Coping Behaviors Mediate Associations between Occupational Factors and Compassion Satisfaction among the Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault Workforce

The intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual assault (SA) workforce faces significant occupational stressors yet little is known about positive occupational outcomes associated with this work. Therefore, this study analyzed factors associated with compassion satisfaction among the IPV/SA workforce in one southwestern U.S. state (n = 623). Drawing from the Resilience Portfolio Model (Grych et al. 2015), researchers examined the possible role of coping behaviors in mediating associations between compassion satisfaction and workplace resources / assets, perceived job security, and resilience. Analyses revealed partial mediation in the models that included workload, values, and resilience as independent variables, suggesting that these factors both influence workers’ coping behaviors and have an independent association with compassion satisfaction. Models investigating control, rewards, community, fairness, and perceived job security indicated significant total effects of the independent variables on compassion satisfaction. Overall, IPV/SA workers who engaged more frequently in a range of coping behaviors reported higher levels of compassion satisfaction. The findings point to implications for organizational and employee practice, including building in worktime for key individual coping behaviors, balancing workloads among staff members, and enhancing organizational level coping strategies, such as team supervision and team care planning.