A Survey of Stress Levels and Time Spent Across Law Enforcement Duties: Police Chief and Officer Agreement

Health issues are commonly reported by law enforcement officers (LEOs) and often associated with stress. This study is the first to investigate the time spent and perceived stress encountered across the diverse variety of LEO activities. We developed a questionnaire to assess an average police officer’s experience across 22 different duties. We then conducted two independent national surveys: one of police chiefs’ views of their typical officer and the other of frontline officers’ personal perspectives. Police chiefs and frontline officers perceived the same duties as the most stressful (e.g. suspect pursuit, witnessing traumatic events and physical altercations) and least stressful (e.g. certain routine duties). Additionally, chiefs’ and frontline officers’ absolute and relative stress rankings of all 22 duties were strikingly similar (Spearman’s rho 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82–0.99). Moreover, chiefs and frontline officers estimated very similar relative annual durations of duty-specific exposures for frontline officers (rho: 0.91, 95% CI 0.74–0.98, P < 0.0001).