Occupational Stress and Job Satisfaction in Law Enforcement: Contributing Factors and the Roles Leaders Play
Occupational stress is a main source of stress for many American adults and is strongly associated with numerous mental and physical health problems. Residual effects from occupational stressors can have lasting effect on one’s overall well-being, as well as spillover effects into one’s interpersona...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
| Language: | English |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
01-01-2021
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Occupational stress is a main source of stress for many American adults and is strongly associated with numerous mental and physical health problems. Residual effects from occupational stressors can have lasting effect on one’s overall well-being, as well as spillover effects into one’s interpersonal relationships. Enduring stress for a long period of time can lead to anxiety, depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder, among other mental and physical complications (Colligan & Higgins, 2005). For law enforcement officers (LEOs), stress can increase fatigue to the point that decision-making is impaired, and officers cannot properly protect themselves or citizens (El Sayed et al., 2019; Gutshall et al., 2017; Lewinski et al., 2016; McCarty & Lawrence, 2016; Regehr et al., 2008). Law enforcement (LE) brings unique stressors to its employees due to repeated exposure to violence, victimization of others, and people in pain or distress, whether witnessed first-hand during routine policing or second-hand through the course of investigation. This dissertation discusses the various occupational stressors for LEOs that may be under the realm of control in an effort to assist leaders to better understand how to foster subordinate well-being and job satisfaction while reducing manageable stressors. This study aimed to highlight various factors that contribute to general occupational stress and employee job satisfaction among LEOs and examine the effects these factors are shown to have on overall subordinate morale. The second aim of this study explored LEOs’ views regarding positive and negative aspects of their job. This was done using the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), as well as additional questions to assess LE-specific factors. I hypothesized that both local and federal LEOs would rank organizational factors (e.g., poor leadership, lack of work–life balance) as higher stress items than environmental factors (e.g., dangers of the job, community perception), a perceived authoritarian leadership style would be associated with decreased job satisfaction, and both local and federal LEOs would rank intrinsic motivational factors (e.g., camaraderie among LEOs, protecting others) higher than extrinsic motivational factors (e.g., salary, bonuses). Five hundred and fifty-five LEOs initiated the survey; however, completion of the entire questionnaire included 493 participants. Initial analysis revealed no significant difference between environmental stressors and organizational stressors of people/resources. Both environmental stressors and organizational stressors of people/resources were endorsed higher than the organizational scale of discrimination with statistical significance. When the environmental stressor “negative community perception of law enforcement” was removed, environmental stressors were then statistically significantly lower than organizational stressors of people/resources. Although the organizational stressor scale of discrimination was not statistically significant overall, minority respondents reported higher means on the discrimination scale than White respondents. Respondents who identified as female endorsed discrimination as a stressor more often than male respondents with statistical significance. Regarding leadership, this study revealed that LEOs prefer authentic, transformational, and transactional leadership styles over an authoritarian leadership style, as those with a perceived authoritarian supervisor had statistically significantly lower job satisfaction ratings. Lastly, results from this study indicate that LEOs tend to place higher value on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, as the intrinsic motivation scale had a statistically significant higher mean than the extrinsic motivation scale. |
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| ISBN: | 9798460418855 |