Professional quality of life among police officers

• In Event: POL Panel 27. Policing research and practice

Abstract

Professional quality of life (PQoL) is a core concept for police officers, as this profession is known to be at increased risk of developing pathological stress (Henn-Haase et al., 2010). There is a plethora of theoretical models identifying causes of well- or ill-being at work, such as the Job Demands-Controls (Karasek, 1979) or the Job Demands-Resources model (Demerouti et al., 2001). However, Stamm's (2010) PQoL model allows articulation of positive (compassion satisfaction) and negative (compassion fatigue including burnout and secondary trauma) components consistent with aspects of this profession. Current paper aims to investigate PQoL among 183 Belgian police officers (MeanAge = 41.29; SD = 9.23; 68.30% of men) assessed with ProQOL (Stamm, 2009) according to their socio-demographic (gender, age), professional characteristics (job tenure, rank) and post-traumatic stress diagnosis (assessed with TraumaQ; Damiani & Pereira-Fradin, 2006). The above-mentioned instruments are included in a broader protocol investigating the emotional experiences of police officers. Main results highlight higher scores in compassion satisfaction (Mean = 38.74; SD = 5.70) compared to burnout (Mean = 24.88; SD = 5.82) or secondary trauma (Mean = 21.19; SD = 5.80). Comparative analyses do not reveal any significant difference in PQoL according to gender, age, or job tenure among police officers. In contrast, police officers from higher ranks (senior inspectors or commissioners) have a higher level of secondary trauma than police officers from lower ranks (p ≤ .01). Finally, as expected, officers with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder had significantly higher scores on burnout (p ≤ .001) and secondary trauma (p ≤ .001) but lower levels of compassion satisfaction (p ≤ .05) than officers without post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite some limits, these results have implications for improving psychological health of police officers, especially the association between the development of occupational stress (burnout) and traumatic stress.

Authors

• Emilie Telle, University of Mons

• Iris Descartes, University of Mons

• Thierry Pham, University of Mons

• Audrey Vicenzutto, University of Mons