Assessing burnout among employees who work with the mentally retarded

Abstract

Burnout, as assessed by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), was examined for employees who work with the Mentally Retarded in Day Treatment Programs. There were three objectives of this study. The first was to assess the factor structure of the MBI, using principal component analysis, for this researcher's sample, and then compare it to the established factor structure of the normative sample (Maslach, Jackson & Leiter, 1996). The second was to assess whether or not burnout, as assessed by the three-component model, was found among these employees. The third objective was to examine whether burnout was related to a person's intention to leave his/her agency.;One-hundred fifty-two employees from five different Day Treatment Programs answered the questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of the MBI, a two-item intention to quit scale, and demographic information.;The MBI, for the new sample, was found to have a three-factor solution and the factor matrix looked similar to the normative sample. Moderate levels of burnout were found in the form of emotional exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment. Low depersonalization scores were found in all Day Treatment Programs. The emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment subscales of burnout were found to be significantly related to a person's intention to quit his/her job. The emotional exhaustion subscale was found to be positively related to the intention to quit scale. The personal accomplishment subscale was found to be negatively related. Future research considerations were discussed in the last chapter.