Policing is widely recognised as one of the world’s most stressful occupations. Extensive research has examined the impact of organisational and operational stressors on police employees. Although this literature, largely focused on sworn officers, consistently identifies organisational stressors as particularly burdensome, the field remains dominated by studies of operational tasks. Comprehensive reforms aimed at addressing the increasingly complex criminality have underscored the need for specialised professionals. Civilians from diverse professional backgrounds are now recruited to perform roles previously reserved for sworn officers, introducing new stressors that remain largely unaddressed. Moreover, the field offers limited insight into stress as a broader phenomenon, due to inconsistent definitions, limited theoretical guidance, and substantial variability in methodology and measurement tools.
This dissertation adopts a structured conceptualisation of stress grounded in two main perspectives: stimulus–response and cognitive appraisal, each with distinct methodological implications. In this dissertation, these perspectives are positioned at opposite ends of a continuum. Stimulus–response models understand stressors as objective conditions that elicit physiological, psychological, or behavioural responses. Cognitive appraisal models, in contrast, view stress as arising from individuals’ interpretations of internal or external demands, shaped by perceived coping capacity. Stress models are located along this continuum according to their theoretical proximity, making explicit the assumptions embedded in different measurement strategies and their analytical consequences.
Across three empirical articles, the dissertation examines how stress is conceptualised and measured in policing, and how methodological choices affect the credibility, coherence, and interpretability of empirical findings. The first study maps and summarises instruments used to assess stress in police populations internationally. The second study, focusing on investigative interviewers, demonstrates the utility of a single item, appraisal-based stress measure and provides an empirical example of an alternative to more commonly used stimulus–response approaches. The third study analyses how the widely used Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ) has been applied differently across studies.
Collectively, the findings underscore that valid and reliable instruments yield meaningful results only when embedded in methodological frameworks consistent with their theoretical foundations. Few police-specific measurement instruments currently in use are updated to address emerging stressors. Closer alignment among theory, measurement, and analysis can promote more coherent and practice-oriented knowledge about stress in contemporary police work. The dissertation highlights the importance of context sensitive operationalisations and explicit specification of causal relationships between constructs and indicators. By systematically aligning theoretical positioning with measurement and analytical strategies, this work offers a foundation for more coherent, theoretically informed, and contextually relevant research on stress in contemporary policing.