THE CASE
Research has shown that policing is stressful given its volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) nature. Thus, stressors inside and outside the organization hurt police officers’ mental and physical health, performance, and interactions with the community. Mental health at the workplace has become a concern due to the costs of depression, anxiety, burnout, and even suicide, which is high among police officers. To ameliorate occupational health, it is crucial to identify stress and burnout levels regularly. However, the instruments frequently used to measure stress have not valorized the specificity of policing tasks (Alagos, Peralta, & Uy, 2022).
A police officer, some of these characteristics include the unpredictability and risk associated with the ongoing threat of terrorist attacks, the rise in gun violence in urban areas, the lac adequate human and material resources, the challenges of working in a team or under supervision, criticism from the public and society, and the lack of sympathy from loved ones or friends (Webster, 2013: Magnavita et al., 2018; Purba & Demou, 2019)
In the 1980s, the NIOSH technical report (Azhar, Bano B, Kamal, Talib, 2017) and Norvell et al. (1993), whose research focused on the impact of gender disparities on low enforcement personnel, both attempted to map police officers’ stress and its origins. Researchers Violanti and Aron (1995, as cited in Vallejo, 2003), Stinchcomb (2004, as cited in van der Meer, 2017), and Brown and Campbell (1994, as cited in Violanti,et al. 2016) also looked at the causes of stress in law enforcement. Although research by Hickman et all. (2011), Luceo-Moreno et al. (2016), and Violenti et al. (2017), among others, continue to highlight the origins of police officers’ stress and its detrimental effects on their mental health and work performance, this issue has gained effects on their health and work performance, this issue has gained increasing attention in the recent ten years.
Ermasova et al. (2020), Wassermann et al (2019), and Baldwin et al. (2019) have made more recent contributions to the research on police officers’ stress levels and mental and physical health. Other research has looked at police officers’ burnout, while related studies have concentrated more particularly on occupational stress (Maran et al., 2015; Gutshall et al., 2017; Johnson et al., 2019).
The personal lives of officers are directly affected by stress. According to research, the stress of the work puts police officers at a greater chance of marital discourse.
Even while many wives take pleasure in their union with an officer, the fact is that raising a law enforcement family is challenging. Several factors, such as: negatively impact police marriages lengthy hours and shift employment. To provide sufficient police coverage, shift work is often necessary for policing. Working several shifts and long hours may generate stress at home since officers often struggle to acquire time off for family functions. Roles at work and in the household conflict. Officers must always be ready to protect themselves and act promptly while on duty. When police are not on duty, it might be difficult for them to shift their perspectives. After their shifts, when they are with their families, officers must make a conscious effort to leave that duty behind. Personality shifts that officers are seen to have between work and home (Karaffa et al., 2015), Officers tend to be analytical and forceful when working to keep themselves safe, which might lead to tension at home.
In addition, many families struggle with money, the stress of witnessing a loved one deal with trauma, and a bad reputation for the police in the community. These problems may harm police marriages and families, leading to emotional weariness and work-family conflict (Karaffa et al., 2015). Particularly, a bad public image might take police families more anxious since the officer could be identified by witnesses and arrestees when off duty and while with their families. In public areas where other families gather, the officer may feel anxious due to its fact.
The researchers focus on the negative impact of working with distressing social situations like crime and death (Henry, 2004), which can affect mental health and cause physical exhaustion, compassion fatigue, and even mental suffering. This has increased interest in police officers’ psychological well-being (Basinska and Wiciak, 2012; Papazoglou, 2016; Papazoglou et al., 2017, 2020; Violenti et al., 2019). Additionally, studies have shown that work stress has steadily grown among police officers over the last ten years. This ongoing job stress has a detrimental effect on the individual and the institution. When it affects one person, it can result in poor mental health (Baldwin et al., 2019; Castro et al., 2019), work-family conflict (Griffin and Sun, 2018), non-adaptive coping mechanisms, and job stress (Zulkafaly et al., 2017); emotional labor (van Gelderen et al., 2007); burnout (Blazina, 2017; Costa et a., 2019; Grassi et al., 2018). Across the board impact on productivity (Shane,2010; Bertilsson et al.,2019; Kelley et al., 2019); unproductive work habits (Smoktunowicz et al., 2015); and improper contact with people, such as the use of excessive force (Neely and Cleveland, 2011; Mastracci and Adams, 2019).
This study aims to determine the stress of police officers assigned in Manila Police District in relation to work-life imbalance and work pressure. The researchers chose police officers who are in the field to see how internal factors contribute to police stress.
A semi-structured interview incorporated both open-ended and more theoretically driven questions to elicit data grounded in the participant’s experience towards developing stress. The interview guide developed in this study explored the respondents’ narration of their stresses. The interview duration took an average of thirty (30) minutes to one hour. The researches operated the audio recording for more accuracy in data analysis. Recordings were subsequently transcribed before the data whet through coding and encoding.
Following the initial reading of the transcript, the matrix was re-read and analyzed one by one, honing in on specific details that appeared to stand out from the rest of the text. The words, phrases, sentences, statements, and passages lifted were highlighted and included in the “descriptive comments” level Smith et al. (2009 as cited in Blau, 2013) described. This process helps the researchers identify particular words, phrases, sentences, statements, and passages that stand out in the text due to frequency, connotation, or perceived importance to the participant or the researchers.
The next level of coding, “linguistic comments” (Smith et al., 2009, as cited in Trinidad, 2018), included a deeper examination of previously highlighted sections and notations about frequently repeated words, phrases, sentences, statements, or passages in the text. This coding helped set the platform for “conceptual comments,” the third level of coding. This level initiated a more conceptual realm of interpretation. The conceptual comment level of coding helped researchers solicit a more profound meaning within the context of experience and identify emergent themes that helped capture the essence of the participants’ experience.
Once coding is done, and initial themes are unlocked, the researchers look for connections between the themes and the phenomena. Initially, each transcript provided a table that organized the three coding levels and made connections to emergent themes and master themes for each participant. As themes emerged within and across transcript, specific quotes and interpretative thinking were used to help formulate and identify critical moments in data.
The study followed these steps in the inquiry tradition:
Read and re-read all the transcribed interviews of the police officers to make sense of them.
Extract significant statements from their experiences that directly pertain to their stress.
Give meaning to the statements related to their stress by categorizing them and creating themes generated on their purposes.
Create theme based on the formulated meanings regarding stress.
Compile detailed descriptions from the generated themes regarding stress.
Summarize the detailed description of these experiences to identify the fundamental structure of the police officers’ stress.
Ensure data’s credibility by examining existing literature and studies regarding police stress.

The data analysis is conducted as an iterative process that compromises many re-readings of the transcript and matrixes as well as three specific levels of the coding-encoding process to determine the master themes and sub-themes the cases presented in the interview. Each transcript is analyzed individually. Therefore, the researchers decided on the finding and initial thoughts from the interviews with the study participants.
In this methodology, bracketing is done to consider the responses in earlier cases to shade the analysis to find the themes (Smith & Osborne, 2008). Although, the researchers recognize and necessitate the completion and removal of one’s knowledge and thoughts about the data from precious interviews. (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009), Awareness of the process helps the researchers consider the responses individually during the analysis and prevents the researchers from inappropriate responses from the emergent themes to new cases.