The Effects of Job Demands on Mental and Physical Health in the Group of Police Officers. Testing the Mediating Role of Job Burnout

Abstract

Abstract:The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model postulates that job demands and job resources constitute two processes: the health impairment process, leading to negative outcomes, and the motivational process, leading to positive outcomes. The aim of the study was to verify the health impairment process. Specifically, the study investigated the direct and the indirect (mediated via job burnout) effects of job demands on mental and physical health. Three kinds of job demands were considered, i.e. interpersonal conflicts at work, organizational constraints and workload. Data was collected among 625 police officers. The regression analysis -using the PROCESS macros of Hayes -was applied. Two of the three job demands were associated with mental and physical health directly or indirectly. The results partially support the Job DemandsResources model.

Job Stress, Burnout and Coping in Police Officers: Relationships and Psychometric Properties of the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire

“…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 , 44 , 45 ], despite low values of resilience coping.…”

“…Nowadays, policing is considered a stressful professional occupation [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 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 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ], forcing police officers to be resilient and to develop coping strategies to face all job demands.…”

Job Demands, Job Resources, and Well-being in Police Officers—a Resource-Oriented Approach

“…Empirically, the assumptions of the JD-R framework have been tested and approved across different occupational groups in cross-sectional as well as longitudinal research designs (Schaufeli and Taris 2014). To date, research on job demands and job resources in the police context has mainly focused on burnout as the outcome (Burke and Mikkelsen 2006;Martinussen et al 2007;Van den Broeck et al 2010) or burnout as a mediator between job characteristics and individual health or organizational outcomes (Baka 2015;Hu et al 2016;Martinussen et al 2007). Fewer studies have taken the motivational process into account predicting work-related well-being (Hu et al 2016;Van den Broeck et al 2010); no research is known that has studied other general well-being outcomes applying the JD-R framework.…”

“…In terms of job demands in the context of police work, Baka (2015) identified interpersonal conflicts at work, organizational constraints, and quantitative workload as relevant stressors and strains showing direct as well as indirect effects (via burnout) on mental as well as physical health. Other studies also identified positive associations of workload and burnout (Hu et al 2016) or exhaustion (Van den Broeck et al 2010).…”

“…Job demands and job resources of police officers have already been studied within the JD-R framework. However, most studies have taken a deficit-oriented perspective by focusing on ill mental or physical health, and burnout (Baka 2015;Martinussen et al 2007). To our knowledge, no studies in the context of police work have taken a resource-oriented approach by focusing on both the positive health impact of job resources and their direct mitigating effect on adverse health outcomes.…”