Effect of psycho-yogic training intervention on selected psychological variables of female police recruits

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find the effects of an eight-week psycho-yogic training intervention on the selected psychological parameters of female police recruits. Materials and methods. Initially, the study involved 200 female police recruits. Out of the 200 participants, 100 participants were screened using the lie score of the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Participants were then further divided into two groups (i.e., experimental and control) using the stratified random sampling method based on the lie score. The psychological variables selected for the study were aggression (physical aggression, verbal aggression, hostility, and anger), emotional intelligence (self-awareness, managing emotions, self-motivation, empathy, and social skill), anxiety, perceived stress, satisfaction with life, and self-esteem. Tests were conducted pretraining and post-training after eight weeks. Results. The Friedman’s two-way analysis of variance revealed significant difference in verbal aggression (p = 0.016), hostility (p = 0.017), managing emotions (p = 0.004), self-motivation (p = 0.004), empathy (p = 0.017), social skill (p = 0.015), anxiety (p = <0.001), perceived stress (p = <0.001), satisfaction with life (p = 0.022), and self-esteem (p = <0.001). Further post-hoc analysis test – Kruskal Wallis revealed that the experimental group improved significantly from pre- to post-test in managing emotions (p = 0.005, d = 0.61, Δ% = 9), self-motivation (p = 0.027, d = 0.57, Δ% = 8.8), social skill (p = 0.002, d = 0.59, Δ% = 10.2), satisfaction with life (p = 0.036, d = 0.5, Δ% = 11.7), and self-esteem (p = <0.001, d = 0.94, Δ% = 17.6). In addition, the experimental group had reduced anxiety (p = <0.001, d = 1.27, Δ% = 59.3) and perceived stress (p = <0.001, d = 1.32, Δ% = 41.7) from pre- to post-testing. On the other hand, the control group showed significant deterioration in physical aggression (p = 0.018, d = 0.58, Δ% = 19.9), verbal aggression (p = 0.017, d = 0.57, Δ% = 17), and hostility (p = 0.013, d = 0.54, Δ% = 17.8). Conclusion. The study findings suggest psycho-yogic training of eight weeks duration to be an effective strategy or method to improve the psychological parameters of female police recruits.