POLICE STRESS AND WELL-BEING - INTEGRATING PERSONALITY, COPING AND DAILY WORK EXPERIENCES

What are the personal and work related factors which contribute to a p olice officer's psychological well-being? This question was examined w ithin a Perceived Quality of Life (PQOL) framework that: integrates pe rsonality, coping processes and a police officer's positive (beneficia l to well-being) and negative (harmful to well-being) work experiences . Structural equation analyses were conducted on questionnaire data ob tained from 527 police officers during two related studies. Two struct ural equation models showed that positive and negative work experience s independently contributed to an officer's PQOL, and that organizatio nal rather than operational experiences were more important. A third m odel supported these findings, but showed that the personality dimensi ons of neuroticism and extraversion were the strongest predictors of a n officer's PQOL. It was also shown that problem-focused coping result ed in positive work experiences, whereas emotion-focused coping contri buted to negative work experiences. Comparisons with other community a nd occupational groups suggested that police reported relatively favou rably levels of psychological well-being. Collectively these results i ndicate that policing is not highly stressful, and demonstrate the nee d for a systemic view in order to understand police officers' psycholo gical responses to their work.