Compassion Satisfaction, Burnout, Secondary Traumatic Stress, and Work Engagement in Police Officers in Arizon

With organizational challenges and the current stressed relationship between law enforcement and the communities they protect, it is important to identify the stress of this occupational environment on police officers' professional quality of life, and its effect on their engagement at work. The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study was to determine if and to what extent a relationship exists between compassion satisfaction, burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and work engagement in police officers in Arizona. The compassion satisfaction-compassion fatigue theory, and the work engagement theory served as theoretical frameworks for this study. The study sample consisted of 153 police officers with membership to the Arizona chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. The participants accessed a digital survey that combined the ProQOL-V survey with the UWES-9 survey. Data analyses involved Pearson product-moment correlations, and multiple regressions. The results showed a significant correlation between compassion satisfaction ( r = .774, p = .000), burnout (r = .--573, p = .000), secondary traumatic stress (r = .--254, p = .000), and work engagement. Subsequent analysis showed work engagement in police officers in Arizona is significantly predicted by compassion satisfaction, F (2,149) = 76.07, p = .000. Results of this study supported previous research indicating a correlation between these variables. Implications suggest the significant, positive correlation between compassion satisfaction and work engagement lends itself to being looked at as variables requiring encouragement and expansion in organizational behavior and development.