Level of occupational stress of court probation officers and style of coping with stress

• Main Author: Łukasz Wirkus
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Termedia Publishing House 2015-08-01
• Series: Current Issues in Personality Psychology
• Subjects: probation officer; job stress; style of coping; Court Probation Service
• Online Access: http://www.termedia.pl/Level-of-occupational-stress-of-court-probation-officers-and-style-of-coping-with-stress,75,25617,1,1.html
• ISSN: 2353-4192; 2353-561X

Background The relationship between a court probation officer and their ward is a specific one and is frequently connected with enormous individuals costs. This fact is connected with the character of the job, and with the conditions determining its character. Psychosocial threats may influence both mental and somatic health, directly or indirectly, by means of the influence exerted by stress. Participants and procedure The main study was conducted at the offices of the teams of the Court Probation Service. The teams of the Court Probation Service are part of the structure of the following 9, randomly selected, district courts (DCs): DC Wrocław, DC Bydgoszcz, DC Szczecin, DC Poznań, DC Łódź, DC Lublin, DC Kraków, DC Katowice and DC Białystok. Participation in the research was voluntary and anonymous; the tools were arranged in sets, and the sequence of those sets was random. The sets of research tools were received by 1,000 individuals altogether. Results The conducted research confirmed the need to verify the significance of the feeling of occupational stress of court probation officers at the workplace and the correlations between it and a number of variables. Below, I present statistical analyses concerning various aspects of occupational stress experienced in the studied group, including correlations between the general level of occupational stress and the dimensions of it, and organizational predictors. The objective of the research was to indicate the styles of coping with stress and the correlations of them with the stress felt by court probation officers. Conclusions The research confirms a significant influence exerted by organizational determinants upon the general level of felt occupational stress. Professional court probation officers experience a higher level of felt occupational stress; what is conducive to that is high encumbrance with occupational responsibilities, and also functioning directly in structures of the court of law. Court probation officers suffering from high and low levels of occupational stress differ from one another in terms of the selection of the style concentrated on emotions, which is relevant to the style typical of individuals manifesting the propensity for concentrating on themselves and their own emotional experiences. The individuals manifesting a high level of felt occupational stress select the style described in this paper much more frequently than individuals suffering from a low level of stress.