Shift Structures and Law Enforcement Officers' Quality of Sleep, Job Satisfaction, and Stress: A Comparative Stud

The very nature of law enforcement requires police officers to work around the clock to provide critical law enforcement services to citizens. The purpose of this quantitative comparative study was to examine if there is a difference between law enforcement officers' quality of sleep, job satisfaction, and stress based on shift structure (e.g., fixed, regularly rotating, and compressed) in agencies with 50 or fewer law enforcement officers. The participants were full-time police officers selected from police agencies within the United States employing 50 police officers or fewer. The final sample size for the study was 187 law enforcement officers employed by police agencies with 50 police officers or fewer. A one-way between-groups ANOVA was performed to determine whether there were statistically significant differences in an officer's quality of sleep, job satisfaction and stress based on shift structure (i.e., fixed, regular rotating, and compressed). Hypothesis 1 showed that there was a statistically significant difference in total sleep scores between the different shift groups, Welch's F(2, 104.00) = 4.20, p = .018. Hypothesis 2 and 3 showed that there were no statistically significant differences between the three groups on the total job satisfaction or stress scores. Recommendations for future research included (a) a quantitative study exploring the differences in the actual size of departments employing 50 officers or less. (b) employing a mixed methods research design that would incorporate both quantitative and qualitative research that would integrate both surveys research with officer interviews.