and PSQ-Org, since it was not published in Portugal. Thus, two psychologists (one conducting research
about policing and police forces, another working with police officers) translated the questionnaire into
Portuguese. Another researcher, unfamiliar with police officers’ work, subsequently back translated the
questionnaire into English and compared it with the original version. Finally, these three researchers
discussed each item with two police officers (a patrol police officer and a police station commander)
until a lexical and cultural consensus was obtained. Suggestions from police officers were included to
add some examples of the Portuguese reality (Table 1). A pilot study was performed with 20 police
officers to ensure the questionnaire was easy to complete and was appropriate to the Portuguese
situation, and no major changes were made.
Table 1. Organizational police stress questionnaire (PSQ-Org) original and Portuguese versions.
Original PSQ-Org (McCreary and Thompson
(2006) Portuguese Version of PSQ-Org
No Stress at All Moderate
Stress
A Lot of
Stress
Nenhum
Stress
Stress
Moderado
Muito
Stress
1 4 7 1 4 7
1. Dealing with co-workers 1.Ter de lidar com colegas de trabalho.
2. The feeling that different rules apply to different
people (e.g., favoritism)
2. Sentir que diferentes regras s
ã
o aplicadas a diferentes pessoas (ex.:
favoritismo).
3. Feeling like you always have to prove yourself
to the organization
* 3. Sentir que tem de estar sempre a provar o seu valor
à
instituiç
ã
o.
4. Excessive administrative duties 4. Existir excesso de tarefas administrativas.
5. Constant changes in policy/legislation 5. Existirem mudanças constantes nas políticas e legislação.
6. Staffshortages 6. Redução do número de polícias disponíveis.
7. Bureaucratic red tape 7. Existir demasiada burocracia.
8. Too much computer work 8. Ter que trabalhar demasiado no computador.
9. Lack of training on new equipment 9. Falta de treino com novos equipamentos.
10. Perceived pressure to volunteer free time * 10. Pressão para se voluntariar ou estar disponível mesmo nos
tempos livres.
11. Dealing with supervisors 11. Lidar com superiores/comandantes.
12. Inconsistent leadership style * 12. Estilo de liderança/chefia/comando inconsistente.
13. Lack of resources 13. Falta de recursos.
14. Unequal sharing of work responsibilities * 14. Partilha desigual de responsabilidades profissionais.
15. If you are sick or injured your co-workers seem
to look down on you
15. Sentir que quando estádoente ou lesionado os colegas parecem
olhá-lo de outra forma.
16. Leaders over-emphasize the negatives (e.g.,
supervisor evaluations, public complaints)
16. Os superiores valorizarem mais os aspetos negativos da profiss
ã
o
(ex.: queixas do cidadão, avaliações de
superiores/chefias/comandantes).
17. Internal investigations 17. Lidar com investigações internas.
18. Dealing the court system 18. Lidar com o sistema judicial.
19. The need to be accountable for doing your job 19. Necessidade de ser responsabilizado pelo seu trabalho.
20. Inadequate equipment 20. Usar equipamento inadequado.
The Operational Police Stress Questionnaire is
provided free for non-commercial, educational,
and research purposes. Cite as:
- McCreary, D.R., and Thompson, M.M. (2013). The
Operational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Org).
Measurement Instrument Database for the Social
Science. Retrieved from www.midss.ie
O Question
á
rio de Stress Operacional
é
de acesso livre para efeitos de
uso não comercial, educacional e investigação. Citar como:
- versão original de: McCreary, D.R., & Thompson, M.M. (2013). The
Operational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Org). Measurement
Instrument Database for the Social Science. Disponível em
www.midss.ie (https://www.midss.org/sites/default/files/psq-org.pdf)
- versão portuguesa de: Queirós, C., Passos, F., Bártolo, A., Faria, S.,
Fonseca, S.M., Marques, A.J., Fernandes da Silva, C., & Pereira A.
(2020). Job stress, burnout and coping in police officers: relationships
and psychometric properties of the Organizational Police Stress
Questionnaire; International Journal of Environmental Research and
Public Health,17, 6718; doi:10.3390/ijerph17186718
Note: * Items with poor psychometric properties, suggesting a Portuguese version with only 16 items.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 5 of 19
The third group of questions was composed by the Spanish Burnout Inventory (SBI, [
67
]),
with a Portuguese version tested on police officers from the Portuguese National Police called PSP,
with adequate psychometric properties [
68
]. The SBI considers burnout as a process of cognitive
and emotional deterioration, involving attitudes of indifference and guilt [
69
], and includes 20 items
organized in four scales. The first is enthusiasm towards the job (demonstrating for instance the
ambition to accomplish a person’s professional goals because they are a source of personal achievement),
while the second is psychological exhaustion (emotional and physical exhaustion related to job tasks,
increased by dealing every day with people who present difficulties or problems). The third is indolence
(negative attitudes of indifference and cynicism when dealing with people demanding help), while the
fourth is guilt (negative feelings, behaviors and attitudes in the workplace, elicited by interactions
during labor relations). Each item is assessed by a 5-point frequency scale ranging from 0 (never) to 4
(very frequent or every day). Low scores on enthusiasm towards the job, along with high scores on
psychological exhaustion, indolence and guilt, represent high levels of burnout. Scores for each of the
four scales are calculated using the mean of the items that compose each scale, and a global score for
burnout can be calculated after reversing the items of the enthusiasm scale. Moreover, guilt allows to
identify two profiles: Profile 1 (high burnout and low guilt according to cut-offvalues by Gil-Monte [
67
]
and Profile 2 (high burnout and high guilt). According to Poletto and colleagues [
70
], it is possible
to use percentile analysis to identify burnout at very low levels (P
≤
10), low levels (11 <P
≤
33),
moderate levels (34 <P≤66), high levels (67 <P≤89) and critical levels (P ≥90).
The fourth group of questions was composed of the Brief Resilient Coping Scale [
39
] in its
Portuguese version [
38
]. The BRCS is composed of four items measuring the person’ capacity to
cope with stress in an adaptive way, assessed by a 5-point frequency scale ranging from 1 (almost
never) to 5 (almost always). The final score is the sum of the four items, and a score between 1 and 12
represents low resilience, between 13 and 17 moderate resilience, while between 18 and 20 represents
high resilience.
The fifth and last group of questions included the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations
(CISS-21, [
71
]), in its Portuguese version [
72
], composed by 21 items that measure the use of coping
strategies in a stressful situation, namely, task-orientated coping (executing an action to solve the
problem at hand, such as “Focus on the problem and try to solve it”), emotion-orientated coping
(expressing or feeling emotions, such as “Become very upset”) and avoidance-orientated coping (doing
another thing to reduce stress, such as “Treat myself to a snack”). Items are assessed in a 5-point
frequency scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much), and each of the three dimensions are
calculated from the average of the corresponding 7 items that represent each strategy.
2.4. Statistical Analysis
One rule of thumb regarding sample size to perform a factory analysis is that the subject to item
ratio should be at least 10 to 1 [73]. Based on this, the sample size was enough to ensure stability of a
factor solution and, prior to testing factor structure of the PSQ-Org, data screening for normality and
multicollinearity occurred. Then, sample was randomly divided in two, so that mutually independent
samples were obtained for the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis
(CFA). Only observations without any missing items were used, resulting in 1131 observations in total,
339 for the PCA and 792 for the CFA. PCA with oblique rotation was conducted (Promax) to allow for
expected factor correlations. For the CFA, the maximum likelihood estimation (ML) with bootstrapping
(1000 resamples) was used to generate accurate estimations of standard errors with accompanying
confidence intervals (bias-corrected at the 95% confidence level). Three models were estimated: (i)
a two-factor model based on the results of the PCA, (ii) a one-factor model representing a general
undifferentiated “organizational police stress” latent construct, and (iii) an alternative second-order
factor model. These models were compared based on examination of indicators of goodness of fit.
As recommended by Kline [
74
], the model chi-square test (
χ2
) was assessed with a non-significant
χ2
indicating a good fit. Three approximate fit indexes (RMSEA, CFI and SRMR) were also reported.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 6 of 19
Values of CFI
≥
0.90 and RMSEA
≤
0.10 [
75
] and SRMR
≤
0.08 [
76
] are interpreted as acceptable fit.
Reliability was examined with estimates of internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient) and
Composite Reliability (CR).
To analyze the constructs’ convergent and discriminant validity of the PSQ-Org factors, the average
variance extracted (AVE) was estimated. Values of AVE
≥
0.50 and AVE
≥
r
2
;DV (squared
correlation between the factors) were considered indicative of convergent and discriminant validity,
respectively [77].
Finally, Pearson’s correlation coefficients were used to determinate whether scales with similar
constructs (e.g., operational stress, burnout and resilient coping) were highly correlated with scores from
the PSQ-Org, and descriptive analyses were also performed to identify stress/burnout/coping levels.
Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of Moment
Structures (AMOS), both version 24 (IBM SPSS/AMOS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).
3. Results
Prior to identifying job stress/burnout/coping level and its relationships, psychometric properties
of the PSQ-Org were analyzed, as well its relationship with other constructs assessed in this study.
Some detailed statistical analyses were calculated and included as an addendum to the article for those
interested (see Supplementary Materials).
3.1. Preliminary Analysis
Data screening prior to analysis showed that all inter-correlations were below 0.80 suggesting no
multicollinearity [
77
] (see Supplementary Materials Table S1). An assessment of normality revealed
that kurtosis and skewness scores for each item fell within
−
2 and 2 [
78
]. The corrected item total
correlations were all positive and more than 0.40. The internal consistency of the total scale was good
(
α
=0.95), and there was a low variation in Cronbach’s alpha if items were deleted. Six items (1, 2, 14,
15, 17 and 19) were excluded from the original scale in Bangladeshi culture [
79
]. A four-factor model
for the PSQ-Org was obtained, consisting of 14 items. In this study, it was not possible to confirm this
factorial structure, as all items had adequate properties in this preliminary analysis.
3.1.1. Principal Components Analysis
PCA suggested that a two-factor structure explained 60% (59.67) of the variance.
The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) Measure was 0.95, indicating that the sample was adequate,
and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity was significant (
χ2
;=4661.02, p<0.001). A Scree plot of the
eigenvalues was considered (see Supplementary Materials Figure S1), also indicating a two-factor
solution. The first factor was robust, with a high eigenvalue of 10.6, and it accounted for 52.93%
of the variance in the data. The eigenvalue for Factor 2 was 1.35, accounting for 6.74% of the total
variance. Factor 1 comprised items 2, 4, 5–7, 9, 12–14, 16 and 20 (11 items), which we termed as “Poor
management and lack of resources”. Factor 2 included items 1, 3, 8, 10, 11, 15 and 17–19 (9 items),
which we designated as “Responsibilities and burden”. Table 2shows the factor loadings, and item 10
presented cross loading. However, we decided to keep this item due to its properties (e.g., corrected
item-total correlation of 0.72). We consider that item 10 fitted conceptually to Factor 2. All items had
communalities greater than 0.40 [
80
]. Internal consistencies for each of the two subscales were good
(see Table 2).
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 7 of 19
Table 2.
Factor Analysis of the PSQ-OR (20 items): two-factor solution using a part of the sample
(Database 1; n=339).
Factor 1 Factor 2
Item (Item No.) Poor Management and Lack
of Resources (α=0.927)
Responsibilities and
Burden (α=0.904) h2;
1 0.881 0.475
2 0.414 0.514
3 0.591 0.628
4 0.594 0.572
5 0.545 0.627
6 0.929 0.665
7 0.813 0.693
8 0.544 0.426
9 0.539 0.521
10 (0.441) 0.409 0.620
11 0.845 0.679
12 0.442 0.550
13 1062 * 0.737
14 0.650 0.641
15 0.796 0.504
16 0.445 0.542
17 0.711 0.601
18 0.616 0.647
19 0.735 0.651
20 0.863 0.641
α
=Cronbach’s alpha coefficients; h
2
=Communalities; Factor loadings <0.40 were suppressed (based on Hair
et al. [
77
]). Note: * if the factors are correlated (oblique), the factor loadings are regression coefficients and not
correlations and as such, they can be larger than one in magnitude.
3.1.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis: Alternative Models
As the PCA suggested a two-factor solution, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used
to examine this structural model. We considered 792 observations in total for the CFA. Mardia’s
kurtosis coefficient of 177.90 with a critical ratio of 84.39 indicated that the data were multivariate
non-normal and may result in standard error biases [
81
]. Accordingly, analysis used ML estimation
with bootstrapping showing a poor fit (
χ2
(169) =1789.82, p<0.001; CFI =0.84; RMSEA =0.11 (90%
CI 0.11–0.12); SRMR =0.06). However, all standardized factor loadings were generally large and
statistically significant for two factors (0.67–0.79 and 0.57–0.80 for factors 1 (“Poor management and
lack of resources”) and 2 (“Responsibilities and burden”), respectively).
The two factors were correlated substantially with each other (r =0.871). The average variance
extracted (AVE), with values of 0.53 for Factor 1 and 0.50 for Factor 2, indicated satisfactory convergent
validity. However, the AVE values were smaller than the squared correlation between the factors
(r
2
DV =0.76), which led us to test the fit of a single factor structure. This one-factor model did not fit
the data well statistically nor descriptively (
χ2
(170) =2133.68, p<0.001; CFI =0.81; RMSEA =0.12
[90% CI 0.12–0.13]; SRMR =0.07). Comparing the two factorial structures, the difference from models
was statistically significant (
χ2
(1) =343.86, p<0.001) indicating that proposed framework by the PCA
showed a significantly better fit to the theoretical model. Furthermore, more than 50% of the items
presented high error covariance.
In such circumstances, a second-order factor model was generated and tested (Figure 1).
This alternative solution examined whether a latent general reality testing factor existed
(“Organizational police stress”, such as McCreary and Thompson [
15
,
65
,
66
] considered when
they developed the instrument and also other authors who adapted it for different countries and
realities [
12
,
79
,
82
,
83
]), in addition to two dimensions (“Poor management and lack of resources” and
“Responsibilities and burden”, where all items are related with organizational aspects). Based on high
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 8 of 19
modification indices, the two first order dimensions have been re-specified. Items 3, 10, 12 and 14
loaded in more than one factor and, therefore, were excluded in this analysis. We also allowed errors
to covary for items 4 and 7, 13 and 20, and 17 and 18. After estimating the model, we verified that this
model did not fit well statistically (
χ2
(100) =851.93, p<0.001), but it did fit well descriptively (CFI =
0.90; RMSEA =0.10 [90% CI 0.09–0.10]; SRMR =0.06). It should be noted that the
χ2
; value is sensitive
to sample size, indicating significant misfit even in good fit models [
84
]. All factor loadings were
statistically significant (Figure 1). This 16-item solution should be preferred overall. The reliability of
the two subscales was good (
α
=0.91 and CR =0.91 for Factor 1 and
α
=0.88 and CR =0.87 for Factor
2). Good internal consistency was obtained for the full scale involving 16 items (α=0.93).
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, x 8 of 19
the PCA showed a significantly better fit to the theoretical model. Furthermore, more than 50% of the
items presented high error covariance.
In such circumstances, a second-order factor model was generated and tested (Figure 1). This
alternative solution examined whether a latent general reality testing factor existed (“Organizational
police stress”, such as McCreary and Thompson [15,65,66] considered when they developed the
instrument and also other authors who adapted it for different countries and realities [12,79,82,83]),
in addition to two dimensions (“Poor management and lack of resources” and “Responsibilities and
burden”, where all items are related with organizational aspects). Based on high modification indices,
the two first order dimensions have been re-specified. Items 3, 10, 12 and 14 loaded in more than one
factor and, therefore, were excluded in this analysis. We also allowed errors to covary for items 4 and
7, 13 and 20, and 17 and 18. After estimating the model, we verified that this model did not fit well
statistically (χ2(100) = 851.93, p < 0.001), but it did fit well descriptively (CFI = 0.90; RMSEA = 0.10 [90%
CI 0.09–0.10]; SRMR = 0.06). It should be noted that the χ² value is sensitive to sample size, indicating
significant misfit even in good fit models [84]. All factor loadings were statistically significant (Figure
1). This 16-item solution should be preferred overall. The reliability of the two subscales was good
(α= 0.91 and CR = 0.91 for Factor 1 and α = 0.88 and CR = 0.87 for Factor 2). Good internal consistency
was obtained for the full scale involving 16 items (α = 0.93).
Figure 1. Second-order model for the PSQ-Org (Database 2; n = 792).
3.2. Job Stress, Burnout and Coping among Police Officers: Descriptive Statistics and Group Differences
Considering instruments’ cut-off values (Table 3), findings showed operational stress is high for
88.4% of the sample, while organizational stress is high for 87.2%. Regarding burnout, for Enthusiasm
9.8% of the sample presented a very low level and 23.7% a low level. The percentage of participants
who presented high and critical levels was, respectively, 22.6% and 12.2% for Psychological
exhaustion, 26.9% and 10.2% for Indolence, 35.3% and 10.3% for Guilt and 23.7% and 10.9% for
Burnout. With Gil-Monte’s profiles [67], 35% of the sample (n = 396) was included in Profile 1 (high
Figure 1. Second-order model for the PSQ-Org (Database 2; n=792).
3.2. Job Stress, Burnout and Coping among Police Officers: Descriptive Statistics and Group Differences
Considering instruments’ cut-offvalues (Table 3), findings showed operational stress is high for
88.4% of the sample, while organizational stress is high for 87.2%. Regarding burnout, for Enthusiasm
9.8% of the sample presented a very low level and 23.7% a low level. The percentage of participants who
presented high and critical levels was, respectively, 22.6% and 12.2% for Psychological exhaustion, 26.9%
and 10.2% for Indolence, 35.3% and 10.3% for Guilt and 23.7% and 10.9% for Burnout. With Gil-Monte’s
profiles [
67
], 35% of the sample (n=396) was included in Profile 1 (high burnout but low guilt),
and only 9.5% (n=108) was included in Profile 2 (high burnout and guilt), while the rest of the sample
did not present any specific profile. Finally, regarding resilient coping 53.8% of the sample presented
low values, while 24.7% presented moderate values, and only 11.5% presented a high resilient coping.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 9 of 19
Table 3. Sample’s frequency (and percentage) distribution according established cut-offpoints.
Questionnaires’ Scales Established Levels with Cut-OffPoints
PSQ Low stress
(≤2)
Moderate stress
(2.1–3.4)
High stress
(≥3.5)
Operational stress 29 (2.6) 102 (9.0) 1000 (88.4)
Organiz. stress 26 (2.3) 119 (10.5) 986 (87.2)
SBI Very low level
(P ≤10%)
Low
(P11–33)
Moderate
(P34–66)
High
(P67–89)
Critical level
(P ≥90)
Enthusiasm job 111 (9.8) 268 (23.7) 349 (30.9) 269 (23.8) 134 (11.8)
Psychol. exhaustion 111 (9.8) 265 (23.4) 361 (31.9) 256 (22.6) 138 (12.2)
Indolence 81 (8.0) 221 (19.5) 400 (35.4) 304 (26.9) 115 (10.2)
Guilt 206 (18.2) 213 (18.8) 196 (17.3) 399 (35.3) 117 (10.3)
Burnout 123 (10.9) 245 (21.7) 372 (32.9) 268 (23.7) 123 (10.9)
BRCS Low resilience
(4–12)
Moderate resilience
(13–17)
High resilience
(18–20)
Resilient coping 609 (53.8) 392 (34.7) 130 (11.5)
Descriptive analyses for all dimensions were performed (Table 4) and showed at least one
participant had the minimum or the maximum value allowed by the scales’ range. Standard deviation
was higher for the responsibilities and burden dimension of organizational stress as well for the
psychological exhaustion dimension of burnout. Considering mean values, for Operational stress,
levels were high and higher than Organizational stress. Poor management and lack of resources
presented the highest value for job stress, while Responsibilities and burden had the lowest value for
job stress. Burnout presented moderate mean values, higher for Psychologic exhaustion and Indolence,
than for Enthusiasm and Burnout, while Guilt presented a low value. Regarding coping, resilient
coping presented moderate levels, while task orientated presented the highest value, followed by
emotion-coping and avoidance orientated coping, which presented the lowest value.
Comparative analyses were also performed regarding gender (Table 4) using non-parametric tests
due to the different proportions of men and women (which reflects the characteristics of this population
at national level), despite Student’s t-tests showing the same significant results. Women presented
higher enthusiasm towards the job and avoidance-orientated coping, while men presented higher
indolence and burnout. Regarding age and job experience, a detailed analysis was performed
comparing groups according to adulthood stages/responsibilities and job experience phases related
with professional progression in this police force (see Supplementary Materials Table S2). This analysis
showed older police officers with less operational and organizational stress, less indolence and more
guilt and emotion-focused coping than younger police officers. Resilient coping seemed to decrease in
the group of middle adulthood and increase on older police officers, while avoidance-orientated coping
is typical of younger adults, decreasing in middle age and older adults. Considering job experience,
a similar pattern was found, with more experienced police officers presenting less operational stress,
less insolence, less avoidance-orientated coping and more guilt and emotion-focused coping than those
with less experience. Resilient coping seemed to decrease between 1 and 30 years of job experience,
increasing for the group of 31 to 40 years of job experience. Additionally, correlational analysis
(see Supplementary Materials Table S2) showed that older police officers and those with more job
experience presented more guilt and more emotion-orientated coping, while younger professionals and
with less experience presented more operational stress, indolence and avoidance-orientated coping.
Only job experience had a negative correlation with organizational stress, while enthusiasm towards
the job, psychological exhaustion, burnout, resilient coping and task-orientated coping appear not be
influenced by age nor by job experience.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 10 of 19
Table 4. Descriptive and comparative statistics for job stress, burnout and coping.
Scales (Range) Mean Std.
Deviation
Men
n=1029
Women
n=102 U
Operational stress (1 to 7) 5.026 1.291 5.034 4.942 0.323
Poor manag. and lack of resources (F1) 5.520 1.243 5.535 5.375 0.109
Responsibilities and burden (F2) 4.126 1.490 4.125 4.130 0.845
Organizational stress 4.910 1.259 4.918 4.830 0.377
Enthusiasm towards the job (0 to 4) 1.935 0.947 1.913 2.153 0.016 *
Psychological exhaustion 2.366 1.091 2.381 2.218 0.149
Indolence 2.211 0.987 2.246 1.868 0.000 ***
Guilt 0.881 0.796 0,882 0.873 0.898
Burnout 1.873 0.742 1.892 1.684 0.007 **
Resilient coping (1 to 5) 3.122 0.980 3.120 3.137 0.779
Task-orientated coping (1 to 5) 3.574 0.846 3.565 3.668 0.288
Emotion-orientated coping 2.513 0.834 2.501 2.639 0.067
Avoidance-orientated coping 2.506 0.846 2.484 2.723 0.012 *
Note: * p≤0.050 ** p≤0.010 *** p≤0.001; U =Mann–Whitney test.
3.3. Job Stress, Burnout and Coping’s Relationships
To understand the relationship between job stress, burnout and coping, R Pearson’s correlations
were performed (Table 5), contributing also for convergent validity evidence of the PSQ-org
questionnaire. Overall, we observed moderate to strong correlations in the expected direction
between 16-item PSQ-Org scale score and its two dimensions, being related conceptually with distinct
constructs: operational stress and burnout, as well with coping. Scores in organizational stress
dimensions were positively associated with operational stress, psychological exhaustion, indolence
and, less strongly, guilt. In turn, enthusiasm subscale showed a negative correlation with organizational
stress. Furthermore, we found low to moderate correlations between total scores and subscales of
organizational stress and resilient coping. Interestingly, higher scores in resilient coping seem to indicate
lower organizational stress. Task-oriented coping was more strongly associated with the dimension
related to responsibilities and burden than with the dimension related to poor management and lack of
resources. These patterns support the construct validity of the scale. It was also found that operational
stress correlated positively with burnout’s dimensions (except for enthusiasm towards job, with a
negative correlation) and with emotion and avoidance orientated coping and correlated negatively
with resilient and task-orientated coping. Regarding burnout’s dimensions, enthusiasm towards job
correlated positively with resilient and task orientated coping and negatively with emotion-orientated
coping, while for avoidance orientated coping no significant relationship was found. Psychological
exhaustion, indolence, guilt and burnout presented the same pattern, correlating negatively with
resilient and task orientated coping and positively with emotion and avoidance orientated coping.
Finally, resilient coping correlated negatively with emotion-orientated, and positively with task and
avoidance coping.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 11 of 19
Table 5. Pearson correlations between Organizational police stress, Operational police stress, Burnout and Coping (n=1131).
Dimensions Organizational
Stress Factor 1 Factor 2 Operational
Stress Burnout Enthusiasm
Tow. Job
Psychological
Exhaustion Indolence Guilt Resilient
Coping
Operational stress 0.795 0.766 0.714
Burnout 0.683 0.599 0.675 0.630
Enthusiasm towards
the job −0.404 −0.358 −0.397 −0.399
Psych. exhaustion 0.685 0.620 0.658 0.645
Indolence 0.669 0.615 0.631 0.609
Guilt 0.318 0.213 0.386 0.262
Resilient Coping −0.263 −0.184 −0.310 −0.257 −0.432 0.428 −0.339 −0.307 −0.272
Task-oriented −0.207 −0.121 −0.269 −0.183 −0.330 0.337 −0.241 −0.229 −0.226 0.571
Emotion-oriented 0.416 0.338 0.440 0.395 0.521 −0.257 0.499 0.420 0.464 −0.320
Avoidance-oriented 0.171 0.167 0.152 0.163 0.077 0.023 * 0.091 0.086 0.085 0.148
Note: All correlations were significant at p<0.001 * non-significant correlation.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 12 of 19
4. Discussion
To identify operational and organizational stress, burnout, resilient coping and coping strategies
among police officers, it is important to resort to instruments that reflect policing idiosyncrasies.
The validation of a Portuguese version of the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire found
adequate psychometric proprieties, despite deleting four items. These items can reflect characteristics
of this study’s sample, which was formed from a national police force working in major Portuguese cities,
or can reflect the lack of expression of the organization’s specific rules in these items (e.g., items “10.
Perceived pressure to volunteer free time” and “14. Unequal sharing of work responsibilities”),
cultural/individual style (e.g., “3. Feeling like you always have to prove yourself to the organization”)
or even a question about hierarchy (e.g., “12. Inconsistent leadership style”) that may have elicited
fear to be identified, despite the guarantee of anonymity and confidentiality. Results also revealed a
two-factor structure, “Poor management and lack of resources” and “Responsibilities and burden”,
confirming the existence of organizational stressors and confirming PSQ-Org as a valid and reliable
measure of policing job stress, such as the one McCreary and Thompson [
15
,
65
,
66
] referred to when
creating this instrument.
Other studies found different structures and factors, namely, because organizational stress is highly
dependent and related to each police force’s cultural idiosyncrasies. For instance, Shane [
12
], with 461
USA police officers, suggested 19 from the 20 original items, organized in six factors: Co-worker
relations, Training and resources, Leadership and supervision, Bureaucracy, Internal affairs and
Accountability, and Management and organizational capacity (with only two items). Sagar et al. [79],
with 210 police officers from Bangladesh suggested 14 from the original 20 items, organized in four
factors, namely Poor management and bureaucracy, Lack of manpower and resources, Feelings of
excessive duty and being supervised, and Lack of leisure time and negative evaluations. Irniza et
al. [
82
], with 262 police officers, adapted for Malay the PSQ, both operational and organizational
scales. They excluded four factors related with lifestyle (managing social life outside work, eating
healthy at work, making friends outside the job and finding time to stay in good physical condition),
suggesting the rest of the items loaded in one dimension including operational and organizational
stressors. More recently, Kaplan et al. [
83
], during an 8-week resilience training course, studied 72 USA
police officers and found a good internal consistency for the PSQ, for both operational (
α
=0.85) and
organizational (
α
=0.88) scales. Like Irniza et al. [
82
] defended, PSQ-Org diverse factor structures can
result from the cross-cultural specificities of each country. However, these differences are less evident
for the PSQ operational scale, which can reflect more common police stressors all over the world.
Moreover, the high standard deviation values for organizational stress, despite the scale ranged from 1
to 7 points, can also reflect different organizational management of each department/police station.
Regarding job stress, burnout and coping and despite mean values showing moderate to high
levels, cut-offscores suggested a more worrying reality, with 88.4% of the sample presenting high
operational stress and 87.2% high organizational stress levels. For burnout, 23.7% and 10.9% of police
officers presented high and critical levels, respectively. Moreover, critical levels were also found in 12.2%
for Psychological exhaustion, 10.2% for Indolence and 10.3% for Guilt, while 9.5% presented for Guilt
the Profile 2, which is characterized by high burnout and guilt levels, suggesting psychological suffering.
Regarding resilient coping, 53.8% of the sample presented low resilience, while task-orientated coping
was higher than emotion and avoidance orientated coping. Resilient coping correlated negatively with
emotion-orientated and positively with task and avoidance coping, suggesting avoidance strategies
are sometimes used for managing stress [
44
,
69
]. These results are in line with other studies and
confirm that policing is a stressful professional occupation [
1
,
2
,
15
,
28
] and that burnout affects police
officers [
4
,
6
,
24
,
27
]. Moreover, results confirmed the preference of task-orientated coping among police
officers [
41
,
43
–
45
], despite low values of resilience coping. However, as a descriptive study, no causal
relationships can be inferred from correlational analysis, and it is important to continue to study
these phenomena.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 13 of 19
The influence of individual factors such as gender, age and job experience revealed some
different patterns on the psychological variables assessed. In line with other studies, women are a
minority in police forces [
56
], but in this study, they presented higher enthusiasm towards the job
and avoidance-orientated coping, while men presented higher indolence and burnout. These results
confirm studies showing men presented more burnout [
85
] but differ from other studies which showed
women experienced more emotional exhaustion, less depersonalization and more stress [
52
,
57
–
59
],
preferring to use emotion-focused strategies [
53
]. A possible explanation can be women are entering
into nontraditional occupations where they have been excluded or marginalized for cultural/social or
discrimination reasons [
86
] and are nowadays proud to access these jobs, policing career included.
Conceptually, avoidance-orientated coping is a strategy of emotion-focused coping, and in our sample,
this preference by women can reflect that women police officers feel policing stressors differently than
men [
60
,
61
]. Moreover, avoidance coping can be useful to alleviate stress when the person does not
have enough resources to solve the problem directly [
37
]. Regarding age and job experience, results
are in line with other studies, revealing that older police officers and those with more years of job
experience presented less operational and organizational stress, less burnout dimensions [
63
,
87
] and
more resilience [
54
]. These results can reflect that while suffering from burnout, the workers tend to
leave their occupations, and only the healthier ones remain on the job, a phenomenon known as the
“healthy worker effect” [
88
]. Finally, older/with more job experience police officers felt more guilty and
used more emotion-focused coping while younger/with less job experience felt less guilty and preferred
avoidance-orientated coping. Guilt, as other negative emotions, can be a psychological consequence
of critical incidents or moral injury, frequent situations for police officers [
89
,
90
]. Avoidance coping
used by younger police officers can reflect their lack of resources to eliminate the stressor directly [
37
],
while emotion-focused coping used by older officers can reveal they learned how to cope with stressors
that cannot be changed.
Considering all results, it is important to implement programs to increase resilience [
91
,
92
],
to manage stress [
44
,
85
,
93
] and to promote the use of adequate coping strategies [
27
,
42
,
51
,
94
] but
adapted to individual differences such as gender, age and job experience, since they can affect the
way a police officer faces job stressors. In the future, job stress management, burnout prevention
and coping training are important topics to be studied. In addition, it is important to identify which
coping strategies are mostly used during critical incidents and how post-traumatic stress is presented,
as well as substance use/abuse as a coping strategy, like other studies did [
48
,
95
]. Moreover, the
significant correlations between these constructs suggest they are associated and influence behavior
and emotional states, which alerts to the need to study them associated with internal and external
aggression, a current concern for researchers [
7
,
8
,
13
,
29
,
30
,
32
,
33
]. Despite not being analyzed in this
study, Patterson [
64
] found police officers with higher educational level used more emotion-focused
coping, including seeking support, an interesting result that demands further analyses. In fact, in stress
management programs, social/emotional seeking support should be emphasized [
94
], overtaking the
frequent public image of “cops don’t cry” [
96
] and helping to regulate emotion suppression [
97
] and
changing social perceptions of police officers as Robocops [27].
5. Conclusions
This study found the Portuguese version of the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire to
be a valid and reliable measure of policing job stress, with two factors (Poor management and lack
of resources, Responsibilities and burden). Using this instrument and others to assess burnout and
coping, this study identified high levels of job stress and burnout and low resilient coping, as well as
the preference for task-orientated coping, with some differences across gender, age and job experience.
The relationships between job stress, burnout and coping suggested these constructs need to be
considered as affecting policing tasks and police officers’ mental health, since stressful situations imply
the use of both individual and organizational resources. However, the study has some limitations,
namely, cross-sectional and descriptive study based only in voluntary participation from one of the
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 6718 14 of 19
three major Portuguese Police forces; the sample represented only 5% of the national police force and
had 3% of margin of error; not having studied more sociodemographic or labor factors on psychological
variables possible bias from the healthy worker effect since we do not have information on the
participants’ psychological health status, namely, if they are working while ill or have returned to work
after being ill; possible bias from socially desirable responses, which we tried to control by previously
informing participants that the questionnaire was anonymous and confidential, and that results will
only be accessed by researchers and not by the police force; lack of control to identify participants who
accessed the questionnaire and give up its submission; and the timing of data collection, which did
not reflected current stressors such as the COVID-19 pandemic. All these limitations demand more
studies on these topics, while trying to collect data from larger samples and to use samples from other
national police forces, namely, judiciary and militarized ones, and thus analyze with more detail the
specific operational and organizational stressors of each police force. Moreover, in the future, it will be
important to collect data combining burnout, resilience and coping among other occupational groups
and compare it with that of different police forces.
Nowadays, police officers are often exposed to high-risk and high-stress events, caused by
nature (e.g., natural disasters) or by human action (e.g., terrorists attacks, multi-victims accidents),
alerting to the need to measure the burden of psychological impact from the involvement in critical
incidents [
98
]. Results showed operational and organizational stressors are high, and currently, with the
COVID-19 pandemic, police forces face new risks and challenges, which require organizations to
reinforce their resilience resources with training for facing these new situations [
99
]. Moreover, social
support and coping must be considered as useful resources, as well as mental health support [
98
].
Thus, new directions must be considered in police training, preparing police officers “to meet
the contemporary challenges of police work” [
100
] (p. 1) but also to develop stress/burnout
prevention/management programs, as well as to promote resilience and adequate coping strategies,
including emotional intelligence [
101
–
103
]. As Sinclair et al. [
104
] (p. 1) recently noted, now
more than ever, “occupational health science in time of COVID-19” is crucial to help all workers,
including police officers, whose professional occupation is one of the most stressful. With this study,
we contribute with the adaptation of a specific questionnaire to measure job stress among police forces
but also bring attention to the importance of psychological variables and the benefits of promoting
psychological/occupational health in police forces, so as to reduce burnout and job stress.
Supplementary Materials:
The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding
author, after authorization from the National Portuguese Police. The following are available online at http:
//www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/18/6718/s1. Figure S1: Scree Plot in favor of the two-factor structure. Table S1:
PSQ-Org items descriptive statistics (n=1131). Table S2: Comparative analysis according to age stages and job
experience phases and correlational analysis for job stress, burnout and coping.
Author Contributions:
Conceptualization: C.Q., F.P., A.P., and C.F.S.; theoretical framework and literature review,
C.Q., F.P., S.F., S.M.F. and A.J.M.; statistical analyses, A.B., A.P. and C.Q.; discussion, C.Q., F.P., S.F., and S.M.F.;
writing—original draft preparation, C.Q., A.B., S.F., and S.M.F.; writing—review and editing, C.Q., F.P., A.J.M.,
A.P., and C.F.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research was funded by the Center for Psychology at the University of Porto, Portuguese Science
Foundation (FCT UIDB/00050/2020).
Acknowledgments:
Directorate of the Portuguese National Police (PSP) who approved and disseminated the
study; all police officers from PSP (from the lower professional positions to high commanders) who generously
spent their time participating/disseminating the study and helped to collect data from a Portuguese national
sample; Pedro Gil-Monte and TEA Ediciones, Spain, who authorized the use of SBI Portuguese version.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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