Assessing the impact of the national police training program Blue Courage on officer attitudes toward mental and emotional wellness

Abstract

PurposeOfficer wellness has become a popular area of focus in recent years. This purpose of this research is to examine the impact of a police training program, Blue Courage, on officer (n = 174) attitudes toward mental and emotional wellness.Design/methodology/approachBorrowing from the field of medicine, a data linkage approach is employed to match pre- and post-test surveys from officers who completed the training. This research uses a single-group pre-test post-test design to estimate the impact of the training, and a lagged dependent variable (LDV) ordinary least squares (OLS) model to compare the impact of the training across different types of officers.FindingsParticipants who completed the training had more positive attitudes toward mental and emotional wellness at post-test. Officers of higher rank and officers who worked in non-urban departments saw larger changes in attitudes toward wellness. Cynical officers, identified in the literature as withdrawing from training and failing to participate, saw comparable change in attitudes to less cynical officers.Originality/valueDespite a relative inability of wellness training to work with police officers historically, this research suggests that certain approaches employed by Blue Courage, specifically by targeting officer cynicism, may improve officer engagement in training and improve training results.