Date of Award

1986

Publication Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Psychology

Supervisor

H. Minton

Supervisor

R. Englehart

Rights

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Abstract

The present study was designed to explore the relationship between potentially stressful life and job-specific events and physical and psychological health in a population of police officers as well as, considering the role of social support as a buffering mechanism. More specifically, the present work investigated the following general hypotheses: 1) that higher levels of life and job-related stress are individually related to higher levels of physical and psychological symptom levels and that the combined contribution of life of life and job-related stress is related to higher levels of physical and psychological symptom levels; and 2) that higher levels of social support are inversely related to higher levels of physical and psychological distress and that the role of social support would be to buffer or moderate the effects of potentially stressful life and job-specific events. Further, additional scoring procedures were included in the present study in an effort to improve the predictive ability of stress measures. The subject sample included 88 police offices (75 male and 13 female) of various ranks/departments. The measures employed were the Life Experience Survey (LES), the Critical Life Events Survey (CLES), the Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviours (ISSB), the Hopkins Sympton-Checklist (HSCL) and the California Medical Survey-Amended (CMS-A). In addition, the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale (CMSD) was included as a measure of test-taking attitude. Zero-order correlations and hierarchical regression analyses were performed but yielded no significant results relative to the major hypotheses. However, significant results were obtained relative to the CMSD in that high scores on this instrument were associated with low scores on the dependent variables but not the independent variables. This result suggested a defensive test-taking attitude and a tendency to under-report physical and psychological symptoms while reporting fairly high levels of potentially stressful life and job-related events. The implications of these findings with reference to future research on police stress and methodological issues related to stress research in general.

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