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Job stressor exposure is associated with mental health in police officers. Police stress research rarely draws a distinction between urban and rural policing, raising the possibility that stressors specific to the rural context remain unidentified and their implications unknown. This may hinder actions to protect the mental health of those involved in policing rural communities.

Among rural policing teams in an English county police force this study used an exploratory sequential mixed method design to (1) identify and quantify exposure to rural policing stressors and (2) examine links between job stressor exposure and psychological distress.

Interviews (N = 34) identified three rural policing job stressor themes: (1) job demands, (2) isolation and (3) critical decisions. Survey data (N = 229) indicated significant differences in exposure by rank to demand and critical decision stressors, with police community support officers (PCSOs) reporting lower exposure than officers of constable and sergeant rank. Overall, 44% of respondents reported symptoms of psychological distress indicative of likely minor psychiatric disorder; higher levels of psychological distress were associated with higher stressor exposure across all three job stressor themes for PCSOs and constables and within the job demand theme for sergeants.

Findings point towards practical actions focussed on resource provision for officers and a research strategy to ameliorate the impact of stressors in English rural policing.

Community-police relations have gained increasing public attention during the past decade. The purpose of the present study was to better understand the relationship between perceived community support and police officer burnout and engagement.

Data were gathered via online survey from 117 officers from a city police department in the Southeastern United States.

Community support was negatively correlated with burnout and positively correlated with engagement. Moreover, multiple regression analyses showed that community support explained significant incremental variance in most dimensions of burnout and engagement, above and beyond demographic factors and community stressors. Qualitative results showed that police officers had mixed perceptions of how they were viewed by the general public, with more negative than positive responses. However, officers felt more positively perceived in their own communities, but concerns were raised that national events affected the perceptions of officers even in positive relationships with their communities. Finally, officers felt that public perceptions impacted their job satisfaction, job performance and personal lives.

The results have practical implications for how to encourage positive interactions between officers and their community, with recommendations for both law enforcement leaders and civilians.

This study is one of the few that highlights the officers' perspective on how public perceptions affect their work. This is important in understanding how to maximize quality community interactions while minimizing conditions that would increase burnout.

Stress research in the UK policing has largely neglected to account for variance in the type of psychosocial hazard officers are exposed to across policing roles, highlighting the need for role‐specific research that is capable of informing similarly specific stress reduction interventions. This study aimed to develop and assess exposure to a taxonomy of psychosocial hazards specific to the UK police custody work, consider the burnout profile of custody officers, explore relations between psychosocial hazard exposure and burnout, and compare the exposures of burned out and non‐burned out custody officers.

Preliminary focus groups identified a series of psychosocial hazards specific to the custody officer role. A questionnaire administered to custody officers within a UK territorial police force assessed exposure to these psychosocial hazards and burnout.

Twenty‐six custody‐specific psychosocial hazards were identified, across nine themes. The proportion of custody officers who reported a high degree of burnout was above that found in normative data. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that exposures were positively related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. Unrelated t‐tests showed that respondents who reported high burnout also reported significantly higher exposures across all nine psychosocial hazard themes than those with sub‐threshold burnout scores.

This is the first study to investigate the stress‐related working conditions of the UK custody officers. It provides a foundation for future large‐scale longitudinal studies concerned with validating the current findings and improving the health of officers engaged in this unique policing role.

There is a paucity of contemporary evidence on the organisational (as opposed to operational) psychosocial hazard (OPH) exposures of UK police officers. The purpose of this study is to report on OPH exposures measured via an instrument developed by the UK government – the management standards indicator tool – among police officers sampled from an entire UK force. The study seeks to provide reference values for UK police officers' OPH exposures, to consider these in relation to government exposure targets, and to examine the association between officers' OPH exposures and perceived work‐related stress.

Police officers (n=1,729) completed the management standards indicator tool which measures perceived exposure to seven psychosocial work environment dimensions: demands, control, managerial support, peer support, relationships, role, and change. In addition, a single‐item measure of perceived work‐related stress was applied.

Sector‐specific reference values were generated by job role and rank on each of the seven dimensions assessed by the indicator tool. Scores on all seven dimensions were below government target levels (indicating that scores fell below the 80th percentile in relation to benchmark data). In total, 46 per cent of police officers reported their work to be very or extremely stressful. A significant positive correlation (p <0.01) was found between scores on each of the seven psychosocial work characteristics and perceived work‐related stress.

This study is the first to report on the assessment of UK police officers' OPH exposure using the management standards indicator tool. It provides reference values that UK forces will find useful for benchmarking and intervention‐targeting purposes, and against which progress in reducing OPH exposures can be assessed.

Process facilitation as part of a complex intervention for changing or improving practices within workplaces is becoming a common work method. The aim of this study was to investigate what characterizes the process-facilitating role in a complex intervention.

The present study focuses on a complex work environment intervention targeting eight organizational units (workplaces) in the Swedish healthcare sector. The study applies a mixed-method approach and has been carried out in two steps. First, a qualitative process evaluation was performed. Secondly, an evaluation was conducted to see to what extent these identified conditions and mechanisms affected the quantitative intervention effect in term of sickness absence.

The analysis shows that the facilitating role consisted of three overlapping and partially iterative phases. These phases involved different activities for the facilitating role. Depending on how the facilitating role and the intervention were designed, various supporting conditions were found to significantly affect the outcome of the intervention measured as the total sickness absence.

It is concluded that the facilitation is not static or fixed during the change process. Instead, the facilitation role develops and emerges through the process of support during the different implementation phases.

The facilitative role of performing support is based on a combination of support role activities and expert role activities. The support role focuses on support activities, while the expert role includes capacity building through knowledge- and legitimacy-oriented activities.

This study contributes to earlier research by developing a methodological approach for carrying out process facilitation in complex interventions.