Assessment of Individual Stress Reactions for Officers Selection and Training

It is well known that police tactical tasks and potentially dangerous interventions are highly demanding situations, which induce both psychological and physical reactions. Research evidences that the degree of stress reaction during and after such commitments, as well as the outcome of the intervention, might vary individually, as a function of personality, task-oriented mindset, previous experience, level of training and physical fitness. Whereas it is impossible to directly quantify the degree of psychological stress during the task, physical reactions such as heart rate, perspiration, body temperature and blood pressure can me measured. The results can be analyzed and correlated with the degree of perceived stress and with the outcome of the performed task. Such approach has high potential for better selection of police officers, especially those assigned to more demanding operations. It can be also a method for evaluation of individual improvement during instruction and training. However it has to be taken into account that when the task involves physical effort it might be difficult to assess at what extent the variation of measured parameters is depending on psychological or physical stress. Therefore the police scenarios used for this kind of evaluation have to be designed in a way appropriate to keep psychological stress separated from the physical one