A study of the effectiveness of early intervention as a means of primary stress management amongst probationary police officers

Following the result of a pilot study (n=86) involving a number of probationaryconstables, experienced officers and retired officers which confirmed that police officersirrespective of experience or length of service reported finding the same types of incidentsstressful, the author attempted to introduce the concept of primary stress managementthrough a planned inoculation programme administered to an experimental group of 31randomly selected male recruits who joined the Greater Manchester Police in the first threemonths of 1991.The experimental group were seen by the author within days of joining thepolice service whilst they were still resident at the force training establishment and prior tothem having any contact with experienced operational officers. It was deemed essential toestablish a good working relationship with the officers before they became subject to peerpressure as they attempted to adjust to their new roles and responsibilities. This earlyintervention was doubly important as the author is a senior officer in the force concernedand as the police service is by nature a disciplined organisation based on a strict rankstructure it was important to build up a good working relationship with the officers priorto the authors rank influencing them in any way.It was hoped that through this early intervention it would be possible toinfluence the way in which officers perceived and dealt with stressful situations and thecoping mechanisms they utilised, clearly there was nothing the author could do to preventthe officers coming face to face with violent and distressful situations as these are a regularfeature of police life, but it was hoped to be able to prepare the officers for what lay aheadand in particular highlight the dangers in becoming insular and distant especially towardstheir families and non police friends. To test the success of the research project, a 72 itemquestionnaire based on the information that had been gathered during the pilot study wasdistributed to the experimental group of officers and two control groups, one comprisingmale officers only and the other female officers only (n=79).The results of the survey showed that generally speaking there was littledifference between the responses of the various groups that could be attributed to the effectof the inoculation