A prospective study of pre-employment psychological testing amongst police recruits

Pre-employment psychological screening to detect psychological vulnerability is common amongst emergency service organizations worldwide, yet the evidence for its ability to predict poor mental health outcomes is limited with published studies looking at post-recruitment research data rather than data collected by the organizations themselves.

The present study sought to investigate the ability of pre-employment screening to predict later psychological injury-related absenteeism amongst police officers.

A nested case-control study using prospective data was conducted. One hundred and fifty police officers with a liability-accepted psychological injury were matched to a control group of 150 psychologically healthy officers. Conditional logistic regression was used to examine associations between Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) scales measuring factors research has shown to predict psychological injury (Neuroticism, Psychoticism, Introversion, Disconstraint and Aggressiveness) and psychopathology (Depression, Anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) with subsequent psychological injury.

Contrary to expectations, we were unable to demonstrate any association between validated pre-employment measures of personality and psychopathology with mental health outcomes amongst newly recruited police officers over a 7-year follow-up.

Other measures may be better able to predict future mental health problems in police recruits.