Journal Article

Resilience Among Police Officers: a Critical Systematic Review of Used Concepts, Measures, and Predictive Values of Resilience

Taris, Ruben, van Veldhoven, Marc J. P. M., van der Velden, Peter G., Janssens, Kim M. E.

2021

Overview

Resilience, hardiness, and psychological capital are considered to be important capacities for police officers to cope with and adapt to challenging stressful and potentially traumatic situations. Despite their growing popularity, a systematic review assessing used concepts and instruments for these capacities and synthesizing the results of studies on the predictive values of resilience, hardiness, and psychological capital among police officers is absent. The aim of the present study is to fill this gap of scientific knowledge, and for this purpose, a systematic literature search was conducted using PsycInfo, Pubmed, and Web of Science. We identified 17 cross-sectional and 5 longitudinal studies. Results showed that resilience, hardiness, and psychological capital were studied mostly in relation to physical and mental health variables. No study focused on officers’ professional functioning. In both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, associations with health variables were very weak to moderate, while cross-sectional studies mostly yielded stronger associations than longitudinal associations. In sum, we found no empirical support for the growing popularity.

• Publisher: Springer US,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Adjustment / Age / Anxiety / Associations / Behavioral Science and Psychology / Coping / Criminology and Criminal Justice / Cross-sectional studies / Gender / Hardiness / Health behavior / Health status / Law and Psychology / Longitudinal studies / Marital status / Mental health / Optimism / Police / Popularity / Post traumatic stress disorder / Psychology / Resilience / Resilience (Psychology) / Scientific knowledge / Social support / Stress / Systematic review / Trauma / Variables / Women