Questionnaires and Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered to rural police officers to determine whether stressful factors were comparable to those of urban officers. Most (90%) indicated the job was stressful, but traditional measures of police stress failed to support this perception. It is suggested that the denial of the effects of stress may be a prerequisite to successful performance in rural law enforcement.

This study describes the relationships among job satisfaction, perceived officer animosity, job involvement, time investment in different psychological services, and personal characteristics of law enforcement psychologists. Subjects were 28 male and 19 female police psychologists drawn from the Directory of Division 18, Police and Public Safety Section, of the American Psychological Association. They worked both in-house and as consultants. All subjects were contacted by telephone and given a structured interview. Results indicated that police psychologists were extremely satisfied with their jobs, and perceived little officer animosity, no matter how much of their professional time was devoted to law enforcement work. In addition, police psychologists spend much more of their professional time doing counseling, and screening and selection, than doing training and organizational development. Finally, the counseling activity was significantly related to two important demographic variables: status (in-house or consultant) and sex. Counseling was done mostly in-house, and largely by female police psychologist.

This study examined the relationships among job performance, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory scores, self-perceived stress, and supervisory-perceived stress for female police officers. Thirty full-time female officers from 19 small-town departments served as subjects, representing 91% of all full-time female municipal officers in Vermont. A comparable group of 30 full-time male officers from the same departments and matched for experience was used as a control group. Results showed that, to a large extent, male and female officers experienced the same stressors in small-town policing. One exception was for task-related stressors, with women reporting more stress when exposed to tragedy, and feeling more stress associated with responsibility for the safety of the public and their professional colleagues. Women also reported stress associated with working in a male-dominated occupation. The increased stress did not affect job performance, however. Performance evaluations by supervisors indicated that female and male officers do the job equally well.

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