Citation

McCarty WP, Aldirawi H, Dewald S, Palacios M. Police Q. 2019; 22(3): 278-304.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1098611119828038

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Job-related burnout is a significant concern for researchers, law enforcement administrators, and government authorities because of its broader effects on officer health, job performance, and service provided to the public. This topic is particularly relevant amidst a variety of complex challenges and heightened scrutiny surrounding law enforcement officers, their decisions, and relations with the public. Although much work has been conducted on burnout among police officers, the aim of this study is to build on the literature through analyzing survey data from roughly 13,000 sworn respondents representing 89 agencies throughout the United States to describe the extent of two components of burnout--emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Then, based on Leiter and Maslach's (2004) six areas of worklife, this study uses multivariate analysis to identify the primary predictors of those two components of burnout and how they are shaped by the characteristics of the agencies and communities in which these officers work. The analysis indicates approximately 19% of the total sample was experiencing severe levels of emotional exhaustion and 13% had extreme values of depersonalization. In addition, regression analyses suggest that specific measures of workload and values were the strongest predictors of emotional exhaustion, while depersonalization was driven by similar factors in addition to a measure of community that tapped into relations with the public. Furthermore, little empirical support was found for the importance of agency and community-level variables as predictors of either component of burnout. A discussion of how to translate those results into efforts to mitigate burnout is also presented.

Language: en