This article reports on a study of the determinants of role-stress amo
ng police executives. The question guiding this research was: Are ther
e broad features of the occupation or role of police executives that a
ffect their perceptions of stress? Data were derived from a concatenat
ion of two national samples of police executives, one for municipal po
lice chiefs and the other for county sheriffs. A logit modeling strate
gy was used to assess the contributions of variables of substantive in
terest for police executives' perceptions of stress. Four measures of
work stress were used for the analysis. It was found that police execu
tives with lower levels of education, especially those with a high sch
ool diploma or less, were more likely to perceive stress. Also, sherif
fs consistently reported higher levels of stress than did chiefs. Howe
ver, lower stress was reported for executives with greater autonomy an
d those who perceived that they had control over the hiring process.