Coping Framework of West Bengal Police: A Con...

Coping Framework of West Bengal Police: A Confirmatory Study

Author Name : Dr. Malini Nandi Majumdar

Police in West Bengal, India are subjected to occupational stressors like excessive political interference in
administrative activities, socio – political polarization of the people of the state, urban-rural and educateduneducated
mix and various other variables. Using a standardized instrument called Brief COPE (C, S, Carver.
1997) and deploying random stratified method of data collection, the study includes 2756 responses across 6
different hierarchies and identifies significant coping mechanisms that are being immensely applied by police
personnel to combat against occupational stressors. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) reveals ten coping
mechanisms such as Humour, Active coping, Use of emotional support, Self- blame, Religion, Behavioural
disengagement, Substance use, Denial, Self-distraction and Acceptance which are often used by our Police
personnel to combat the stressors and survive. There after Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) is being
conducted to understand the causal connection between variables representing each factor. Various measures
are suggested to deal with stressors more effectively like periodic interaction with superiors, encouraging
employees for persuasion of hobbies, promoting team spirit, frequent arrangement of yoga and meditation
classes, in the context of dealing with critical issues like attending child and rape victims, dealing with situational
crisis etc. While conducting the study some limitations have been experienced viz. time constraint, bureaucratic
instructions as well as perceptual blockages of respondents.