It has been argued recently that employee burnout is an identifiable and important phenomenon, especially in human service occupations, but empirical data about burnout are relatively scarce. We report the results of a study designed to test several hypotheses about the burnout phenomenon. Burnout is denned as a three-component syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of low personal accomplishment. Burnout was hypothesized to be associated with both unmet employee expectations and job conditions. Hypothesized consequences of burnout included (a) preferred job type, (b) subsequent thoughts about leaving, (c) job-search behaviors, (d) training received, (e) intentions to leave, and (f) voluntary leaving. Participants in the study were elementary and secondary school teachers who responded to two questionnaires mailed to their homes. One year elapsed between completion of the two questionnaires. Regression analyses of time-lagged data (N = 248) support many of the hypothesized correlates of employee burnout, but improved conceptualizations about the burnout phenomenon are needed.The term burnout was coined by Herbert Freudenberger (1974), a clinical psychologist familiar with the stress responses exhibited by staff members in "alternative" institutions such as free clinics and halfway houses. Current burnout research continues to focus on employees in the human services sector, including social workers, nurses, teachers, lawyers, physicians, police officers and other occupations requiring large amounts of contact with people in need of aid (see Maslach, 1982, andPerlman & Hartman, 1982, for reviews).Despite the relatively recent appearance of the burnout phenomenon, diverse definitions of burnout have flourished. In most uses, the term burnout refers to a state of emotional exhaustion caused by excessive psychological and emotional demands made on people helping people. Use of the word exhaustion reflects an important underlying assumption of burnout researchers, namely that the burnout syndrome is most relevant for jobholders whose work is very involving. Exhaustion presumes prior states of high arousal, in contrast to tedium, which might be experienced by jobholders whose work is monotonous or boring.A second important aspect of stress reactions among human service employees is a tendency to deindividuate and depersonalize clients or patients (Maslach, 1973). Depersonalization refers to treating people like objects and is often reflected in the The authors sincerely thank Robert M. Guion for his thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was designed to assess the frequency and intensity of perceived burnout among persons in the helping professions in general. This study examined the reliability and validity of the MBI when used with one particular category of helping professionals, teachers. The construct validity of the MBI was examined by using principal factor analysis with iterations and a varimax rotation. Results of this analysis indicated that when employed with teachers, the MBI measures the same basic constructs or factors as those identified through studies in the helping professions—Emotional Exhaustion, Personal Accomplishment, and Depersonalization. However for teachers, Depersonalization separated into a job related and student related factor. Because of the high subscale intercorrelations for the frequency and intensity dimensions of the MBI, the need to utilize the two dimensional format with teachers is questioned. Internal consistency estimates of the reliabilities of each subscale of the MBI for teachers was determined using Cronbach's coefficient alpha. The reliabilities obtained for teachers were similar to those reported for helping professionals in general. Recommendations are made for improving the reliability of the Depersonalization subscale as well as for future examination of the validity of the MBI.

This study of 469 classroom teachers examined the relationship of role conflict and role ambiguity to teacher burnout. Three aspects of burnout were examined: feelings of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization or negative attitudes toward students, and feelings of a lack of personal accomplishment. Two of the more important findings were: (1) role conflict and role ambiguity explained a statistically significant amount of variance infeelings of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and (2) role conflict and role ambiguity differed in their relationships to the three aspects of burnout. Suggestions for minimizing role conflict and role ambiguity as well as recommendations for future research are presented.

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