TY - JOUR
AU - Arentsen, Virginia
AB - Policing is a stressful career. It not only involves shift work and working directly with the general public but is often a thankless, unpredictable and violent occupation. It is difficult to argue against the reality that police officers experience a range of unavoidable day-to-day stressors in undertaking their duties that the police organisation is unable to prevent or mitigate. It is important therefore to recruit people with good resilience skills and who can manage their stress levels in a positive way. The purpose of the research study was to examine the effects of gender and country on stress and coping in police recruits. Three classes of police recruits at academies in Australia, Canada and China completed a questionnaire that the authors developed to assess the longitudinal experiences of stress and resilience, and to identify lifestyle factors that might exacerbate stress or conversely contribute to better coping and greater stress resilience. This article reports on the first year of a three-year longitudinal study. As expected, it shows that resilience levels are high and stress levels are low in police recruits in the academy in all countries, except for Chinese males who showed significantly higher stress levels than their male and female counterparts. Social expectations for men in China may be a possible explanation for this difference.
TI - The Effects of Gender and Country on Stress and Resilience: A Comparative Study of Police Academy Recruits from Australia, China and Canada
JF - The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles
DO - 10.1350/pojo.2014.87.4.678
DA - 2014-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/the-effects-of-gender-and-country-on-stress-and-resilience-a-kLg0wlG4jq
SP - 245
EP - 257
VL - 87
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -