Saber ambiental: conocimientos y sabidurías

Burnout has been measured in various ways with the primary measurement instrument, the Maslach Burnout Inventory stemming from her conceptualisation of burnout. Most of these measurement instruments are self-report tools. Table 2.4 below shows a list of the primary assessment measures of burnout. A detailed description will be limited to the major ones as they are widely used in research and practice.

Table 2.4

Burnout Inventories

Measure (Instrument/Tool) Dimensions Measured 1. Maslach Burnout Inventory

(MBI) - Has variations of MBI-HSS, MBI-GS; & MBI-E

1. Emotional Exhaustion 2. Depersonalization

3. Reduced Personal Accomplishment 2. Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) 1. Physical Exhaustion

2. Psychological Exhaustion 3. Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OBI) 1. Exhaustion

2. Disengagement from work 4. Shirom-Melamed Burnout Inventory

(SMBI)

1. Physical Fatigue 2. Emotional Exhaustion 3. Cognitive weariness 5. Spanish Burnout Inventory 1. Enthusiasm towards work

2. Psychological Exhaustion 3. Indolence

4. Guilt 6. Bergen Burnout Inventory (BBI) 7. Exhaustion

8. Cynicism 9. Inadequacy

Of the burnout inventories in Table 2.4 above, all of them have at least two factors or dimensions. Exhaustion is the most common dimension in all the measures, though it may

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occur in the physical or psychological realm or both. These inventories have been applied in different settings to measure burnout. The top three inventories are the most widely used, with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) most widely used in research (Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998). These three will be discussed in detail in the following sections.

2.4.1 Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)

According to Schaufeli et al., (2008), the MBI is the most widely used measurement tool for burnout. Stemming from Maslach’s conceptualisation of burnout, it has three sub-scales which are emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and personal accomplishment. It was developed by Maslach and Jackson (1981) to measure burnout in human services. With the developments in burnout research and its expansion to other occupations, the MBI now comes in three variations, namely the human services survey one (MBI-HSS), the General Survey, (MBI-GS) and the Educational Survey (MBI-ES). These will be respectively assessed below.

The Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) is based on the original MBI instrument. This had three sub-scales, viz.: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and decreased personal accomplishment. Whereas the first two subscales were in the negative, the last one was in the positive. The MBI–GS was an attempt to measure burnout across other occupations and outside the core human services. According to Maslach and Jackson, (1986), the MBI could not be indiscriminately applied outside the human services where it was initially designed. There was an attempt to consider the context outside human services. The MBI-GS by Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach, and Jackson (1996) comprises three sub-scales that are in line with the original MBI. These are exhaustion (Ex), cynicism (Cy) and professional efficacy (PE). In the MBI-GS, exhaustion is generic and not limited to people as a source of emotions. Cynicism reflects the indifference or a distant attitude towards work in general according to Schutte et al., (2000). The last factor, professional efficacy, includes social and non-social aspects of professional accomplishments. The MBI-E seeks to measure burnout in the educational sector.

The MBI in its various forms has been applied in various occupations and geographical settings. It is a reliable tool in as far as the theory is concerned. According to Schaufeli and Enzmann (1998), the MBI was used in over 90% of the empirical publications on burnout since the mid-eighties. They put the MBI Human Services Survey’s internal consistency scale at Cronbach’s Alphas above .70 consistently and across various samples. Maslach et al., (1997) put subscale reliability coefficients at .90 for emotional exhaustion, .79 for

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depersonalisation and .71 for personal accomplishment. In terms of test-retest reliability, the MBI-HSS scales’ stability overtime was confirmed with coefficients of .82 for emotional exhaustion, .60 for depersonalisation and .80 for personal accomplishment after two to four weeks among graduate students of health (Maslach et al., 1997). On the other hand, Jackson, Schwab and Schuler, (1986) obtained coefficients of .60 for emotional exhaustion, .54 for depersonalisation and .57 for personal accomplishment after one year for a study of teachers. Generally, ranges of .50 to .82 were obtained after a period to three to 12 months of testing (Leiter Maslach & Jackson, 1996). Leiter et al., (1996) also argued that cross-cultural validation studies have been done on the MBI with varying results, though in confidence in the use of the MBI is high. Like any other similar instrument, the criticisms of self-report instruments apply to the MBI in its variations. The MBI was also criticised for circularity. Kristensen et al., (2005) argued that burnout, as measured by the MBI, is by definition restricted to the human services. According to Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach and Jackson, (1996), the development of the MBI-General Survey in 1996 addressed the previous concerns to apply to other occupational settings.

Initially, the MBI’s inclusion of three different measures without a combined burnout score cast doubt on its efficacy. However, the development of clinically validated cut-off scores of MBI developed in the Netherlands allowed for the use of the MBI-GS as a tool for diagnosing work-related mental problems (Schaufeli & Taris, 2005). Kristensen et al., (2005) also criticised the MBI for having three distinct aspects – an individual state, a coping strategy, and a consequence, that is, emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and reduced personal accomplishment, respectively. They recommended against lumping these together. Schaufeli and Taris (2005) are in agreement the extent that personal accomplishment by its relationship to the other MBI factors might not be part of the burnout syndrome. The unavailability of the MBI in the public domain and its distribution by a commercial publisher was also raised as a matter of concern by critics (Shaufeli & Taris, 2005). There is a feeling that this limits scientific enquiry onto the psychometric properties as well as validation in other areas owing to the cost of research unlike where the instrument was available for free for research purposes. 2.4.2 Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI)

Owing to the criticism of the MBI, Kristensen, et al., (2005) presented an alternative which is a more general instrument, measuring burnout by exclusively focusing on psychological and physical exhaustion (Schaufeli & Taris, 2005). It is a burnout measurement instrument which

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has three sub-scales. It focused on personal burnout, work-related burnout, and client-burnout. Personal burnout has been defined as a state of prolonged physical and psychological exhaustion. Work-related burnout as a state of prolonged physical and psychological exhaustion, which is perceived to be related to the person’s work. Client-related burnout refers to the state of prolonged physical and psychological exhaustion that is usually perceived as linked to a person’s work with clients. Clients can include clients, patients, social service recipients, elderly citizens, or inmates.

The CBI demonstrates high levels of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and

concurrent validity, and seems to be a reliable and valid measure of burnout in a number of countries where validation studies were carried out (Kristensen, et al., 2005). In one sample, the three scales were found to have an inter-item correlation average between 0.42 and 0.60 and a corrected item-total correlation between 0.49 and 0.83 internal consistency of the three scales having Cronbach's α values above 0.82 for personal burnout, work burnout and client burnout subscales (Schaufeli & Taris, 2005). The CBI has been found to be related to the MBI (Schaufeli & Taris, 2005).

The availability of the CBI in the public domain was hailed for the promotion of research, unlike the MBI which is protected by copyright laws and distributed by a commercial publisher. However, the measurement tool was criticised for equating burnout with fatigue (Schaufeli et al., 2008).

2.4.3 Olden Burnout Inventory (OLBI)

The OLBI was constructed to be an alternative to the MBI given its shortcomings on positive and negatively worded items and associated biases (Bakker et al., 2004). The instrument is constructed to assess exhaustion and disengagement with positively and negatively framed items. According to Bakker et al., exhaustion is defined as a consequence of intense physical, affective, and cognitive strain over a period whereas in the MBI exhaustion covers only affective aspects not physical and cognitive aspects. They also argued that disengagement has to do with distancing oneself from one’s job in general, that is, the relationship between employees and their jobs. It should also be noted that professional efficacy is not included, as it was felt that it is not part of the core dimensions of burnout but may be a consequence of it

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(Bakker et al., 2004). Support was found on the OLBI in the Netherlands and other countries (Shaufeli & Bakker, 2004; Bakker et al., 2005).

2.4.4 Other Burnout Inventories

The Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measures (SMBM) includes three subscales of physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and cognitive weariness. It is based on Melamed et al., (2006)’s conceptualization of burnout as a multidimensional construct which include emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, and cognitive weariness. The scale was not meant for use in diagnosis or clinical practice. On the other hand, the Spanish Burnout Inventory consists of 20 items under four main dimensions of enthusiasm towards the job, psychological exhaustion, indolence and guilty and it has a global score for burnout. It was meant to be an answer to the MBI’s lack of a global score. Lastly, the Bergen Burnout Inventory (BBI) is comprised of three core dimensions of exhaustion at work, cynicism toward the meaning of work, sense of inadequacy at work. It has a behavioural, cognitive and an emotional component. It is meant to measure burnout in all occupations and was built on the same theoretical three-dimensional conceptualization of burnout.

All these instruments are in a way related to the MBI though they have their own emphasis in line with their proponents’ three-dimensional conceptualization of burnout.

2.4.5 Burnout Inventories Summary

The burnout inventories described above have been used in different context to measure burnout. Of interest is the fact that these measures are aligned to different conceptualisation of the burnout construct. According to Schaufeli and Enzmann (1998), the MBI has been successfully applied in different occupations and across nations. However, they also noted that its weaknesses in failing to have a unidimensional burnout score and its lack of statistical guidelines resulted in the emergence of new measures like the Copenhagen and the Olden burnout inventories.