Research has demonstrated that policing is a stressful occupation and that this stress has a negative impact on police officers’ mental and physical health, performance, and interactions with citizens. Mental health at the workplace has become a concern due to the costs of depression, anxiety, burnout, and even suicide, which is high among police officers. To ameliorate occupational health, it is therefore crucial to identify stress and burnout levels on a regular basis. However, the instruments frequently used to measure stress have not valorized the specificity of policing tasks. This study aims to: (i) conduct a literature review to identify questionnaires used to assess occupational stress and burnout among police officers; (ii) analyze the psychometric characteristics of a Portuguese version of Operational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-Op); and, using the PSQ-Op and other questionnaires, (iii) to identify operational stress, burnout, and distress levels among Portuguese police officers. The literature review identified 108 studies which use a multiplicity of questionnaires to measure burnout or occupational stress among police officers, but few studies use specific police stress questionnaires. Sample sizes were mostly below 500 participants and studies were mainly developed in the last decade in the USA and Brazil, but also in another 24 countries, showing the extent of the interest in this topic. This study applied to 2057 police officers from the National Portuguese Police, a force policing urban centers, and used the PSQ-Op, as well the Spanish Burnout Inventory and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale. The results show that the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of PSQ-Op are adequate. Factorial analysis revealed two dimensions defined as social and work issues, which were associated with measures of distress and burnout. Fit indices suggested a second-order solution called operational police stress. Overall, and considering the scale range of each questionnaire, the results showed moderate values of operational stress, distress, and burnout. However, considering their cut-off points, 85% of the sample presented high operational stress levels, 11% critical values for burnout, and 28% high distress levels, with 55% of the sample at risk of a psychological disorder. These results reinforce the need to prevent stress and to invest in police officers’ occupational health.

Smart cities aim to improve the citizens' quality of life by leveraging information about urban scale processes extracted from heterogeneous data sources collected on citywide deployments. The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is, thus, the enabler of smart city technologies at urban scale. In this paper, we present PortoLivingLab, a multisource sensing infrastructure that leverages IoT technology to achieve city-scale sensing of four phenomena: weather, environment, public transport, and people flows. To sense these processes on a city scale, we deployed a vehicular network with over 600 vehicles and 19 static environmental sensors. We also developed an easily reconfigurable crowdsensing platform and carried out several crowdsensing campaigns with more than 600 participants. The data is collected in a common backend and stored using similar spatio-temporal data models to simplify sharing and joint analysis for the characterization of urban dynamics. We describe the architecture and composing elements of PortoLivingLab, highlighting the IoT technologies, and challenges faced. We present several proof-of-concept use cases (e.g., passenger flows from WiFi connections) that provide new insights into different components of an evolving and moving city. Finally, we lay out the future lines of work that will strive for finding hidden phenomena by leveraging data from the three complementary platforms.

Policing is a stressful occupation, which impairs police officers’ physical/mental health and elicits burnout, aggressive behaviors and suicide. Resilience and coping facilitate the management of job stress policing, which can be operational or organizational. All these constructs are associated, and they must be assessed by instruments sensitive to policing idiosyncrasies. This study aims to identify operational and organizational stress, burnout, resilient coping and coping strategies among police officers, as well to analyze the psychometric properties of a Portuguese version of the Organizational Police Stress Questionnaire. A cross-sectional study, with online questionnaires, collected data of 1131 police officers. With principal components and confirmatory factor analysis, PSQ-org revealed adequate psychometric properties, despite the exclusion of four items, and revealed a structure with two factors (poor management and lack of resources, and responsibilities and burden). Considering cut-off points, 88.4% police officers presented high operational stress, 87.2% high organizational stress, 10.9% critical values for burnout and 53.8% low resilient coping, preferring task-orientated than emotion and avoidance coping. Some differences were found according to gender, age and job experience. Job stress and burnout correlated negatively with resilient coping, enthusiasm towards job and task-orientated coping. Results reinforce the importance to invest on police officers’ occupational health.

Objetivo avaliar o nível de fadiga por compaixão em enfermeiros e sua associação em função de características sociodemográficas/profissionais. Método estudo quantitativo, descritivo e transversal, com 87 enfermeiros de um serviço de urgência e emergência de adultos, de um hospital universitário. Aplicaram-se um questionário sociodemográfico/profissional e a escala Professional Quality of Life Scale 5 . Para a análise dos dados, recorreu-se à estatística descritiva e inferencial. Resultados verificou-se que a satisfação por compaixão apresenta as médias mais elevadas, seguida do burnout e do estresse traumático secundário. Encontraram-se no nível elevado 51% dos enfermeiros na satisfação por compaixão, 54% no burnout e 59% no estresse traumático secundário. Os participantes com mais idade apresentaram médias superiores de satisfação por compaixão, enquanto os do sexo feminino, mais novos, com menos tempo de experiência profissional e que não tinham atividades de lazer evidenciaram média superior de estresse traumático secundário. Conclusão existe fadiga por compaixão expressa na grande percentagem de enfermeiros com elevados níveis de burnout e de estresse traumático secundário. A fadiga depende de fatores individuais como idade, sexo, experiência profissional e atividades de lazer. A pesquisa e a compreensão desse fenômeno permitem o desenvolvimento de estratégias de promoção de saúde no trabalho.

During the last few years, burnout has gained more and more attention for its strong connection with job performance, absenteeism, and presenteeism. It is a psychological phenomenon that depends on occupation, also presenting differences between sexes. However, to properly compare the burnout levels of different groups, a psychometric instrument with adequate validity evidence should be selected (i.e., with measurement invariance). This paper aims to describe the psychometric properties of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) version adapted for workers from Brazil and Portugal, and to compare burnout across countries and sexes. OLBI's validity evidence based on the internal structure (dimensionality, reliability, and measurement invariance), and validity evidence based on relationships with other variables (work engagement) are described. Additionally, it aims presents a revision of different OLBI's versions—since this is the first version of the instrument developed simultaneously for both countries—it is an important instrument for understanding burnout between sexes in organizations. Data were used from 1,172 employees across two independent samples, one from Portugal and the other from Brazil, 65 percent being female. Regarding the OLBI internal structure, a reduced version (15 items) was obtained. The high correlation between disengagement and exhaustion, suggested the existence of a second-order latent factor, burnout, which presented measurement invariance for country and sex. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Portuguese OLBI version presented good goodness-of-fit indices and good internal consistency values. No statistically significant differences were found in burnout between sexes or countries. OLBI also showed psychometric properties that make it a promising and freely available instrument to measure and compare burnout levels of Portuguese and Brazilian employees.

Burnout as predictor of aggressivity among police officers: This paper aims to understand the relationship between aggressivity and burnout among police officers, more precisely, it investigates whether burnout is a predictor of aggressivity among police officers. The study focuses on the relationship between burnout and aggressivity, using regression analysis to identify aggressivity predictors. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to measure burnout, while the Aggression Questionnaire was used to measure aggressivity. A cross-sectional study collected data from 274 male police officers (from PSP – Portuguese Police of Public Security) exercising urban patrol tasks in Porto or Lisbon. Low burnout and moderate aggressivity levels were found, with positive significant correlations. Regression analysis reveals that burnout, more than socio-demographic characteristics, predicts 13% to 22% of aggressivity. In particular, feelings of high depersonalisation and low personal accomplishment are the burnout dimensions that most strongly explain anger and aggressivity, whereas emotional exhaustion only explains 4% of verbal aggression. The study highlights the need to develop prevention strategies of stress, aiming to avoid the development of burnout as occupational chronic stress, and decreasing the risk of developing aggressivity among police officers. Despite the wide literature in the area of police officers’ burnout and individual characteristics (e.g. aggressivity proneness as a personality trait), there is limited research on the relationship between burnout and aggressivity. Within democratic societies where excessive use of force by police officers is criticised, aggressivity predicted by burnout reinforces the need to prevent occupational stress that leads to burnout.