Reality shock and mental resilience among adolescent police cadets: meaning, identity, and relational pathways in a Chinese police academy context.

INTRODUCTION

Adolescent police cadets are trained in an institutional environment where schooling, collective discipline, physical training, peer living, and early occupational socialization are closely intertwined. This environment may provide structure and purpose, but may also expose cadets to a distinctive form of vocational environmental risk. However, the psychological pathways through which environmental risk and personal resources are linked to mental resilience in this population remain underexplored.

METHODS

Drawing on an environmental risk and resilience framework, this cross-sectional study examined the association between reality shock and mental resilience among 642 adolescent police cadets from three police education institutions in China, and explored whether positive psychological traits were linked to resilience through occupational calling, identity work support, and relational job crafting. The sample was randomly split into an exploratory subsample (n = 321) and a confirmatory subsample (n = 321), resulting in a refined 36-item measurement model. Structural equation modeling and bootstrap mediation analyses (5,000 resamples) were conducted on the full sample.

RESULTS

Reality shock was negatively associated with mental resilience (β = -.23, p < .001), whereas positive psychological traits, occupational calling, identity work support, and relational job crafting were positively associated with resilience. Competing nested structural models and directional alternative model tests suggested that a combined parallel-sequential mediation model best fit the data. Bootstrap analyses confirmed that the indirect effects through the three parallel pathways and the sequential pathway were all significant. Multi-group analyses across academic years supported strict measurement invariance and suggested broadly similar structural associations across training stages.

DISCUSSION: These findings suggest that resilience in adolescent police cadets is not merely individual toughness; it is deeply linked to occupational meaning, identity support, and relational practices. The results extend environmental risk and resilience frameworks to specialized vocational education settings and offer practical implications for police education programs. Because the data were cross-sectional and self-reported, causal conclusions cannot be drawn.