title: [Occupational stress in municipal police officers: contribution to the Italian adaptation of a questionnaire for the assessment of the operational and organizational stressors].
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The study of occupational stress in police has received growing interest because of the potential negative effects that it may produce both on an individual and on an organizational level. The aim of the present research is to give a first contribution to the Italian adaptation of two questionnaires used in order to assess operational and organizational stressors in police: the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Op) and the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Org). METHODS; The PSQ-Op-It and the PSQ-Org-It have been administered to all the municipal police officers serving the population of a small town in Northern Italy (N = 88). An explorative factor analysis has been carried out to verify the internal structure; in order to assess the concurrent validity, correlations with psycho-physical malaise (GHQ-12) and burnout (MBI-GS) have been calculated.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The factor analysis (rotation method oblimin) confirmed the original structure of the two questionnaires: two factors, corresponding to organizational and operational stressors, have been extracted. The Cronbach's alphas of the two questionnaires, 0.95 and 0.94 respectively, have pointed out good internal consistency. The two instruments are related to the subscales of the GHQ-12 and the MBI-GS, with the exception of the professional inefficacy dimension.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The PSQ-Org-It and the PSQ-Op-It have shown good psychometric properties, so they could be used in order to assess police-specific stressors. Nevertheless we suggest to deepen the obtained results by confirmative factor analyses to carry out through the administration of the instrument to more numerous samples, in different and more structured urban contexts.
authors.forename: Ilaria
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Setti
authors.forename: Piergiorgio
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Argentero
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D016495:Police; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires