The relationship between stress, strain and social capital

Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & ManagementEmerald Article: The relationship between stress, strain and social capitalMartin Gächter, Davd A. Savage, Benno Torgler

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To cite this document: Martin Gächter, Davd A. Savage, Benno Torgler, (2011),"The relationship between stress, strain and social capital", Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Vol. 34 Iss: 3 pp. 515 - 540

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The relationship between stress,strain and social capital

Martin GachterUniversity of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria, and

Davd A. Savage and Benno TorglerQueensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of social capital with the negativeexternalities associated with stress, or the psychological and physiological strains experienced bypolice officers.

Design/methodology/approach – Using data collected in 1999 from a survey of Baltimore Policeofficers designed to examine questions about the relationship between police stress and domesticviolence in police families and using multivariate regression analysis, the paper focuses on fivedifferent proxies for stress and strain, and two proxies for social capital and conducting severalrobustness checks.

Findings – Results show that an increase in social capital is significantly correlated to a decrease inthe level of strain, in the psychological, physical, burnout and health areas.

Research limitations/implications – While this study examines the social capital/strainrelationship with US officers, more research is needed, as these findings may not extrapolate wellinto other national settings. It may also be interesting to further explore sub-cultures withindepartments. Additionally, the data may be dated and, as major changes and events have occurredsince the survey, a newer study of officers would be needed to observe whether these changes havehad significant impact.

Practical implications – From a policy perspective, the findings suggest that stress reductionprograms should actively engage employees to build stronger social networks.

Originality/value – This study comprehensively examines the ability of social capital at negatingthe impacts of strains, and significantly reduces the impact of major trauma events. This paper adds tothe literature as there are few multivariate analyses of the social capital/strain relationship.

Keywords Social capital, Trust, Stress, Gender, Burnout, Police, United States of America

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionThe two concepts of social capital and stress have received much attention across adiverse range of research fields from anthropology, economics, and sociology topsychology and the medical sciences. However, very little work has been done to linkthese two seemingly disparate concepts together, and to show how the relationshipbetween the two may work. Social capital has been the catch phrase for a large volumeof research, investigating the enigmatic links between the individual and their accessto resources via personal networks. The concept has resisted definitive definition, eventhough many prominent researchers across several fields have attempted to do so (see,e.g. Bourdieu, 1985; Coleman, 1988; Fukuyama, 2003; Grootaert, 2001; Knack andKeefer, 1997; Loury, 1977; Manski, 2000; Portes, 1998; Putnam, 1993). Bourdieu (1985,p. 248) defined social capital as:

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Stress, strain andsocial capital

515

Received 22 April 2010Revised 30 November 2010

Accepted 31 May 2011

Policing: An International Journal ofPolice Strategies & Management

Vol. 34 No. 3, 2011pp. 515-540

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited1363-951X

DOI 10.1108/13639511111157546

[. . .] the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of adurable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance orrecognition.

A decade and much research later, Portes (1998, p. 6) declared that the consensusposition is simply that:

[. . .] social capital stands for the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership insocial networks or other social structures.

The benefits of social capital that are best understood and most commonly citedusually include only the physical or economic type resources, such as access to capitalor individuals with influence, but the less-tangible benefits such as social support maybe of equal import.

Like social capital, stress and its effects has become so inexorably linked to that ofmodern society that the topic is also researched and discussed across a diverse range offields. The economic costs or the negative externalities generated by stress areconsiderable, as it not only includes the cost of administering mental and physicalsupport for sufferers but also the lost work hours. International Labor Organization(ILO) estimates that in the USA one in ten workers are diagnosed with depression, witha treatment cost of between US$30-$44 billion, resulting in approximately 200 millionlost working days each year (Gabriel and Liimatainen, 2000). Public service workers,like police officers or nurses, are recognized as suffering from high levels of stressthrough performing work that is both physically and emotionally draining (Kopel andFriedman, 1999; Schwartz and Schwartz, 1981; Stotland, 1991). Numerous researchstudies have demonstrated that the high levels of stress in these professions can lead todetrimental health consequences, or strains (see, e.g. Gachter et al., 2010). Theseconsequences can include mental and physical illnesses; aggressive or violentbehavior; alcohol abuse and decreased work performance (McCarty et al., 2007; Morashand Haarr, 1995; Swatt et al., 2007).

Although literature has explored a large set of factors that may determine stress, theexamination of whether social capital has an effect on stress or strains is still anunderdeveloped topic. Specifically, we want to investigate the impact of the non-tangibleaspects of social capital on stress and its manifestations of strain. We therefore workwith an extensive survey of police officers from the Baltimore Police Department inMaryland, USA (Gershon, 1999, 2000). The extensive survey covered many job relatedfactors (both positive and negative), as well as personal, organizational and socialquestions and is representative of the demographic characteristics of that department.Within this work we utilize the definitions of stress and strain as set out in O’Driscoll andDewe (2001) such that: stressors are characteristics of the work environment that causestrain, and strains are the labels for the resulting physical or psychological impacts suchas burnout or ill-health. Thus, individuals who are exposed to high levels of stress arelikely to exhibit or manifest detrimental health issues as strains (which can includeburnout, somatization, etc.). We contend that greater levels of social capital alleviatework related strains, such that as levels of social capital increase so too does access tosocial support, which in turn can reduce many of the negative aspects of stress. If, asindicated by Coleman (1988, p. 304), social capital works by “facilitating the achievementof goals that could not be achieved in its absence or could be achieved only at highercost” and the resource which is being facilitated is social support and the informational

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exchange of coping strategies, then higher levels of social capital should result in lowerstress levels and measurably lower strain outcomes. This idea is well supported in theliterature such that “the short and long term effects of stress depend in large part uponthe individual’s available coping strategies and their effective use” (Loo, 1984, p. 10).Searching for improvements for law enforcers can generate large societal benefits.Utilizing the benefits of social capital may provide a good alternative or additionalprogram in situations where traditional stress reducing instruments fail or where thenecessary information to design and enforce suitable instruments and directives cannotbe effectively used.

Theoretical backgroundA generalized definition of stress covers conditions of a physical, biological orpsychological nature that strain an organism beyond its power to adapt (Cannon,1929a, b, 1935; Lovallo, 2005; Selye, 1936). Stress has been explained as a physicalprocess with an almost mechanical or automatic response from the human body[1].Cannon suggested such an automatic response existed for psychosocial threats(Cannon, 1929a, b, 1935). Selye’s (1936) General Adaption Syndrome (GAS) expandedon this concept, stating that the human body has an innate drive to maintain abiological steady state or equilibrium known as homeostasis. Stress, infections andexcessive work demands disrupt this equilibrium and trigger a natural response fromthe body, returning it to homeostasis. Everly and Lating (2002, p. 40) describe the GASas a tri-phase phenomenon. The first phase refers to the alarm phase, representing ageneralized somatic shock. The second phase is the stage of resistance, in which thereis a dramatic reduction in most alarm stage processes and the body fights tore-establish and maintain homeostasis. The first two stages are constantly repeatedthroughout an individual’s life; however, should the body remain in the second stagefor protracted periods of time, then the body enters stage three, the exhaustion stage.Prolonged exposure to this stage manifests itself as disease and dysfunction of bodilyorgans and – when applied to the entire body – may cause death. Research into thethird stage has demonstrated the links between stress and physiological andpsychological disease/illness (see, e.g. Everly and Benson, 1989; Lachman, 1972;Sternbach, 1966; Schwartz, 1977, 1979). These models indicate that it is the inability toadapt to these stresses and/or extended durations of stress that creates ill-effect, andthe greater the impact stress has on an individual the greater the probability of harm.

Police officers are routinely exposed to a vast array of stresses that are dissimilar tomost common work environments, but resemble those experienced by emergency serviceworkers (ambulance, E/R and fire) as well as those in the armed forces (see, e.g. Libermanet al., 2002). However, some of the more common stresses are driven by theorganizational structure, social interactions, and job requirements observable in manyworking environments. These common stresses can include shift work, excessiveovertime, heavy workload, discrimination and harassment, poor working conditions, andstrong interactions with the public. The most commonly reported stresses amongstpolice officers around the world are the everyday operational stresses (see, e.g. Brooksand Piquero, 1998; Brown and Campbell, 1990; Crank and Caldero, 1991; Kroes et al.,1974; Liberman et al., 2002). However, we contend that these stresses are ubiquitous andas such are experienced by all members of the police force to form the environmentalconditions within which they work. From a theoretical and empirical perspective, it is


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important to analyze data where individuals have a similar job profile, as many of thepotential stress factors are common across a large group of individuals. Remainingdifferences within the homogenous environment can then be controlled as good aspossible in a multivariate analysis. For example, it has been proposed that femaleofficers may face additional stress factors than those experienced by their malecolleagues (He et al., 2005; Morash and Haarr, 1995; O’Farrell, 1980; Stotland, 1991) andthat gender varies the way in which work stress is experienced. First, men and womencan experience different stressors or varying levels of the same stressor from the samesingle event. Second, the reaction of men and women to the event can vary greatly so thateach gender experiences a different level of stress from the event. Finally, thestressor-strain relationship observed for males and females may differ or gender may actas a moderator such that it affects one but not the other (Desmarais and Alksnis, 2005).Many theories have been proposed to explain the variations in stress effects betweenmales and females, some of which include: gender socialization and gender roles,tokenism, family status and children, workloads, social support, or self-reportedvariations (see Gachter et al., 2011). He et al. (2005) investigated the gender and racialvariations of stress within the police force, claiming three initial findings:

(1) female officers have higher levels of stress than males;

(2) white males have higher stress levels than black males; and

(3) there are no significant stress differences between white and black femaleofficers.

Similarly, we also control for ethnic groups to deal with the issue that multiplesubcultures exist within a department.

Thus, the advantage of focusing on a particular profession such as police officerswithin a regional department is the chance of improving the ceteris paribusassumption, holding important potential factors constant[2]. The remaining stressescan be classified by the frequency by which they occur as well as the intensity of theimpact on the officer (Brown et al., 1999) and it is these high impact traumaticexposures inherent in police work that are of interest. Police officers can encounter,witness or hear about fellow officers’ involvement in extreme situations such asphysical or even life threatening danger and the exposure to disturbing events ingeneral (Gershon et al., 2009). It is the involvement in events such as shootings,attachment to victims, or the attendance of a gruesome crime scene that have beenidentified as triggers for mental disorders such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(Stephens et al., 1997).

The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition,Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) from the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2000)states that an individual has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of thefollowing were present:

. The person experienced actual or threatened death or serious injury, or otherthreat to one’s physical integrity; or witnessing an event that involves death,injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of another person; or learning aboutunexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of death or injuryexperienced by a family member or other close associate (Criterion A1).

. The person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror (Criterion A2).

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Traditional attempts to measure stress or traumatic events, have utilized self-reportedsurveys such as: the Impact of Events Scale (IES) or the revised version (IES-R),encompass a 15 (22) question set with a ranking scale (see Horowitz et al., 1979; Weissand Marmar, 1997). Across a number of the most common standardized measures oftrauma, Criterion A1 is the sole or primary focus[3] and most scales do not assessCriterion A2 at all (Norris and Hamblen, 2004). Thus, the use of high impact traumaticevents utilized in this paper are in line with the measures of traumatic events generallyaccepted in research and as defined by the APA criteria. We are not creating a newassessment scale but are utilizing the trauma questions and scales provided by officersin the survey, to illustrate the relational effects that social capital has on physiologicaland psychological stress indicators or health.

As seen from Table I, stressful incidents can have a broad range of impactresponses across the different events. Attending a police funeral and being the subjectof an IID investigation clearly rate as being some of the highest impact events. On theother hand, it is surprising to observe that chemical spills, violent crime scenes andhostage events are viewed as having little or no impact. These events can affect officersin several ways, either physically, psychologically or both (Gershon, 2000). Some of thenoted physical strains associated with police stress include: hypertension, stroke,ulcers, high blood pressure, or sexual dysfunction (Bartollas and Hahn, 1999; Berkmanand Syme, 1979; Kroes, 1985; Mitchell and Bray, 1990; Peak, 1993, Stratton, 1984,Violanti et al., 1983). The psychological strains associated with police stress caninclude: depression, PTSD, burnout, suicide and alcoholism (Hawkins, 2001; Kawachiet al., 1996; Kopel and Friedman, 1999; Schaufeli and Enzmann, 1998; Schwartz andSchwartz, 1981; Stephens et al., 1997). Thus, officers who suffer from high levels ofstress or trauma, should exhibit higher incidents of physiological and psychologicalstrain, allowing for demographic variances (see, e.g. Gachter et al., 2010). However, thissimple relationship does not allow for the mitigating effects of social capital onreducing stress and promoting positive health outcomes.

It has been argued that a person may be more or less insulated against the effects ofstressors depending on whether the individual possesses social supports. It has alsobeen suggested that low levels of social capital exacerbate these problems, as lack ofsocial capital can indicate a predisposition for depression (Brown and Harris, 1978;Caplan, 1974). More recent studies have shown that social capital in the form of socialsupport buffers individuals against both chronic and acute forms of stress (Cohen and

Not at all A little Very much N/AFrequency and impact of incident (1) (2) (3) (0) Totals

Making a violent arrest 220 554 210 105 1,089Shooting someone 98 92 90 813 1,093Subject of IID investigation 86 258 370 378 1,092Respond to chemical spill 267 197 49 581 1,094Respond to bloody crime scene 378 445 170 100 1,093Personally know victim 121 323 180 469 1,093Involved in hostage situation 249 311 86 447 1,093Attending police funeral 41 262 602 186 1,091Experience needle stick injury 76 198 325 494 1,093

Table I.Descriptive statistics


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Willis, 1985; Prince et al., 1997; Whitley and McKenzie, 2005). However, it has also beenreported that gender may play a role in the effectiveness of social support, such thatfemales are reported to have a higher use of social support strategies then males(Biggam et al., 1997). This is related to the literature on social environment that statesthat supportive, non-conflictual social relations at work are able to reduce stress, strainoutcomes and enhance health, meeting basic human needs such as approval, affiliation,and a sense of belonging (Repetti, 1993). More specifically, this would mean thatindividuals who confront difficult or traumatic job situations by themselves willexperience higher levels of stress or other damaging consequences than those who areable to turn to friends or colleagues for advice, comfort, or material aid (Cullen et al.,1985). Social support in this context is the end product of an individual’s social capital,i.e. social support is the result of expenditure of social capital and the higher the level ofan individual’s social capital the greater the available social support. Conversely, anindividual who has a low level of social capital will be unable to access assistance orsocial support from colleagues. One of the causes of low social capital may come frombeing an outsider, whether it is from gender, race or simply the individual’s inability tofit into with the behavioral expectations of the group.

The social support being offered through the social network of officers consists oftwo parts: first, as informational exchange of coping strategies; and second, as supportfrom fellow officers (e.g. an understanding shoulder to lean on). Coping strategies aremethods of reducing or manage stress, being able to move an individual from thehigher phases of the GAS to the lower ones becomes important. Coping has beendefined as cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage environmental or internaldemands, and the conflicts between them, which tax or exceed a person’s resources(see, e.g. Cohen and Lazarus, 1979; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Put more simply,coping creates ways for individuals to deal with or reduce the effects of stress. Copingstrategies can be either adaptive or maladaptive (Girdano et al., 2001) such thatadaptive strategies reduce stress whilst promoting long-term health (see Figure 1),whereas maladaptive strategies (alcohol/drug abuse, smoking, etc.) may reduceshort-term stress effects but have negative long-term health outcomes (Everly, 1979).Furthermore, maladaptive coping strategies have been shown to result in job burnoutand quitting behaviors (Burke and Deszca, 1986; Malloy and Mays, 1984). When copingstrategies are successful, the detrimental effects of the third stage (exhaustion) of theGAS model are reduced or eliminated and homeostasis is re-established, but ifunsuccessful then the chances of “disease and dysfunction” are increased (Everly andLating, 2002).

Research has identified several of the coping mechanisms utilized by police officersto alleviate stress as being either adaptive or maladaptive. These can result in eitherpositive or negative outcomes such as: social and spiritual support systems, alcoholand substance abuse, and violence (Gershon et al., 2009; Haarr and Morash, 1999; Swatt

Figure 1.

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et al., 2007). Waters and Ussery (2007) list of proposed individual coping strategiesincluded: development of a dependable support system; improved communicationskills and means of venting feelings appropriately, as well as lifestyle factors like diet,exercise and vacations. It is obvious from these strategies that a high level of socialcapital would be needed for them to be successful, as support, venting andcommunication would be all but impossible without it. According to Dasgupta (1999),social capital can lead to more efficient transactions by giving agents access to moreinformation, enabling them to coordinate activities for mutual benefit, and, throughfrequent transactions with the same person, reducing therefore the likelihood ofopportunistic behavior.

Social capital can be viewed as being akin to financial capital, as it can be generatedand held in account for the future and used to purchase social objects such as supportor assistance. Social capital can be generated through a shared sense of identity (orsense of belonging/solidarity) reciprocity and norms of cooperation that induces asense of obligation to help others, along with a confidence that such assistance will bereturned (Putnam, 1993). It is through the generation of trust and cooperation thatindividuals are able to engage in informational exchange, which include copingstrategies or load sharing with colleagues. Game theory and experimental findingshave shown that a high level of social capital enables co-operation between actors andfacilitates superior social outcomes (Boix and Posner, 1998).

Coleman (1988) stated that for any systematic treatment of social capital threethings must be clearly distinguishable:

(1) the possessor of social capital or those making claims;

(2) the sources of social capital, or those agreeing to these demands; and

(3) the resource being demanded/supplied.

In this case the stressed officers are seeking social support or coping mechanisms (theresource) from other experienced officers. However, access to the resources grantedthrough social capital can be stymied or limited, not only through the amount of socialcapital available to an individual, but also due to other social or demographic factorsinvolved in the generation of social capital. These factors can include: gender, race,education, age or rank but layered on top of these restrictions are the social norms andbehavioral requirements of the police force. As such, it is important to use thesedemographic variables as controls as to get at the true nature of the relationshipbetween stress and social capital. Portes (1998) concluded that “at the individual level[. . .] social ties can bring about greater control over wayward behavior and provideprivileged access to resources; they can also restrict individual freedoms and baroutsiders from gaining access to the resources through particular preferences.” Thus,two of the negative consequences of social capital include the exclusion of outsiders(see, e.g. Waldinger, 1995) and the restriction of individual freedoms through control ofbehavior (see, e.g. Boissevian, 1974; Simmel, 1964). Table II shows a predominatelywhite male working environment within the police force, where outsiders may includeother subcultures such as: non-whites, women, or those not meeting behavioralexpectation of fellow officers.

How can we measure social capital? We are interested not only in an analyticalconcept but also in an empirical one. Grootaert (2001, pp. 10-11) points out that thereare three major views on social capital: First, Putnam (1993) interprets social capital as


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a social network, as networks of civic engagement facilitating coordination andcooperation. Second, Coleman (1988, p. 598) defined social capital as: “a variety ofdifferent entities” that consists of social structure aspects, that also facilitate certainactions, taking into account not only horizontal (co-worker) but also vertical socialrelationships (officer rankings). The third concept considers the social and politicalenvironment that enforces norms and shapes social structures. In this case, we have theability to hold such environmental factors constant as we observe police officers withinthe same working environment. Social capital is therefore used to describe aspects ofsocial networks, relationships and trust (Coleman, 1988; Fukuyama, 2003; Portes, 1998;Woolcock and Narayan, 2000). Putnam’s (1983) five principles include: a local/civicidentity, a sense of belonging, solidarity, and/or equality with other members of thecommunity, and reciprocity and norms of cooperation inducing a sense of obligation tohelp others, along with a confidence that such assistance will be returned (Putnam,1993). Similarly, Paldam (2000, p. 630), describes three families of social capitalconcepts: trust (cognitive social capital), cooperation (collective action) and networks.He points out that these conceptual families come together because “most people build

Variable Count Percent n Mean s 2 Min Max

GenderMale 943 85.73 1,100Female 157 14.27Ethnic groupAfrican-American 355 32.51 1,092Caucasian 696 63.74Hispanic 14 1.28Other 27 2.47Current rankOfficer trainee 91 8.27 1,100Officer 601 54.64Agent 62 5.64Detective 144 13.09Sergeant 143 13.00Lieutenant or above 59 5.36Marital statusMarried 658 59.87 1,099Live-in partner 88 8.01Divorced/separated 135 12.28Single 213 19.38Widowed 5 0.45Age 1,081 36.04 9.09 20 66Experience 1,078 11.52 9.28 0 44Children 1,090 1.18 1.16 0 7Psychological strain 1,064 10.57 3.02 7 28Physical strain 1,086 6.61 1.84 5 20Overall strain 1,060 17.18 4.36 12 48Burnout 1,092 7.91 2.56 3 15Health 1,104 1.18 1.35 0 9Social capital 1,075 7.19 1.60 2 10Home index 1,078 6.60 1.41 2 9Trauma index 1,077 11.98 5.79 0 27

Table II.Descriptive statistics

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trust in and networks to others and come to cooperate with them” (Paldam, 2000, p.629). Paldam’s view is in line with our rationale for working with the following twoproxies for social capital, namely whether “there is a good and effective cooperationbetween units” and whether one “can trust his/her work partner”. The trust variablethat we use can be classified according to Uslaner (2002) as particularized (or personal)trust, a proxy that relies strongly upon experiences. Particularized trust is only relatedto a specific group such as co-workers, family members, or to specific institutions.Trust is then often connected with the element of reciprocity or interactions dependingupon specific individual or group characteristics. This notion is essential for ouranalysis as we are exploring the work environment and its implication on individuals’stress level. Good effective managerial behavior is crucial to the formation of socialcapital in a workplace, such that a well-organized workplace fosters an environment oftrust between all members of staff (Hodson, 2005). Thus, one could stress that socialcapital within any workplace is important but the special nature of police work, similarto the military, makes trust, reciprocity and cooperation between colleagues even morevital (Torgler, 2003). Trust leads to the idea of “having one’s back” such that supportand assistance will be freely given even in the most dangerous situations by yourfellows. However, this concept is not a given in either policing or the military, butthrough the creation of social capital individuals “know” that others will have theirback as they have built up high levels of trust. Furthermore, individuals with lowerlevels of social capital may not experience the same level of trust in colleagues and assuch would be concerned about others having their back in a dangerous situation.Research has shown that higher levels of social support decrease strain outcomes forpolice officers (Morash et al., 2006, Morris et al., 1999). However, many previous studieshave only utilized a narrow selection of environmental and demographic factors andutilized a single stress variable within the analysis. In this paper we have thereforeexamined several aspects of stress and strain outcomes as well as an extended set ofcontrol and environmental factors in our multivariate analysis.

Data and methodsThe data for our analysis are taken from the Study to Help Identify, Evaluate and LimitDepartment Stress (SHIELDS), which was conducted by Gershon (1999, 2000). Studyparticipants were recruited from the Baltimore Police Department in Baltimore whichprovides law enforcement services to about 700,000 inhabitants in Maryland. Thestudy aimed to examine questions about the relationship between police stress anddomestic violence in police families. The sampling strategy (Gershon, 1999, p. 34)involved:

. obtaining the number of sworn employees at each precinct at each shift;

. attending one or two roll calls for each shift at each precinct to obtain aconvenience sample of volunteers; and

. distributing questionnaires to all officers volunteering to complete thequestionnaire.

The response rate[4] in the original study was very high, amounting to 68 percent (seeGershon, 1999 for more details). From approximately 1,200 questionnaires distributed1,104 were returned (more than 92 percent). The five-page questionnaire coversquestions in four main areas:


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(1) symptoms of stress and likely stressors;

(2) perceived (current) stress;

(3) coping strategies; and

(4) health outcomes.

Thus, the very high response rate, the excellent sampling strategies and theanonymous nature of the study makes it very interesting to analyze such a dataset.Moreover, the sample closely resembles the demographic characteristics of the policedepartment in 1996. At that time, the department had 3,061 sworn employees,including 2,636 males (86 percent) and 425 females (14 percent). Thus, the samplecovers roughly a third of the whole study population.

Table II presents an overview of the data set. Almost 86 percent of the employeesare male. Regarding the ethnic group, a majority is Caucasian (64 percent), followed byAfrican-American (33 percent) and Hispanic (1 percent). Approximately 26 percentattended college, while just about 4 percent hold a graduate degree. The predominantrank was officer (55 percent), followed by detective and sergeant (13 percent each). Themajority of employees were either married or had a live-in partner (68 percent), while19 percent declared themselves as singles. The mean age was 36 years, ranging from20 to 66. On average, people have been working in the department for 11.5 years(lasting from 0 to 44) and have 1.18 children living at home (varying between 0 and 7).

For the purpose of this study, we have constructed several indices to measuredifferent aspects of stress and strain. Moreover, to better isolate the impact of socialcapital on stress we control for factors such as demographic characteristics (age,gender, ethnic group, number of children, marital status), as well as experience andrank within the department. There is a large body of work that has suggested thatgender and ethnicity have either a confounding or moderating effect on stress. InGachter et al. (2011), this premise is tested and shown to have validity, for this purposewe utilize both variables as controls for a clearer picture. Additionally, it is naıve toassume that home life has no impact upon work stresses, how an individual perceivesthe job is not completely isolated from life outside work and their life-satisfaction. Ithas been well documented that social capital is not isolated to the work environs,officers who are married or have domestic partners are be able utilize this additionalcapital and reduce work stresses. Therefore, we have added control factors formarriage and children, as well as a measure of social capital in the domesticenvironment. Many previous studies report that rank and experience is relevant (for anoverview see Brown and Campbell, 1990) and in the reverse direction age. It isgenerally believed that as individuals age they become better able to mitigate stresseffects (Lennings, 1997) through either acclimatization or a quasi-natural for of stressinoculation training (see Meichenbaum, 2007). However, age is correlated with bothrank and experience and thus we control for all three to separate out the effects of each.

To check robustness of the results we also conduct a sensitivity analysis, extendingthe baseline specification with a trauma index. This index measures whether policeofficers have experienced certain potentially dangerous or traumatic events in the lineof duty and how much they were emotionally affected by them. Additionally, weinclude an index that measures police officers’ stability and support in the home. Forsimplicity and comparability we will use the same independent variables for all the fivestrain indices used as dependent variables (see Table II for descriptive statistics).

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Dependent variablesTo measure different types, aspects and outcomes of stress, as well as being able todistinguish between certain effects and their specific influences on strain we constructfive different indices of stress. Using a large set of dependent variables also offers agood robustness test for the relationship between social capital and stress. FollowingKurtz (2008, p. 224), we develop indices of psychological and physical strain as well asan index that combines these two factors. In the first index (referred to as psychologicalstrain), participants were asked if they experienced the following signs ofpsychological strain in the past 6 months: restlessness, feeling hopeless, panicattacks, irritability, withdrawal, depression, and emotional depletion. A four-pointLikert scale (Likert, 1932) with possible answers ranging from never (1) to always (4)was used for each question. These items were then used to create a summative scalethat ranged from 7 to 28, with higher levels indicating a higher level of (psychological)strain. The measure showed a satisfactory level of internal consistency (Cronbach’sa ¼ 0:83). The physical strain index (physical strain) uses five questions assessingwhether respondents had experienced nausea, trouble getting breath, a lump in thethroat, pains or pounding in the chest, and faintness or dizziness in the six monthsprior to the survey. As the construction of the index is similar as explained above, thesummative scale ranged from 5 to 20, with higher levels indicating a higher level of(physical) strain (a ¼ 0:72). Our third strain indicator (overall strain) combines thepsychological and physical components and, therefore, gives an overall indicator ofperceived strain ranging from 12 to 48 (a ¼ 0:86).

In addition to these three strain indices, we construct indices considering burnoutsymptoms and health outcomes. Our burnout index (burnout) follows the approach ofKurtz (2008, p. 225), taking into account the three questions related to burnout,specifically: feeling like an automatic pilot most times, feeling burned out from the job,and feeling like being at the end of the rope. The possible answers range from stronglydisagree (1) to strongly agree (5) resulting in an index from 3 to 15 (a ¼ 0:73). Ourindex of health outcomes (health), as opposed to the index of physical strain, considerschronic health outcomes, including migraines, diabetes, chronic low back pain, highblood pressure, liver disease, foot problems, heart disease, reproductive problems andchronic insomnia. Possible answers of these questions were yes (1) or no (0). Thus, theindex includes nine questions ranging from 0 to 9 (a ¼ 0:56) with increasing levelsindicating higher levels of burden or negative health outcomes, respectively[5].

Correlation coefficients of the five indices explained above are reported in Table III.Not surprisingly, as all indices measure various aspects of strain, respectively, theyshow positive correlations. While the correlation between the psychological and thephysical index with the overall strain index is not surprising, since the latter is the sumof the former two aspects of strain. The remaining correlations (varying between 0.35

Psychological strain Physical strain Overall strain Burnout Health

Strain 1 1.0000Strain 2 0.5873 1.0000Strain 3 0.9403 0.8277 1.0000Burn 0.5853 0.3761 0.5640 1.0000Health 0.4373 0.5301 0.5261 0.3457 1.0000

Table III.Cross-correlation table of

dependent variables


525

and 0.59) show that these measures reflect different dimensions of stress and strain,albeit the correlation between them is considerably positive.

By measuring stress and various aspects of strain by means of five different indices, weare confident to cover a wide range of stress aspects as well as strain. The followingsection explains our explanatory variables while focusing on our measure of social capitalat work. Moreover, it covers our choice of control variables such as demographic variablesand specific characteristics of the current position within the department.

Explanatory and control variablesTo address our main research question, we construct as mentioned in the previoussection a narrow index measuring social capital at work (referred to as social capital)by focusing on two specific questions in the survey, namely whether there is good andeffective cooperation between units and trust in work partners. Possible answers rangefrom strongly agree (1) to strongly disagree (5). To facilitate a more intuitiveinterpretation of our results we have reversed the index, so as to range from 2 to 10with higher levels indicating a higher level of social capital. Although the level ofinternal consistency was at the lower bound of acceptability (a ¼ 0:53) we included itin our following regressions as such moderate level of Cronbach’s alpha could also bedue to the low number of items included in the index. Moreover, the low a alsoindicates that there is lower redundancy in our index of social capital, as the index ismeasuring different dimensions of social capital[6]. Additionally, we add the number ofyears working for the department to control for experience (referred to as exp), age andranking (rank) as explanatory variables. We use all these three factors to isolate theireffects even though they are correlated with each other[7]. As further control variableswe include the number of children (ranging from 0 to 7, referred to as child), as well asdummies for the ethnic group (1 if Caucasian, referred to as Caucasian) and the maritalstatus (1 if married or live-in partner, referred to as marital status). To considerpossible differences between genders, we simply constructed a gender dummy withvalue 1 if female and 0 otherwise (female).

For robustness purposes, we extended our model by including indices for “trauma” and“stability at home” in our empirical analysis. Following Swatt et al. (2007), trauma wasmeasured using a nine-item negative work-related events scale. More detailed, participantswere asked whether they have experienced certain potentially dangerous or traumaticevents in the line of duty and how much it emotionally affected them. In total we includednine incidents such as a violent arrest, shooting someone, being the subject of an IIDinvestigation, responding to a call related to a chemical spill, responding to a bloody crimescene, personally knowing the victim, being involved in a hostage situation, attending apolice funeral and experiencing a needle stick injury or other exposure to blood and bodyfluids. For each event officers were asked if they ever experienced this event, and if so, howmuch it affected them. Possible answers ranged from “not experienced” (0), “not at all” (1),“a little” (2) to “very much” (3). Thus, we assume that experiencing an event, althoughwithout affecting the officer emotionally, was more stressful than not experiencing theevent at all. The resulting summative scale ranged from 0 to 27 with higher levelsindicating more individual trauma (a ¼ 0:79).

We construct an additional index measuring social capital or “stability at home”(referred to as home) we consider questions about reliability on support from thefamily, friends etc. and talking about problems with the spouse, relative or friend

PIJPSM34,3

526

(Cullen et al., 1985; He et al., 2002, Howard et al., 2004). In constructing the index, wehad to recode the question about reliability on the family (“I feel that I can rely onsupport from my family, friends etc.”), as the answers originally ranged from stronglyagree (1) to strongly disagree (5). However, the second question (“I talk with my spouse,relative or friend about problems”) could be answered with never (1) to always (4).Therefore, we reverse the measure of the first question by putting the numbers upsidedown from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). Subsequently, we construct anindex ranging from 2 to 9 with a moderate level of internal consistency (a ¼ 0:53).

Empirical resultsBaseline modelOur findings in the baseline model are presented in Table IV. In all regressions we usestandard errors robust to heteroskedasticity of unknown form. Remarkably, in all fivemodels, the measure of social capital has the expected negative sign, being highlystatistically significant at the 1 percent level in all five cases (see Models 1 to 5). Theestimated regression coefficients indicate that with each additional one unit increase insocial capital strain decreases on average between 0.246 and 0.782 points. Interestingly,social capital affects psychological and physical strain in quite a similar way, as thestandardized beta coefficients for the first three equations vary between 20.214 and20.287[8]. Thus, a one standard deviation increase of social capital reduces strain by morethan 0.2 standard deviations. The same applies to our measurement of burnout(standardized a ¼ 20:287) whereas the effects on health outcomes is slightly smaller(a ¼ 20:142) but still highly significant. Remarkably, the magnitude of our standardizedbeta coefficient of social capital is quite high as compared to other explanatory variables inour estimation, which shows the relative importance of social capital.

Looking at the control variables we observe that strain levels are negativelycorrelated with increasing age holding ranking and experience constant, while ourmeasure of experience (number of years worked in the department) has ceteris paribusa positive sign. In almost all the cases both coefficients are statistically significant. Onthe other hand, the ranking position is not statistically significant in most of theregressions. For our burnout index there is a negative relationship observable that isstatically significant at the 1 percent level. The dummy variable for ethnicidentification is also statistically significant, indicating that Caucasian employeesexperience higher strain levels, particularly in psychological terms, while there is nostatistically significant difference between races for our health measure. Furthermore,while our gender dummy variable is not statistically significant in our measures forpsychological strain (Models 1 and 4), the coefficient turns out to be highly statisticallysignificant in all physical aspects of strain (Models 2, 3 and 5). Thus, as compared tomen, women report suffering from higher levels of physical strain, while there is nosignificant difference between genders in terms of perceived levels of psychologicalstrain and its aspects. Overall, the number of children, marital status and the currentrank do not seem to have a reliable influence on our measurements, although a higherrank within the department seems to reduce the liability for burnout.

Extensions of the modelTo check the reliability of these results, we test the robustness by including the indices“trauma” and “stability at home” (see Models 6-10 in Table IV). The variable “trauma”,


527

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Table IV.Baseline and extensionmodels

PIJPSM34,3

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,*

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,0:

01

Table IV.


529

as explained above, allows controlling for experiencing extreme situations, while such apotential stressor is not found in many other job profiles. Not surprisingly, we observe astrong relationship between trauma and strain. The trauma index influences the strainlevel positively, as more trauma leads to a higher level of (perceived) stress and thus,higher levels of strain. This relationship holds for all our five specifications. On thecontrary, as expected, stability at home reduces stress at work, being highly statisticallysignificant in all five regressions. The impact is quite strong, as shown by means of thestandardized beta coefficients. Moreover, the results of this extension once again confirmthe baseline model. The index for social capital is still highly statistically significant,while the magnitude of the coefficients does not change drastically. Remarkably, themagnitude of the standardized beta coefficient for trauma is comparable to the influenceof our social capital variable. Thus, even under high trauma levels strain levels do notincrease if there is a certain degree of social capital within the police unit. It seems thatsocial capital consisting of trust between working partners and effective cooperationbetween units is able to negate a considerable level of trauma within a job. Consideringthe relative magnitude of the coefficients (by comparing standardized betas) it is obviousthat social capital in general, particularly at work, plays a major role in reducingperceived stress levels and negative strain effects.

Further robustness testsTaking into account the moderate internal consistency of our measure of social capitalwe conducted further robustness tests by splitting up the social capital variable into itstwo single parts, namely the question about good and effective cooperation betweenunits (cooperation) and trust in work partners (trust). For reasons of simplicity, just thecoefficients for the single measures of social capital are shown, while we use the sameset of control variables reported in the previous specifications in Table IV (includingthe indices “trauma” and “stability at home”). As expected, the results reported inTable V are very robust and do not change. Both single factors are still highlystatistically significant in almost all specifications reporting comparable quantitative

Psychological strain Physical strain Overall strain Burnout Health(11) (12) (13) (14) (15)

CooperationRegression 0.475 * * 0.190 * * 0.673 * * 0.325 * * 0.067Robust standard errors 5.054 3.111 4.907 3.975 1.581Beta coefficients 0.163 0.107 0.160 0.132 0.052

TrustRegression 0.399 * * 0.240 * * 0.660 * * 0.475 * * 0.124 *

Robust standard errors 3.345 3.170 3.851 4.986 2.469Beta coefficients 0.119 0.118 0.136 0.167 0.083Other control factors Yes Yes Yes Yes YesR-squared 0.22 0.169 0.243 0.213 0.188F 20.891 * * 16.237 * * 24.140 * * 22.175 * * 23.826 * *

n 972 990 969 995 997

Note: Significance levels: *0.01 , p , 0.05, * *p , 0.01

Table V.Robustness test: splittingup to single factors ofsocial capital

PIJPSM34,3

530

effects between trust and cooperation, with slightly lower coefficients than in formerregressions as they are just measuring one part of the original social capital index.Thus, although the index of social capital exhibits only a moderate scale of internalconsistency, the estimates of the influence of social capital on strain are confirmed bythese regressions including the separated variables.

Furthermore, we also took into account a possible endogeneity issue regarding ourmeasure of social capital. More precisely, as various stress measures are investigated,questions about causality between strain and, e.g. aspects of work environment,camaraderie, unfairness, coping mechanisms, etc. necessarily rises. Surprisingly, veryfew previous studies raised the question about possible endogeneity issues in thiscontext. Thus, in a further robustness test, we approached this issue by applying aninstrumental two-stage-least square setting where the index of social capital isassumed to be endogenous. We used personal characteristics and personal perceptionsof the environment as excluded instruments[9]. Both the validity as well as therelevance of our excluded instruments is confirmed by a number of tests to assess thereliability and efficiency of the IV estimations[10]. The results of our 2SLS estimationtaking into account the endogeneity of our social capital index confirm the resultsderived from our former models[11]. The index for social capital reduces strainsignificantly for all five measurements which confirm the importance and significanceof social capital and interpersonal skills at work for reducing strain, even whencontrolling for endogeneity of the social capital measure.

Discussion and conclusionThe aim of this paper was to investigate the relational effect that social capital has onstress and strain by utilizing a large set of strain indices from amongst police officersand within their physically and emotionally stressful work environment. While manypolice stressors are comparable to other work environments (e.g. shift work, excessiveovertime, heavy workload, poor working conditions and strong interactions with thepublic), it is the highly stressful and traumatic events of police work that make thiswork environment different. Unlike other work environments, officers can alsoencounter, witness or hear about fellow officers’ involvement in extreme situationssuch as physical or even life threatening danger and general exposure to disturbingevents. Police officers form an essential part for a well-functioning society and thus thenecessity to find effective methods to reduce the negative aspects created by workingin this highly stressful job. We illustrate in this paper that social capital within a workenvironment is a breeding ground for social stability among workers and from thistrust flows information and social support. In other words, the negative aspects ofstress are lowered through the generation of trust and cooperation established betweenco-workers and units, through the passing on of coping strategies and support ofcolleagues. Social cohesion reduces transaction costs, allows for better access toinformation and enables a better coordination of activities. Thus, social capital is theconduit through which police officers can draw on resources in their personal andprofessional lives which should help them to deal with stressful situations.

The results provide strong empirical support that social capital has a highlysignificant and potent effect on reducing all of the factors of stress/strain underinvestigation, even after controlling for many of the usual confounding demographicfactors. However, some of these control factors have thrown up some interesting


531

results that demand further attention such as race, gender and rank. In line with muchof the literature, gender has affected stress levels but in surprising ways, as we observethat females suffer significantly more from the physical and health aspects of stressbut not from burnout or the psychological effects. This is in line with the idea thatfemales do indeed have better capabilities to alleviate the mental side of stress throughcommunication and load sharing with female colleagues, whereas males cannot or willnot do the same. Additionally, we observed that Caucasians are affected significantlymore by the psychological effects of stress, but do not display significant differences inthe physical strain, burnout or health outcomes. The findings are consistently strongand robust in both the baseline and extension models. This provides additional supportto the idea that not only does gender and race affect how stress impacts individuals butalso determines the type of stress, be it physical or psychological in nature. Thisdifferentiation of stress effects requires much more research that could ultimately leadto tailored programs with greater probability of success if both race and gender of theindividual is taken into account. Furthermore, we find an interesting inverserelationship between age and experience of individuals and the effects of stress. Asexpected, with increasing age officers become better at divesting themselves of largeamounts of stress, excluding health where age is expected to have a much more directimpact on health regardless of stress. However, the more years of experience an officerhas the greater the negative stress outcome, which would indicate that stress iscumulative over time and the more years spent in the force the greater the effect. Thiseffect effectively disappears once we control for traumatic events and home life. It isclear from the results that social capital in this work environment is by far the largestand most significant factor in reducing the negative effects of stress, closely followedby social capital at home. Just as significant is the explanatory power of the traumaticevents index across all the aspects of stress explored in this study.

Social capital has therefore shown to be extremely effective in negating the impactsof the majority of the strains, and significantly reduces the impact of the major traumaevents (shootings, hostages and funerals, etc). This finding would indicate that policemanagement and police officers themselves would be greatly benefited through theimplementation of social programs that enhance social capital, in our case measured bytrust, cooperation and communication between units. Further benefits derived fromgreater levels of social capital can be observed in staff retention rates, where higherlevels of social capital can be seen to have a positive effect on lowering staff turnoverrates (Gachter et al., 2009). However we do concede that the age of the data doesslightly reduce the explanatory power for the current work environment and consistsof only one American police department. It may also be interesting to explore policeenvironments in different countries to check whether the extrapolation of the results ispossible. Brown and Campbell (1990) point to the fact that there are divergenttraditions between countries and results from the USA cannot be extrapolated to othercountries such as the UK. Moreover, the source of stress may be driven by the nature ofthe organization itself. However, it is also useful to test whether the obtained resultsalso hold in other environments that are comparable to the police one (e.g., military).

Nevertheless, additional studies of highly stressed work employees andenvironments in other areas would contribute to a better understanding of therelationship between stress, strain and social capital and may improve the quality ofrelief programs and greatly reduce the costs and its externalities accumulated through

PIJPSM34,3

532

strained employees. Currently, the predominant stress reduction programs arecounseling services, utilized in the hope that this will stem the flood of stress relatedretirements and burnouts. This hope has been labeled occasionally as too simplisticgiven the very complex relationships between stressful incidents, individualdemographic variables and organizational structure (Dick, 2000). In addition, socialcapital might be a good alternative instrument in situations where common stressreducing instruments fail or where the necessary information to design and enforcesuitable instruments and directives cannot effectively be used.

Notes

1. For example, when an individual’s core temperature rises, the body evokes a sweatingresponse to shed the excess heat.

2. For example, environmental factors are better controlled or isolated compared to the casewhere individuals within a survey have heterogeneous job profiles and are acting in differentenvironments (noisy stress comparison).

3. See, e.g. the Stressful Life Events Screening Questionnaire (Goodman et al., 1998); TraumaHistory Questionnaire (Green, 1996); Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (Kubany et al.,2000); Traumatic Stress Schedule (Norris, 1990); Brief Trauma Questionnaire (Schnurr et al.,1999); Traumatic Events Questionnaire (Vrana and Lauterbach, 1994); Life StressorChecklist – Revised (Wolfe et al., 1996).

4. The response rate was calculated by the number returned by each precinct compared withthe average number of sworn employees at each precinct on the day of the survey.

5. At this point it seems important to mention the slightly differing number of observationsdepending on various variables and indices (see Table II) ranging from 1,060 to 1,104. Thereason for this is some missing observations in the data, as some participants did notrespond to all questions. However, as the missing observations amount to 44 cases in theworst case (index overall strain, not even 4 percent of the data,) this should not be a majorproblem in our analysis. Moreover, preliminary analyses indicate that excluded cases did notsignificantly differ from the others on key demographic variables such as gender, age, rank,or race.

6. Thus, it is also important to check the results by splitting up the index of social capital toexamine the effects of the single parts of the index for all the dependent variables (seeTable V).

7. However, our results indicate that there is enough remaining variation on each of thevariables when the other two variables are held constant. In addition, when assumingmulticollinearity issues, although it would be difficult to get distinct coefficient estimates forthem, it would only affect the coefficient estimates for those variables that are collinear andnot the coefficient estimates of our main independent variable, namely the social capitalindex. Nevertheless, we have run estimations with these single factors independentlywithout observing major changes in the reported results.

8. Standardized coefficients convert all the variables into standard deviations inducing thesame metric which allows us to compare them across different variables.

9. More precisely, we assume that personal characteristics and personal perceptions of theenvironment have a significant impact on the personal perception of social capital at work,namely whether the individual is well integrated into the department or not. In other words,even if there is a considerable degree of social capital in a department, certain individualswho have difficulties with interpersonal relationships in general should report a lowerdegree of social capital in that specific department (as they are not able to participate in this


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social process), although other more socialized employees may experience high trust andgood cooperation, respectively.

10. Further information about the estimation procedure and the tests conducted is available onrequest.

11. For the purposes of brevity and space we have not included the results for the 2SLSregressions in the paper, however the results are available on request.

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Further reading

Adler, P.S. and Kwon, S.W. (2002), “Social capital: prospects for a new concept”, Academy ofManagement Review, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 17-40.

Alesina, A. and La Ferrara, E. (2002), “Who trusts others?”, Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 85No. 2, pp. 207-34.

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Cannon-Bowers, J.A. and Salas, E. (1998), “Individual and team decision making under stress:theoretical underpinnings”, in Cannon-Bowers, J.A. and Salas, E. (Eds), Making Decisionsunder Stress, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.

Derogatis, L. and Savitz, K. (1999), “The SCL-90-R, brief symptom inventory and matchingclinical rating scales”, in Maruish, M. (Ed.), The Use of Psychological Testing forTreatment, Planning and Outcomes Assessment, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah,NJ.

Gambetta, D. (1988), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Blackwell, Oxford.

Hardin, R. (1993), “The street-level epistemology of trust”, Politics and Society, Vol. 21 No. 4,pp. 505-31.

La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A. and Vishny, R. (1999), “The quality of government”,Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 222-79.

Leana, C.R. and Van Buren, H.J. (1999), “Organizational social capital and employmentpractices”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 538-55.

Schaltegger, C.A. and Torgler, B. (2007), “Government accountability and fiscal discipline: a panelanalysis using Swiss data”, Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 91 Nos 1-2, pp. 117-40.


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Stock, J.H. and Yogo, M. (2005), “Testing for weak instruments in linear iv regression”,in Andrews, D.W.K. and Stock, J.H. (Eds), Identification and Inference for EconometricModels: Essays in Honor of Thomas Rothenberg, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Torgler, B. (2007), Tax Compliance and Tax Morale: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis,Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.

Corresponding authorDavid A. Savage can be contacted at: [email protected]

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