Law Enforcement Officers Safety and Wellness: A Multi-Level Study, United States, 2020-2022 (ICPSR 39030)

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Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

To assess law enforcement officer (LEO) and correctional officer (CO) safety and wellness and create a framework for trauma-based programs and enhance safety and wellness.

Study Design View help for Study Design

Officers eligible to participate in Wave 2 received an invitation email, followed by regular follow-up email reminders including a description of the project, contact information for the principal investigators, and instructions on how to complete the survey. Between email invitations and reminders, the research team contacted the 9,256 officers 25 times on average, resulting in 1,924 completed responses.

The research team aimed for approximately one year in between Wave 2 survey submission and Wave 3 survey initiation, grouping officers into three tranches. Officers who completed a survey at Wave 2 were eligible and invited to complete a survey at Wave 3. Over the 14-month data collection period, the research team distributed a total of 24,471 email invitations and reminders to the Wave 3 sample of law enforcement officers (LEOs) and correctional officers (COs). The team implemented a novel recruitment strategy at Wave 3, obtaining quotes in support of the OSAW Initiative from leaders at agencies with officers in the OSAW sample and using these quotations in recruitment emails. The research team contacted several agencies, provided example quotes for Chiefs or Sheriffs to endorse, and then these endorsement statements were added to emails. Excluding officers who refused, screened out of the survey, and had email bounce backs, there were 1,716 officers eligible for the Wave 3 survey. Of those, 1,000 officers completed Wave 3. This final sample included 877 LEOs and 123 COs. Given the challenge of obtaining a high response rate with longitudinal surveys, Wave 3 also involved a pilot experiment which offered a $15 gift card for Amazon.com as an incentive for 324 LEOs and COs.

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The sampling frame for the Officer Safety and Wellness (OSAW) Initiative was the 2017 National Database on Law Enforcement Agencies (NDLEA). In the first stage of sample selection, the researchers cleaned the law enforcement agency (LEA) sample frame. As sworn officer count was a critical variable in the sample selection process, the researchers imputed this variable where missing. For Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agencies, the researchers imputed the missing sworn officer count as the median of the nationwide sworn officer to population served ratio. For all other agencies, the researchers used the median sworn officer to population served ratio for the particular region and agency type. Any agencies without law enforcement officer (LEO) duties or with a sworn officer count of zero were eliminated from the frame. All state agencies in the frame were set aside for certainty inclusion in the main sample. After removing the state agencies from the frame, the next 75 largest agencies (using sworn officer count as a size proxy) were included in the main sample with certainty. All remaining agencies were sorted by census region, LEA type, and number of sworn officers, and the remainder of the sample were selected using systematic sample selection. The reserve sample was set aside, again using systematic sample selection following a sort by census region, LEA type, and number of sworn officers. The researchers then flagged LEAs to be selected for rostering. The agencies selected for rostering were sampled systematically using a sort of census region, LEA type, and number of sworn officers. The reserve sample was also flagged for any necessary roster replacements. During the field period, in an effort to increase the number of LEAs represented in the OSAW project the research team decided in April 2018 to incorporate an additional 500 LEAs into the original sample. As rostered agencies responded to the LEA survey, the researchers implemented a system to sample officers from the roster. Once a roster was received, the researchers divided the roster into males and females (as specified by LEA). The researchers designed the officer selection process to sample officers from responding agencies according to the agency size. The officer selection program was set up to select the appropriate number of officers from each roster to achieve the desired officer sample size, while also oversampling females at a rate of 2:1.

All officers eligible to participate in Wave 1 of the OSAW survey were re-invited to participate in Wave 2. LEOs were excluded from the Wave 2 sample if they were screened out at Wave 1, not able to be contacted at Wave 1, or were from one of two agencies that submitted anonymized rosters with no LEO contact information at Wave 1. A total of 9,256 LEOs were invited to participate at Wave 2. Correctional Officers were newly eligible to participate in the OSAW initiative at Wave 2. To select COs for the sample, the research team began by contacting sampled county LEAs at Wave 1 to request a roster of their correctional personnel from which to select a sample. To increase the number of COs represented in the OSAW initiative, the research team decided to include an additional 500 county LEAs to include in their roster eligible group. After removing ineligible agencies, rosters were requested from a total of 810 eligible county LEAs. The research team followed the same protocol in requesting rosters as in Wave 1 (Mumford et al., 2020). Although longitudinal cohort studies usually are only fielded to baseline participants in subsequent waves, because the OSAW baseline sample was going to be enhanced through the recruitment of COs (new to the study), the research team re-invited all eligible LEOs who were initially invited to participate in the Wave 1 survey, regardless of baseline participation. All LEO and CO officers who completed a survey at Wave 2 were invited to complete the survey at Wave 3. A total of 1,879 officers were invited to Wave 3, as 44 COs that completed a Wave 2 survey were unable to be invited to complete Wave 3, as their agency requested that officer emails not be distributed to the research team, and instead used alias email addresses that removed any officer identifiers. The research team was unable to re-establish contact with this agency at Wave 3 to receive permission to re-field the survey, and thus the officers were removed from the sample.

Time Method View help for Time Method

Universe View help for Universe

Law enforcement officers and correctional officers in the United States.

Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation

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Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection

Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables

Officer data included demographics, mental health questions, physical health questions, substance use questions, etc. These data include the variable OSAW_ID to link data across waves of the study.

Response Rates View help for Response Rates

Wave 2 response rate - 23.16%; retention rate from Wave 1 - 53.61%

Wave 3 retention rate from Wave 2 - 58.28%

Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales

The investigators measured protective factors and captured social support using the four-item short form measure of emotional support from PROMIS, officers' ability to manage stress using the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS)(Cohan et al., 2006) and the Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS)(Simons + Gaher, 2005), and officers' ability to manage their emotions following a stressful situation using the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire (ERSQ) (Berking + Znoj, 2008).

Physical health was captured using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-15)(Kroenke et al., 2010) as well as through questions about diagnoses of hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, and gastrointestinal disorders, as measured by the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) instrumentation.

Researchers assessed sleep disorders using the PROMIS sleep disturbance short form scale, attention, memory, and executive functioning problems through the Deployment Risk and Resilience Inventory (DRRI) (King et al., 2006), and fatigue using the Vital Exhaustion scale (Appels + Schouten, 1991).

General stress was captured using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)(Cohen et al., 1983), while occupational/administrative stress was measured by a modified measure from the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Op) (McCreary + Thompson, 2006) and piloted in this study. Other measures of officers' mental health included the PHQ-2 to screen for depression (Kroenke et al., 2003), the 5-item anxiety and depression screener MHI-5 from the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) (Lara et al., 2002), suicidal ideation using the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (Osman et al., 2001), post-traumatic stress captured by the primary care-PTSD scale (Prins et al., 2004), and resilience was captured using the RS-14 (Wagnild, 2011).

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Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date

2025-01-16

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Weight View help for Weight

Post-stratification weights are included in the dataset to ensure national representation. Weights were calculated with the probability of selection and adjusted for survey non-response. The research team calculated individual weights for each module. The recommended weight for module 2 is W2NORMWT, and the weight for module 3 is W3NORMWT (these are the normalized weights).

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