Professional stress of police officers: an associative experiment

Abstract

The object of the study is professional stress in the activities of Russian police officers. The subject of the study is the clarification of the concept of "professional stress" in the minds of police officers through an associative experiment. The purpose of the study: a comparative analysis of the severity of the categories of analysis of the concept of "professional stress" of Russian police officers of different generations. Research methods and empirical sampling - an expert method; an associative experiment conducted on a sample of 140 Russian police officers (70 people are 3-4-year cadets and 5th-year students of an educational organization of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and 70 people are active police officers with more than 5 years of experience in the internal affairs bodies). Main conclusions: As a result of a free associative experiment on the phrase-stimulus "Professional stress", 541 associations were obtained. As a result of the expert method (expert design), 7 categories of analysis were identified that form the structure of the semantic field of the concept under study. The students revealed the predominance of the cognitive aspect (identification of the causes and consequences of occupational stress), and the older police officers revealed a focus mainly on the psychophysiological aspect (states and experiences) of occupational stress. At the same time, the older generation, unlike the youth, has a wider range of ways to manage professional stress and shows the existential aspect of professional stress (loss of meaning, awareness of the impossibility of change and unrealization). In the semantic field of the concept of "professional stress", non-organizational aspects have been identified that are not directly related to work, but affect the increase in professional stress and reduce labor efficiency.