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Stressors and strain among correctional employees
Abstract
Questionnaires were completed by 272 correctional employees from seven maximum security prisons. Respondents answered questions about the frequency and stressfulness of 99 work-related events which fell into eight categories identified in a previous study by the investigator (Beaver, 1992). The Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness (PILL) were the measures of strain utilized. The demographic variables of interest were: job assignment, rank, gender, minority status, level of education and years of employment. It was found that the Inmate-Related Matters and Work in Corrections categories were the most frequently occurring sources of stress. The most stressful kinds of events were Emergencies and Administrative Matters. Overall, the most important source of stress was from the factors inherent to Work in Corrections. Uniformed staff perceived all eight categories of events as being significantly more stressful than did nonuniformed staff. Higher ranking employees reporting Emergencies as being more stressful than the lower ranking staff. This was an initial attempt to empirically examine differences in stress and strain as a function of gender and minority status. Significant differences were found with both categories. Finally, multiple regression analyses were computed to determine the amount of variance in strain scores attributable to stressors and other variables. It was found that the combination of the eight categories of stress accounted for the largest or second largest amount of non-redundant variance in all instances. Level of education and rank each accounted for the largest amounts of variance associated with two separate measures of strain. The implications for facility managers and for future research are also discussed.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy
Recommended Citation
Beaver, Shannon Lee, "Stressors and strain among correctional employees" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9516578.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9516578