Original Article

A Psychological Study of Stress, Personality and

Coping in Police Personnel

Ravneet Kaur, Vamsi K. Chodagiri1, Narasimha K. Reddi1

ABSTRACT
Context: There have been few studies focusing on occupational/organizational causes of stress in police. Hardly any
studies exist on personality traits and coping methods in this group of individuals. Aims: To study the association of
personality traits and coping methods to psychological stress in police personnel. Settings and Design: This cross‑sectional
study was conducted among the constables and head constables working in the Police Department, Vizianagram town,
Andhra Pradesh. Materials and Methods: The study sample consisted of 150 police persons. The socio‑demographic data
was individually collected from them. General Health Questionnaire‑28 (GHQ‑28) was used for assessing psychological
stress, Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) for personality traits, and Coping Checklist‑1 (CCL‑1) for eliciting coping
methods. The statistical analysis was done using SPSS v 10 software. Results: On screening by GHQ‑28, 35.33% of the
police were found to be having psychological distress. The socio‑demographic variables showed no significant association
to psychological stress. Personality traits such as neuroticism, psychoticism, and extroversion and coping methods like
negative distraction and denial/blame showed statistically significant association (P<0.05) with psychological stress. The
most commonly used coping methods across the sample were social support (72.55%), acceptance/redefinition (64.72%),
and problem solving (60.46%). As measured by Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r), there was evidence of linear association
between certain personality traits and coping methods as well. Conclusions: The personality traits and coping methods
have significant independent and interactive role in the development of high psychological stress in police persons, thus
placing them at a high risk of developing psychiatric disorders.

Key words: Coping methods, personality traits, police personnel, psychological distress

INTRODUCTION brunt of this job is borne by constables as they are the

foot‑soldiers of police in India. They have to deal with
Police services have always been one of the most angry mobs, counter‑insurgency operations, traffic
challenging and stressful services in India and with control, VIP security, political rallies, religious festival
changing times it is becoming even more so. The major crowd control, and various other law and order duties
without losing their composure and sensitivity. They
Access this article online have to face potentially hazardous situations that can
Quick Response Code result in physical or mental trauma or even death in the
Website:
line of duty. Their work stress can be further aggravated
www.ijpm.info
because of their personality traits or wrong coping
methods. A majority of Indian[1,2] and international[3,4]
DOI: studies have found high stress levels in police, which
10.4103/0253-7176.116240 is disturbing as psychiatric morbidity in police can
have many direct and indirect negative consequences

Department of Psychiatry, Kamineni Institute of Medical Sciences, Nalgonda, 1Maharaja Institute of Medical Sciences,
Vizianagram, Andhra Pradesh, India

Address for correspondence: Dr. Ravneet Kaur

Superintendent of Police Bungalow, Hyderabad Road, Nalgonda ‑ 508 001, Andhra Pradesh, India. E‑mail: [email protected]

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine | Apr - Jun 2013 | Vol 35 | Issue 2 141
 Kaur, et al.: A psychological study of stress, personality and coping in police personnel

for society. Therefore, apart from physical fitness, they Cabarkapa, in a study on military aviation crew, found
have to be mentally fit to do full justice to their duties. neuroticism as a personality trait in correlation to
job‑related stress and concluded that stress evaluation
Review of literature and certain personality characteristics examination
Previous studies have commented on the high stress can be used for the development of basic anti‑stress
levels in police and its association with physical and programs and measures.[10]
mental ill‑effects. High psychological stress is seen to
have a negative impact not only on their work ability Gershon et al. reported that the most important risk factor
but also in the personal and interpersonal spheres of in a police officer’s perceived work stress was maladaptive
their lives. coping behavior and exposure to critical incidents.[11]

Deb et al., in a study on traffic constables under Kolkata A study involving different ranks of police personnel by
Police, disclosed that 79.4% of them were moderately Ranta[12] reported that enhancing the coping behavior of
or highly stressed.[1] subjects using Indian psychological techniques resulted
in a significant reduction in job stress.
A study by Rao et al. on Central Industrial Security
Force (CISF) personnel found 28.8% of them scoring Personality traits and coping methods have also been
positive for high stress on GHQ‑30. The study also linked to the development of suicide ideation in police
found higher psychiatric morbidity in the high‑stress personnel,[13] thus highlighting the need for further
group.[2] research and work on these two aspects.

Collins et al. in a cross‑sectional study on county police As there have not been many studies in this regard
constables and sergeants in the United Kingdom found in India, this study is an attempt to explore the
that the high‑stress group constituted 41% of the relationship between personality traits, coping methods,
population and showed significant association with and psychological stress in police personnel. This can
having negative job perception.[3] Lipp[4] found 43% of also prove to be a useful guide towards pre‑recruitment
senior Brazilian police officers under significant stress. and post‑recruitment measures to reduce stress in police
services.
Zukauskas et al. identified in their study on police
officers that consequences of stress included depression, Aims
alcoholism, physical illness, and suicide.[5] Kohan et al. 1. To study the association of personality traits
correlated job stress with high substance use among and coping methods with the development of
police.[6] psychological stress in police personnel
2. To study the associations between personality traits
Thus, we need to examine ways to reduce psychological and coping methods used by the study sample.
stress to ensure that the police feel physically and
mentally competent to do its duty efficiently and MATERIALS AND METHODS
alertly.
The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of
There is a lot of research material on external Maharaja Institute of Medical Sciences, Vizianagram.
and occupational sources of stress in police work,
emphasizing on the organizational and operational Sample selection
problems. These stressors include lack of organizational The sample was obtained from among the police
support, excess workload, inadequate leave, political personnel working in the law and order branch of police
pressures, lack of time for family, frequent transfers, department, Vizianagram town, Andhra Pradesh. All
negative public image, and exposure to duty related the police personnel of the rank of constable and head
traumatic events.[1,3,7,8] constables who were on active duty were included in
the study. We chose to include only constables and head
However, although most of the police persons are constables in the sample as they more or less face the
exposed to the same external occupational and same external stressors on family, financial, and work
organizational stressors, all of them do not develop front. Therefore, the study could focus on the role of
psychological morbidity. This is because a person’s individual personality traits and coping methods in the
vulnerability to stress is also based on an individual’s development of psychological stress in them.
appraisal and response to difficult situations. Personality
and coping both play an interactive and independent The officers above them in rank, apart from having a
role in influencing adjustment to stress.[9] different work and external stressors profile, were also

142 Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine | Apr - Jun 2013 | Vol 35 | Issue 2
 Kaur, et al.: A psychological study of stress, personality and coping in police personnel

too few in number in the concerned town under study Independent ‘t’ test, Chi‑square test, and Pearson’s
to have any representative value in the sample. correlation analysis were used to study the data. P<0.05
was considered as statistically significant.
Tools used in assessment
After taking written and informed consent from RESULTS
the subjects under study, they were assessed on the
following tools: Socio‑demographic profile
a. Socio‑demographic variables: A semi‑structured The study was done on a sample size of 150 police
questionnaire on socio‑demographic data was used personnel consisting of 135 males and 15 females. The
to elicit age, sex, marital status, duration of service, mean age of the sample was 42 years. The males heavily
and rank outnumbered females in the sample with M:F ratio of
b. General Health Questionnaire-28, Goldberg 9:1. The majority was made up of male (n=135, 90%),
(G.H.Q-28): It is one of the most widely used married (n=142, 94.6%), constables (n=124, 82.6%).
and validated questionnaires to screen for high Based on the duration of service, the sample consists of
psychological stress and morbidity. [14] Using 4 groups with 14% (n=21) with 1-10 years of service,
Goldberg’s terminology and based on their GHQ 52% (n=78) with 11-20 years, 24% (n=36) with 21-
scores, the personnel were divided into two groups 30 years, and 10% (n=15) with >30 years of service.
as “case” (score > 4) and “noncase” (score ≤ 4)
c. Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire (EPQ): It Psychological distress
was used to assess personality traits of the police Based on a cut‑off score of 4 on GHQ‑28, a total of 53
personnel. It is designed to give rough and ready persons (35.32%) were marked as “cases,” which, in this
measure of three important personality dimensions: study, meant people suffering from high psychological
Psychoticism, neuroticism, and extroversion. These stress who were prone to developing psychiatric
three dimensions are conceived of as being quite morbidity. The rest 97 persons (64.66%) were marked as
independent and, thus, can exist in all possible “non‑case” group. In the total sample, 35.55% (n=48)
combinations in an individual[15] of the males and 33.33% (n=5) of the females were
d. Coping Checklist-1 (CCL-1) by Kiran Rao was used found to have high psychological stress. Comparing the
to assess the coping methods used by the police “case” and “non‑case” groups across socio‑demographic
personnel. This scale is very comprehensive and is variables such as age, gender, marital status, duration
also very easy to administer. It is one of its kinds of service, and rank were not found to be significantly
in the Indian setup. The CCL has three scales and associated with the development of psychological stress.
seven sub‑scales consisting of a total of 70 items. According to rank, 46.15% (n=12) of head constables
There is a problem focused scale (sub‑scale: Problem as compared to 33.06% (n=41) of constables were
solving), an Emotion focused scale (sub‑scales: found to be in the “case” group [Table 1].
Distraction positive methods, Distraction negative
methods, Acceptance/Redefinition, Religion/Faith, Personality traits and psychological distress
and Denial/Blame), and a Problem and Emotion The personality traits (evaluated by EPQ) across the
focused scale (sub‑scale: Social support).[16] “case” and “non‑case” group were analyzed using the
independent ‘t’ test. The mean scores of psychoticism
The study sample was evaluated using the and neuroticism were higher in the “case” group,
abovementioned tools of assessment on one‑to‑one while the mean score of extroversion was high in the
basis by the authors. “non‑case” group. The difference in these trait scores of
the two groups was found to be statistically significant
Out of the 161 constables and head constables who with P<0.001 for both neuroticism and psychoticism
initially enrolled in the study, 11 scored high on Lie and P<0.05 for extroversion.
Scale in EPQ and were excluded from the study. Thus,
the final sample of the study consisted of 150 persons. By Pearson’s correlation analysis, neuroticism (r=0.603)
and psychoticism (r=0.288) showed a positive correlation
The “case” and “non‑case” groups were then analyzed for with higher GHQ scores, while extroversion (r=−0.283)
differences in the socio‑demographic profile, personality was in negative correlation to GHQ scores [Table 2].
traits, and coping methods. The links between personality
traits and coping methods were also explored. Coping methods and psychological distress
The most commonly used coping method in the
Statistical analysis whole of study sample was social support (72.55%),
The data collected was entered in excel sheets. The followed by acceptance/redefinition (64.72%) and
statistical analysis was done using SPSS v 10 software. problem‑solving method (60.46%) [Table 3].

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 Kaur, et al.: A psychological study of stress, personality and coping in police personnel

The most used coping method in “case” and “non‑case” length of service. There was no significant association
group was also that of social‑support (73.20% and found between rank and “caseness.” This shows that
72.16%, respectively).
Table 1: Relation between socio‑demographic data and
psychological stress
When coping methods were compared across both the
groups, it was found that negative distraction (P<0.001)) Variables Total Case Non‑case Chi‑square P value
n (%) n (%) n (%) (x2)
and denial/blame (P<0.001)) showed statistically
Age (years)
significant association to the development of
21-30 14 (9.33) 5 (35.71) 9 (64.28) 0.553 0.907
psychological distress. Negative distraction (r=0.404) 31-40 46 (30.66) 17 (36.95) 29 (63.04)
and denial/blame (r=0.358) were also in positive 41-50 65 (43.33) 21 (32.30) 44 (67.69)
correlation with high GHQ scores [Table 4]. 51-60 25 (16.66) 10 (40) 15 (60)
Sex
Personality traits and coping methods Male 135 (90) 48 (35.55) 87 (64.44) 0.029 1.000
Research into the links between personality traits Female 15 (10) 5 (33.33) 10 (66.66)
and coping methods or the “coping‑trait” complexes Marital status
brought up certain interesting findings. Using the Unmarried 8 (5.33) 4 (50) 4 (50) 0.796 0.454
Pearson’s correlation analysis on the study data, Married 142 (94.66) 49 (34.50) 93 (65.50)
Duration of
it was seen that psychoticism showed a positive
service (years)
correlation with coping items denial/blame (r=0.288), 1-10 21 (14) 7 (33.33) 14 (66.66) 5.304 0.151
negative distraction (r=0.295), and problem solving 11-20 78 (52) 22 (28.20) 56 (71.79)
(r=0.258). 21-30 36 (24) 18 (50) 18 (50)
31-40 15 (10) 6 (40) 9 (60)
Neuroticism was also in positive correlation to negative Rank
distraction (r=0.190) and denial/blame (r=0.412). Constables 124 (82.66) 41 (33.06) 83 (66.94) 5.869 0.053
Head 26 (17.33) 12 (46.15) 14 (53.85)
Extroversion was positively correlated to coping item constables
of positive distraction (r=0.181) and in negative n – Numbers; P<0.05 is statistically significant
correlation with denial/blame (r=−0.185) [Table 5].
Table 2: Association between personality traits and
psychological stress
DISCUSSION
Personality traits Mean T value P value
Psychoticism
In this study, 35.33% of the police personnel in the
Case 5.1321 4.609 0.000*
sample were found to be suffering from psychological
Non‑case 3.5361
stress, which is consistent with the stress reported Neuroticism
by Rao et al. in 28.8% of CISF personnel.[2] Other Case 9.4906 8.931 0.000*
studies such as that done by Geetha et al. in Bangalore Non‑case 4.3608
police personnel found high stress levels in 60% of Extroversion
population,[17] Deb et al. also found high stress in 79.4% Case 13.0755 –2.304 0.023
of traffic constables in Kolkata. The higher levels of Non‑case 14.1443
stress reported by these studies as compared to the *P<0.05 is considered as significant
present study could be because of socio‑demographic
and methodological differences in the studies. Several Table 3: Coping methods used by case and non‑case
international studies in police personnel have also group expressed in percentages
reported stress levels ranging 40–50% of the sample, Coping methods Case group Non‑case group Total sample
but contrary to the present study, these studies have (n=53) (%) (n=97) (%) (n=150) (%)
found higher psychological stress in female police Problem focussed
Problem solving 63.3 58.86 60.46
persons.[3,4,18] The reason for this could be that the
Emotion focussed
number of females in the current study sample was
Positive distraction 48.37 48.74 48.61
very less compared to males, with a M:F ratio of 9:1. Negative distraction 25.35 12.71 17.18
As the ratio of females in Indian police is quite less as Acceptance/redefinition 65.67 64.19 64.72
compared to males, a bigger sample size is required to Religion 38.56 38.14 38.29
get a true representation of their stress levels and other Denial/blame 41.67 27.62 32.60
study parameters. Problem and emotion
focussed
No statistically significant difference was found between Social support 73.20 72.16 72.55
the two groups in relation to both marital status and the n – Numbers

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 Kaur, et al.: A psychological study of stress, personality and coping in police personnel

more or less the entire sample and both the groups had the challenging tasks of police work, extroversion
the same socio‑demographic background. becomes a protective shield when dealing with the same.
Extroversion as a personality trait is also less likely to
In this study, neuroticism and psychoticism showed be seen in people with high neuroticism scores.
significant association with “case” group as well as
positive correlation to high GHQ scores. Extroversion The most frequently used coping skills across the study
comes out to be significantly associated with the sample were found to be social support, acceptance/
“non‑case” group as well as showing negative correlation redefinition, and problem solving. A study done by Deb
with high GHQ scores in this study. et al. in traffic constables in Kolkata police reported
the following coping strategies used by them: Sharing
This association of personality traits with experience of problems with colleagues (72.6%), family members
mental stress has been explored in a study by Francis (62.9%), and friends (59.7%); becoming workaholic
et al. who correlated GHQ scores with neuroticism and (64.5%); accepting reality (58.1%); viewing TV/listening
introversion but not with psychoticism.[19] Another music (56.5%); doing exercise (50%); becoming optimistic
study by Fontana et al. showed a positive correlation about future (43.5%); smoking more cigarette (29%); and
of stress with neuroticism and psychoticism and also devoting more time in religious activities (25%).[1] A
a negative correlation between stress and extroversion study by Madu et al. also lists using humor, social support,
traits.[20] This very clearly illustrates that while people meditation, and delegation of responsibilities as coping
with these neurotic and psychotic personality traits strategies used by police persons.[21]
are more prone to developing stress when faced with
In the current study, coping skills involving negative
Table 4: Association of coping methods to psychological distraction, blame/denial showed a statistically
stress
significant association with the development of high
Coping methods Mean t value P value
psychological stress. Maladaptive coping behaviors
Problem‑focussed
such as excessive drinking and problem gambling have
Problem‑solving 0.122
associated as a risk factor with high perceived work
Case 6.3396 1.557
Non‑case 5.8866
stress.[11] While escape/avoidance increased stress,
Emotion Focussed coping strategies of distancing and planned problem
Positive‑distraction 0.905 solving have been found to significantly reduce stress
Case 6.7736 –0.120 in police situations.[22] Positive coping skills have been
Non‑case 6.8247 shown to have a stress‑buffering effect.[17] Thus, helping
Negative‑distraction 0.000* people to recognise their maladaptive coping methods,
Case 2.2830 5.724 educating them about the mental harm caused by the
Non‑case 1.1443 same, and, at the same time, encouraging them to
Acceptance/redefinition 0.528 use good coping skills like yoga/meditation, exercise,
Case 7.2264 0.633
seeking friend/family support, assessing and solving
Non‑case 7.0619
problems realistically, and using acceptance and prayer
Religion/faith 0.905
Case 3.4717 0.119
will help reduce psychological stress considerably.
Non‑case 3.4330
Denial/blame 0.000* In the present study, coping skills of denial/blame and
Case 4.5849 5.438 negative distraction showed a positive correlation with
Non‑case 3.0412 both psychoticism and neuroticism. Extroversion had
Problem and emotion focussed a positive correlation with positive distraction and
Social support 0.647 negative correlation with denial/blame. Psychoticism
Case 4.3962 0.459 has also shown a positive correlation with problem
Non‑case 4.3299 solving, but maybe the methods used by them to
*P<0.05 is considered significant solve problems increases rather than decreases stress.

Table 5: Sample Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) between personality traits, coping methods, and GHQ scores
Problem Positive Negative Acceptance/ Religion/ Denial/ Social GHQ
solving distraction distraction redefinition faith blame support score
Psychoticism 0.258* 0.036 0.295* 0.045 0.032 0.288* −0.023 0.288*
Neuroticism 0.075 −0.034 0.190† 0.134 0.030 0.412* −0.033 0.603*
Extroversion 0.125 0.181† −0.049 0.077 0.156 −0.185† 0.079 −0.283*
GHQ score 0.062 −0.040 0.404* 0.110 −0.019 0.358* 0.086 1.00
GHQ‑28 – General health questionnaire‑28; *Correlation is significant at the 0.001 level (2‑tailed); †Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2‑tailed)

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 Kaur, et al.: A psychological study of stress, personality and coping in police personnel

Conceptual links have been found between models ACKNOWLEDGMENT

of personality and coping with directive for future
research to focus on coping “trait” complexes.[23] Carver We are grateful to the Police Department, Vizianagram,
et al. in a study on personality and coping reported Andhra Pradesh for their co‑operation. We express our
that meta‑analyses link optimism, extroversion, sincere thanks to Dr. G Prasad Rao, Schizophrenia and
conscientiousness, and openness to more engagement Psychopharmacology Division, Asha Hospital, Hyderabad,
India for his valuable guidance and support.
coping; neuroticism to more disengagement coping; and
optimism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness to less
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