Police And Alcohol Use: A Descriptive Analysis

Introduction

Many people overlook the misuse of alcohol within policing. Alcoholism and heavy drinking is a huge issue when one talks about the police world today. The article, Police and Alcohol Use: A Descriptive Analysis and Associations with Stress Outcomes written by Violanti et al., does an excellent job conducting a study on alcohol use by police officers. The focus of this study was to look at how demographics, life events and police stress are important factors that can be linked to alcohol use. This article is interesting because it looks at the outcomes of stress rather than what causes stress among officers. In addition, it is interesting because it addresses the issue of alcoholism in the police force, which is usually overlooked

by society. The hypothesis stated in the introduction was that lifestyle, gender, police stress and events related to work are associated with the misuse of alcohol. Researchers conducted this study to answer the question on whether all those factors are actually connected to police use of alcohol. Another research question that was proposed is whether or not posttraumatic stress symptoms and depressive symptoms have any connection to the amount of police consumption of alcohol. In addition, the design of the study was made to correlate demographics, police stress and life events with the misuse of alcohol.
Methods
Sample
To conduct the study, researchers randomly selected 115 police officers from a police department with 934 sworn officers.

However, only 105 officers gave all the information necessary to conduct the study, so the other ten officers were dropped from the study. They used more women in the study than were represented in the department, so that the results would better illustrate more departments. There was no specific qualifications to be in the study. The officers gave their responses voluntarily and were not forced by the department. Overall, the sample managed to be a good representation of the entire department. The subjects filled out four questionnaires dealing with alcohol use, depressive symptoms, posttraumatic stress symptoms and life events outside of police

work.
Procedure
The study was done by having the 105 participants fill out four different questionnaires. The first questionnaire the participants were given was the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). This test measures age, race and gender related to alcohol use, which is the demographics of the study. In this study, the AUDIT was used for demographics and to determine the levels of alcohol consumption among officers. The test has 10 questions on it with them being separated into three separate categories. For all questions, the subject must score themselves between zero or four. Zero meaning that they never do, one means less than once a month, two means monthly, three means weekly and the score of four means daily or almost daily. The first category being “hazardous alcohol use”, which measures the frequency and quantity of drinking, while the second category of questions is “dependence symptoms”, which measures unusual drinking behavior. Finally, the last category of question is “harmful alcohol use”, which looks at consequences that correlate with alcohol use. If the participant scored a four or more in any of these categories, it symbolizes they either have dangerous drinking levels, are physically or mentally dependent on alcohol, or have life issues because of alcohol. The researchers used the AUDIT to determine the drinking habits of different officers.
Moreover, the officers were given a 41 question yes or no test that measured any type of stressful event that happened in the past 12 months. The third form they were given measured depressive symptoms. This form was called the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale (CES-D). There were 20 questions that were answered on a point scale from zero to three, zero being none of time or rarely and three being almost always. The scores of this test had a big range from 0 to 38. If the subjects scored 16 to 21, they had mild depression, but if they scored 22 or higher they had major depression. If the officers scored under 15, they were unlikely to be depressed. The final form the officers filled out the Impact of Events Scale (IES). It is was used to determine if the officers had posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. There were a total of 15 questions, with the first seven measuring disruptive symptoms and the last eight measuring avoidance symptoms. Participants answered the questions on a scale from 0 to 4 based on how much distress they had within the past week.
Results
The results of this study demonstrates how certain variables had an effect on the officer’s misuse of alcohol. By looking at the AUDIT scores, the researchers discovered that the male police officers had a higher mean AUDIT score than the females. In the three categories of the AUDIT, hazardous alcohol use was the highest for all the participants. However, males had a dramatically higher mean in this category. They also were higher in the dependence symptom category than the women. When the researchers began to look at demographic of the officers within the AUDIT, they realized that women officer’s age made an impact on hazardous drinking category. Women who had a higher AUDIT score were approximately five years younger than those with lower scores. Whether a male officer is single, divorced or separated, affects the hazardous drinking category. The study found that male officers with a higher AUDIT score were mostly single or separated. When comparing the AUDIT to the life event questionnaire, it was found that males in hazardous drinking category had much higher life event scores. When the researchers looked at all the factors, they found there was no connection between AUDIT score and years of service, the duty of the officer or the social factors. In addition, it was found that men had more frequent alcohol consumption than women. The World Health Organization (WHO) says someone should not consume more than 20 grams per day of alcohol. 64 percent of the participants exceeded this limit on alcohol consumption. This study illustrated that the rate of drinking among police officers is double that of the normal workplace. Overall, the data supported the hypothesis the researchers stated, in the sense that demographics and external life events, like marital status, influenced alcohol consumption. However, the researchers thought police work stress, like depression and PTSD, would influence alcohol consumption, but there was little to no evidence to prove they were linked. The author found the key findings to be the relationship between misuse of alcohol and life events and demographics.
Critique
The article, Police and Alcohol Use: A Descriptive Analysis and Associations with Stress Outcomes, does an excellent job at relating alcohol consumption to the officers.

The researchers did a good job at trying to get an equal representation of all police departments. They increased the amount of females in the study so it would better accurately fit other departments as well. Another strength the study had was having such a high response rate among officers. The use of the AUDIT made the study more reliable because it showed the police officers responses related to alcohol. However, the researchers could have made an effort to find out the officers drinking habits before the external life events or police stress. The results of the study may have been different if the researchers knew the personal stress and life events that could have caused the drinking. Another limit to this article is that the sample size of 105 was relatively small. Even though the researchers did a good job at trying to equally represent officers, the sample was still too small to make causal relationships among things, so if they tested a larger sample, the results would have been more

accurate.
Furthermore, this article opens up more questions that can be studied. Some of the questions that are still unanswered are why female officers tend to drink when they are younger. Another question that would be interesting to the study is whether different races drink more or less than others, and how many of them are alcoholics. After reading this study, one may wonder what there is to do to help officers so they do not drink as much. The research within the article was valuable because it was a good representation and used valid and reliable questionnaires for the officers to fill out. Honestly, this study is helpful and practical for someone who is curious about misuse of alcohol among officers and whether the work environment causes officers to drink. The study was done ethically in the sense that the officers were not put against their will to fill out the forms, but instead filled them out voluntarily to help the research team. There should definitely be more research done in this area, but it should focus more on how to control the high alcohol rates among officers. Also there should be more research on why females and males differ so greatly when it comes to alcohol consumption. The results of this study apply to officers who are looking to go into the job and departments to realize they need to help and start prevention programs. The next step in this line of research is to understand the sources of stress officers deal with and how someone can help prevent alcohol misuse before it happens. Overall, this article was interesting, because it makes the audience think about what officers have to go through and how it causes them to turn to alcohol.