The development and evaluation of an emotion competence intervention in the South African police service

Abstract

The South African Police Service (SAPS) is an organisation where employees are exposed to numerous stressful and traumatic episodes which affects the employee’s emotion functioning. Although several pro-active psychological programs exist within the organisation, they do not effectively assist the employee with coping with stressors on an emotion level. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate an emotion competence intervention for the SAPS. From the literature study, several emotion competencies were found that will illustrate emotion intelligent behaviour. The criteria, methodology and content to include in an emotion competence interventionfor the SAPS was established and included in the development of the intervention. The intervention was evaluated by a panel of experts (N=13), suggesting only a few minor adaptations. These suggestions were incorporated in the final emotion competence intervention. Limitations included the small amount of experts that evaluated the intervention, as well as the absence of functional SAPS members as part of the panel of experts. Recommendations for future studies were made