A Cognitive Interviewing Approach to Conceptualizing Moral Injury Among Law Enforcement Professionals

Background and Purpose: Moral injury is a prevalent issue among law enforcement professionals, resulting from events that violate one’s deeply held values and manifesting in distressing psychological, behavioral, social, and spiritual reactions. Current understandings of moral injury and measurement tools are based primarily upon research with military service members and veterans, highlighting the need to adapt these tools to law enforcement. This study aimed to tailor conceptualizations of moral injury to the law enforcement profession and to explore the fit of the commonly utilized Moral Injury Events Scale (MIES) to policing. This work is critical to the development of appropriate assessments and interventions for moral injury in law enforcement.

Methods: Cognitive interviewing (N=7) was used to adapt conceptualizations of moral injury to the law enforcement profession while exploring the fit of the MIES to policing contexts. Cognitive interviewing comes out of the field of cognitive psychology and is a well-established method for assessing the content and construct validity of measurement tools. Cognitive interview studies are completed with small samples and involve a “think aloud” approach in which the interviewee freely verbalizes their thoughts with minimal interference from the interviewer, who prompts as needed for further elicitation of detail and context. Interviewees were recruited following their participation in a larger mixed methods study of law enforcement officers. The sample consisted of active and retired officers across the ranks. Participants reflected on the moral injury construct and discussed morally injurious events they had experienced or witnessed. They critiqued each question on the MIES individually and commented on the fit of the full MIES to law enforcement.

Findings: Findings suggest that adapting understandings of moral injury to law enforcement is necessary to accurately capture the experiences of officers in this profession. The cognitive interviewing methodology yielded a nuanced understanding of moral injury in the law enforcement context while highlighting the need to tailor measurement tools, such as the MIES, to the context of the profession. Findings suggest that, while largely appropriate, the MIES does not fully capture the range of morally injurious events experienced in law enforcement, particularly as they pertain to organizational context and a moral injury experience that often centers around feelings of betrayal by fellow officers, superiors, and the profession at large.

Implications and Conclusion: Cognitive interviewing proved a useful tool for assessing the fit of an existing construct and measure to a new professional context and population. Findings reveal that moral injury in law enforcement often stems from organizational culture and the actions of those with power, rather than from one’s own actions or events in the community. Findings can be used to tailor assessments and interventions to the unique needs of law enforcement officers and to position the law enforcement and helping professions to detect and address the crises of meaning affecting law enforcement officers. As social work grapples with its role alongside and within law enforcement agencies, understanding the experiences and actions of law enforcement professionals can help us better determine our scope, role, and ethical responsibilities.