l as the maintenance of public order, the prevention of crime, and service in problems related to crime and victimization. Sheriffs provide countywide law enforcement and they may be responsible for county corrections and serve as officers of the court (Walker, 1991). Municipal chiefs, for the most part, are appointed officials. Sheriffs are elected every four years, and because of this they are not under the same day to day accountability as higher municipal administrators (Crank, et al. 1993).The executives education has a direct effect on role stress which comes from the skills and knowledge that provide an executive to cope with the complexities of leadership and administration of a large organization (Beehr, 1976). In external versus internal hiring, it is hypothesized that chiefs hired from the outside would experience greater levels of role stress than those promoted from the inside. A chief hired from the outside must find support in an unfamiliar organization. Control over the hiring procedures hypothesizes that increases in a chiefs perception of control over hiring policies would be inversely related to perceptions of role stress. Length of service hypothesizes that role stress would be higher before the end of the first four years, than after the first four years (Crank, et al. 1993) Individuals who have a high degree of work autonomy are less likely to experience role strain (Beehr, 1976). Autonomy is negatively related to role stress and stress related constructs. The hypothesis in decision making autonomy was that chiefs perceptions of autonomy in making decisions would be inversely associated with role stress (Crank, et al, 1993). Data for the survey by Crank, et al. (1993) was obtained from two samples. The city police chiefs data was obtained from a national sample of 1,120 police chiefs. Random sampling was used to select the police chiefs. Data for the county sheriffs was also obtained from a national sa...
