Examining the job demands-resources model in a sample of Korean correctional officers
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Examining the job demands-resources model in a sample of Korean correctional officers Soohyun Cho 1 & Hyunkyung Noh 2 & Eunjoo Yang 3 & Jayoung Lee 4 & Narae Lee 3 & Wilmar B. Schaufeli 5,6 & Sang Min Lee 7
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract There have been numerous studies on the job stress and mental health of correctional officers. Most of them, however, focused on specific symptoms or the simple relations between various stressors and mental health. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the mechanism of the relationship between job characteristics and burnout among correctional officers by integrating basic psychological needs satisfaction into the job-demands resources model. The results, using a representative sample of 3005 correctional officers, indicate that job demands directly influenced burnout, while job resources indirectly influenced burnout via basic psychological needs. These findings suggest that the fulfillment of basic psychological needs plays a pivotal role in preventing burnout among correctional officers. The current study offers several suggestions on how to apply these findings in prison organizations. Keywords Job demands-resources model . Basic psychological needs . Burnout . Correctional officers
Introduction A correctional officer (CO) is an individual responsible for the supervision, safety, and security of convicted prisoners in a prison, jail, or similar form of secure custody. However, in the process of maintaining a safe environment in these facilities, COs are often exposed to violent situations that provoke constant feelings of tension and anxiety (Finney et al. 2013). Several empirical studies (e.g., Finney et al. 2013; Reeves 2014) have reported that COs’ jobs lead to various physical and emotional * Sang Min Lee [email protected] 1
Department of Education, Keimyung University, Daegu, South Korea
2
Center for Teaching and Learning, Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, South Korea
3
Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea
4
Counseling Psychology Program, Hanyang Cyber University, Seoul, South Korea
5
Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
6
Research Unit Occupational, Organizational Psychology and Professional Learning, KULeuven, Leuven, Belgium
7
Department of Education, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea
problems that jeopardize their mental health and diminish their job performance. For instance, the rate of suicide among COs is much higher than in other occupations, and many COs experience post-traumatic stress disorder (Brower 2013). In South Korea, COs have also demonstrated higher rates of job burnout (Jung et al. 2014), turnover (La and Lee 2011), and depression and suicide (Korean Ministry of Justice 2016) than other public safety officers such as police officers or firemen. Given the numerous stressors inherent to COs’ working circumstances, it is perhaps unsurprising that their occupational stress has generated considerable interest among researc
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