Impact of Organizational Stressors on Health and Wellness: A Longitudinal Study of Occupational Stress, Trauma Exposure, Psychological Distress, and Suicide Risk among Correction Officers

The applicant proposes a longitudinal study of a random sample of 375 new recruits graduating from Massachusetts Department of Correction academies over their first five years on the job. The research team will conduct three waves of interviews (year 1, year 3, and year 5) to distinguish the impact of short, episodic traumatic incidents from long-term organizational stress on overall officer safety and wellness. The longitudinal design will allow the research team to capture the temporal ordering of traumatic events from overall organizational stress.

Primary outcome measures are changes in behavioral, emotional, physical, psychological, and relational health and wellbeing. The results of the interviews will be analyzed using Egocentric Social Networks (ESN) to assess changes in the officers’ social networks. The ESN method was created to execute the previous NIJ-funded study on correctional officer suicide. The ESN examines the social supports and resources available to these officers. Poisson Fixed-Effects regression will be used to identify risk factors present in the panel data. Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law, and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements - 2 CFR 200.210(a)(14). CA/NCF