Mapping Police Stress

Abstract

Research on police stress has developed out of several theoretical frameworks, but the knowledge base is limited by a common reliance on self-report stress measures. This article describes an innovative approach to studying police stress that attempts to overcome some of these limitations by using direct, real-time, and spatially anchored measurement of an officer's stress response (via heart rate) during shift work. A pilot study was conducted using a single officer to determine whether this methodology is feasible for future studies. The pilot study demonstrated that continuous heart rate measurement over the course of the test officer's shift was possible and that these data could be placed in space-time context for purposes of exploring potential stress "hot spots." Overall, the results indicate that the methodology is both feasible and suitable for systematic studies of police stress, with the potential to advance our understanding of when, where, and why officers experience stress. Potential benefits, limitations, challenges of implementation, and future directions are discussed.

Ambulatory Assessment of Psychophysiological Stress among Police Officers: a Proof-of-Concept Study

“…However, laboratory experiments fail to represent real-world settings, due to the inherent artificial conditions. Finally, there seems to be a lack of reliable physiological methods that can be used to assess stress responses in applied settings, particularly among emergency professions such as policing (Hickman et al 2011;Kusserow et al 2013).…”

“…Although much work has been conducted to better understand police stress, most of these studies relied mainly on self-report measures. An exception is a study by Hickman et al (2011) that aimed to investigate police stress using direct realtime and spacially anchored measurements of an officer's response to stressors and the sample consisted of one police officer. Although the study demonstrated that continuous measurement of police officers cardiac response during a shift is possible, results were limited by the lack of self-report stress data considered.…”

Распоређивање Полицајаца – Рад У Смјенама

“…Умор који настаје усљед рада у смјенама није повезан само са личним незадовољством и незадовољством послом, већ може довести и до контрапродуктивног понашања, као што је: импулсивност, агресивност, раздражљивост и напади бијесa (Vila, Morrison, & Kenney, 2002). Колико је рад у смјенама напоран, говори и чињеница да су га полицајци сврстали међу 10 највећих узрочника стреса (Hickman et al, 2011).…”

Biometrics and Policing: A Protocol for Multichannel Sensor Data Collection and Exploratory Analysis of Contextualized Psychophysiological Response During Law Enforcement Operations

“…Objective physiological assessment of individuals in occupational settings other than law enforcement has demonstrated the utility of heart rate variability analysis to identify effort at work [38], psychological distress [39], and self-reported burnout [40]. We know of only 2 other research studies that have attempted to track direct physiological stress responses within an operational police setting [41,42]. …”