U.S. Law Enforcement Officers’ Stress, Job Satisfaction, Job Performance, and Resilience: A National Sample

• Published date: 01 March 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10986111241253851
• Author: Elizabeth A. Mumford,Weiwei Liu,Meghan S. O’Leary
• Date: 01 March 2025

Article

Police Quarterly

2025, Vol. 28(1) 104–126

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10986111241253851

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U.S. Law Enforcement

Officers’Stress, Job

Satisfaction, Job Performance,

and Resilience: A National

Sample

Elizabeth A. Mumford

1

, Weiwei Liu

1

, and

Meghan S. O’Leary

1

Abstract

The current study examined reports of perceived stress, job satisfaction, and job

performance ratings in a longitudinal study of 684 officers participating in the Officer

Safety and Wellness (OSAW) Initiative. Structural equation models were estimated to

examine direct effects and, in subsequent analyses, the moderating effects of officer

resilience and agency wellness programming on both the stress-job satisfaction as-

sociation and the job satisfaction-job performance association. Surveys were admin-

istered annually, with job performance assessed both in terms of a self-rating and a self-

report of supervisory rating at each officer’s last performance review. Officers’stress

(wave 1) was negatively associated with job satisfaction (wave 2), which in turn was

positively associated with supervisory ratings of job performance (wave 3). These

associations remained significant among officers reporting low to moderate baseline

resilience but the association between job satisfaction and performance dissipated

among officers with high resilience. Stress was negatively related to job satisfactionfor

officers who had easy access to agency-based wellness programs, whether they had

concerns about stigma or used the programs, or not. The association between stress

and job performance varied according to program access, use, and concerns about

stigma associated with use. Administrators and policymakers striving to retain a high-

1

Public Health, NORC at the University of Chicago, Bethesda, MD, USA

Corresponding Author:

Elizabeth A. Mumford, Public Health, NORC at the University of Chicago, 4350 East-West Highway, 8th

Floor, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA.

Email: mumford-elizabeth@norc.org

performance police workforce may consider these results in recruiting as well as

academy and in-service wellness training and program decisions.

Keywords

law enforcement officers, resilience, stress, job satisfaction, job performance

Introduction

Concerns about the stressful nature of law enforcement as a high-risk profession are

relevant to officer well-being in both the short and long term (Mona et al., 2019;

Patterson, 1992;Purba & Demou, 2019;Regehr et al., 2019;Sherwood et al., 2019).

Whether officers are able to manage the stress of policework is also a critical question,

both in terms of maintaining a well-trained, experienced workforce and ensuring job

performance consistent with the law enforcement mission of public safety. Particularly

in an era of increased attention to agency policies and officer performance (e.g.,

Cobbina-Dungy & Jones-Brown, 2023;Maranto et al., 2022;Mummolo, 2018;

Rosenfeld et al., 2020), as well as ongoing concerns about workforce retention that took

an additional hit from the social upheaval of 2020 (Mourtgos et al., 2022;Stogner et al.,

2020), it is important to examine temporal associations of officers’perceived stress,

their satisfaction with their professional position, and indications of the quality of their

performance.

Associations Between Job Stress, Satisfaction, and Performance

Across professions, there has been considerable study and subsequent metanalyses

pointing to a positive association between job satisfaction and job performance

(Christian et al., 2011;Davar & RanjuBala, 2012;Judge et al., 2001;Katebi et al.,

2022). Moreover, a meta-analysis of empirical research across professions points to a

negative association between job stress and satisfaction, and a positive association

between job satisfaction and supervisors’rating of employee performance (Fried et al.,

2013), associations also found during the social upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic

(Chowhan & Pike, 2022).

Empirical law enforcement research regarding job stress, satisfaction, and perfor-

mance often examines various pairings of the three constructs. Officer job stress is

negatively associated with job satisfaction (Johnson, 2012;Julseth et al., 2011;Paoline

III & Gau, 2020), research that has been replicated across other high-stress professions

(Huang, 2009;Zangaro & Soeken, 2007). Moreover, there is some evidence that

organizational stressors (Shane, 2010a), the challenge of performing new complex

skills (Oron-Gilad et al., 2008), and a range of agency, occupational, community, and

personal stressors (Chen, 2009) are associated with police performance (Chen, 2009;

Oron-Gilad et al., 2008;Shane, 2010a). Further, findings drawing on meta-analyses of

Mumford et al.105