Impact of Mindfulness Training on Stress-related Health Outcomes in Law Enforcement

Change in combined scores of perceived operational and organizational stressors from the Police Stress Questionnaire (McCreary & Thompson, 2004) from baseline to 3 months. Each of these 2 scales has 20 items with 1-7 ratings, where higher scores indicate greater stress (1=no stress at all, 7=A lot of stress). Organizational and operational stress scales will be summed to create a single value with a range of 40-280.

Saliva samples collected on each of 3 days will be used to calculate diurnal cortisol slope, defined as the change between the peak cortisol response in the 45 minutes after awakening and cortisol levels just prior to bedtime, with a hypothesized steeper slope in the intervention vs. waitlist group at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

The cortisol awakening response (CAR) will be measured using saliva samples collected 0, 30, and 45 minutes after awakening on each of 3 days, with hypothesized increased CAR in the intervention vs. waitlist group at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Composite of hsCRP and 4-plex of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, TNF-alpha) is hypothesized to be lower in intervention vs. waitlist group at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Change in hyperarousal symptoms from the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline

Global scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (Buysse et al., 1988) will be compared at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline

Changes in total scores from the Perceived Stress Scale (10-item version; Cohen et al., 1988) from baseline to 3 months.

Hair cortisol concentration will be assessed from a 3-cm sample of hair collected from participants' scalps, corresponding to approximately 3 months of hair growth, at 6 months vs. baseline.

Change in minutes of behaviorally assessed restful sleep time during 1 week of sleep measured in the field using Fitbit Charge 2 activity trackers at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Changes in lure discrimination index (LDI) scores from the Mnemonic Similarity Task (Stark et al., 2015) will be assessed between baseline and post-intervention (3 months). LDI scores have a theoretical range of -1 to +1, where a score of +1 indicates perfect ability to discriminate novel items from those previously seen and 0 indicates chance discrimination of novel from previously seen items. Negative scores, while theoretically possible, are rare as they indicate greater labeling of novel items as "old" compared to previously seen items as "old".'

Change in depression and anxiety subscale scores from the 43-item version of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS-43) at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline. There are 6 depression and 6 anxiety items, each of which is scored on a scale of 1 ("never") to 5 ("always"), yielding a range of 6-30 for each subscale with higher scores indicating greater impairment.

Change in total PTSD symptoms from the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline

Changes in average resting heart rate calculated over 3-7 days of field data collection using a Fitbit Charge 2 activity tracker at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Change in pain interference subscale scores from the 43-item version of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS-43) at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Change in the two core dimensions of burnout, exhaustion and disengagement, on the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (Halbesleben & Demerouti, 2005) at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Change in work productivity, measured as the estimated percentage of work time affected by chronic mental and physical health issues on the Work Limitations Questionnaire (short form; Lerner et al., 2001) at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Change in physical health and well-being behaviors as measured by the Good Health Practices Scale (Hampson et al., 2017) at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Changes in total scores and individual dimensions of the Five-Facet Mindfulness Scale (short form; Bohlmeijer et al., 2011) at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.

Change in work-to-family and family-to-work spillover from the Work-Family Spillover Scale (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000) at post-intervention (3 months) vs. baseline.