Problems spilling over: work–family conflict’s and other stressor variables’ relationships with job involvement and satisfaction among police officers

ABSTRACT

Studies exploring how workplace factors contribute to job stress among police officers are not rare, but studies specifically examining how work–family conflict is associated with the job involvement and satisfaction of police officers are. In this study, data from 827 Indian police officers were used to examine the relationships of the four dimensions of work–family conflict (time-, strain-, behaviour-, and family-based) and other stressors (perceived dangerousness of the job, role conflict, role ambiguity, role underload, and role overload) with police officers’ job involvement and satisfaction. Time-based conflict was found to be associated with higher job involvement while family-based conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload were not. Perceived dangerousness of the job was found to be associated with higher job satisfaction while time – and strain-based conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload were not.

KEYWORDS:

• Police
• work–family conflict
• job involvement
• job satisfaction
• India

Acknowledgement

The authors thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions to improve the paper. James Frank, Hanif Qureshi, and Eric Lambert contributed equally to the paper and the order of authorship for them is in random order.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There are two major forms of procedural justice in policing. The first is how police officers treat citizens (called external procedural justice). Treating citizens in a fair manner using procedural justice tends to result in higher views of police legitimacy and willingness to cooperate with the police (Van Craen & Skogan, 2017). The second major form of procedural justice in policing has to do with the police organisation treating the police officers in a fair manner (called internal procedural justice) (Van Craen & Skogan, 2017). Internal procedural justice tends to result in greater external procedural justice and thus higher trust in the police by the citizens (Van Craen & Skogan, 2017).

2 The alpha values range from 0 to 1, and the closer the value to 1, the better. Nawi et al. (2020) note that in a table of alpha coefficient ranges (see page 24), an alpha score less than 0.60 is ‘poor,’ 0.60 to 0.70 is ‘moderate,’ 0.70 to 0.80 is ‘good,’ 0.80 to 0.90 is ‘very good,’ and 0.90 or higher is ‘excellent.’ Taber (2018) indicated that alpha levels above 0.60 are ‘acceptable/satisfactory,’ but higher alpha values are better (p. 1279). Taber (2018) indicated that studies using items to measure latent concepts should both calculate the alpha value and conduct factor analysis. Ursachi et al. (2015) indicated that alpha values of 0.6 to 0.7 have ‘an acceptable level of reliability’ and alpha values of 0.8 or higher are ‘very good.’ While we hoped for alpha levels of 0.70 or higher, we decided to use the measures with alpha levels of 0.60 or higher based on the face validity of the items and the factor analysis results. Future studies should explore raising the alpha levels, including using other measures for the latent concepts.

3 The positive correlation between age and job satisfaction was unexpected because it was expected that an increase in age would result in greater exposure to workplace stressors, which, after some time, would have a cumulative effect, reducing job satisfaction. It could be that older officers have found a position that meets their needs, which buffers against the negative aspects of the occupation, or it could be a cohort effect. More research is needed on this matter. It is also important to note that the correlation, while statistically significant, was small (r = 0.11), and that age is not a significant predictor in multivariate regression analysis when the shared effects of the other independent variables are taken into account.