Development of Two Reliable and Valid Measures of Stressors in Policing: The Operational and Organizational Police Stress Questionnaires

This article describes the development and validation of the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Op) and the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Org). In Study 1, a series of focus groups were used to elicit the most common stressors associated with policing. During this study, it became apparent that officers separated their stressors into two general categories: operational and organizational. In the following three studies, the PSQ-Op and PSQ-Org were assessed for reliability and validity. The findings showed that both forms of the PSQ were reliable and demonstrated construct validity (correlations between perceived stress and frequency), discriminant validity (compared with general life stressors), and concurrent validity (compared with job satisfaction measures).