Study On Job Burnout Across Three Occupational Samples: An Integrity Perspective

According to Maslach & Jackson, Job burnout is "A syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who do 'people work' of some kind." Emotional exhaustion refers to the depletion or draining of emotional resources caused by interpersonal demands. Depersonalization means the development of negative, callous and cynical attitudes toward the recipients of one's services. Finally, lack of personal accomplishment is the tendency to evaluate one's work with recipients negatively.In the past about 30 years, job burnout has becoming a hot topic in many disciplines in western countries. But in China, little have been done on this topic. Researches on job burnout, can not only affluence the study thesis of Management Psychology and Health Psychology, and promote the development of a new psychological discipline-Work & Health Psychology, but also give theoretical guides for Stress Management, Emotion Management and Employee Assistance Plan, and thus have an important theoretical and practical values.First, on the basis of the review of related documents, we have developed an instrument which rooted in Chinese culture and named Chinese Maslach Burnout Inventory (CMBI). The three-factor model (Emotional exhaustion, Depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment) of CMBI was best supported by confirmed factor analysis across three different occupational samples, which consist of teachers, policemen, medical staff. Reference to the diagnosis indexes of Maslach', we have formulated the diagnosis indexes of CMBI. Boldly creatively, we class job burnout in three different level, namely low-grade burnout, moderate burnout and high- grade burnout. At last, we also examine the effects of demographical variables such as age, work age, sex, and marriage status on job burnout across three occupational samples.Second, we have explored the relationships between job burnout and its antecedent variables across three occupational samples. The antecedent variables include work stress (work overload, lack of control, insufficient reward, breakdown of community, absence of fairness and conflicting values), personality characters ( locus of control, Psychoticiism, Introversion-Extraversion and Neuroticism) and social support (subjective support, objective support and the useless of support). It has been found that the relationships between job burnout and its antecedent variables have typical occupation characteristic, but at the same time, the relationship pattern is stable across different occupations.Finally, we have investigated the relationships between job burnout and its outcome variables across three occupational samples. The outcome varibles include mental health, intention to quit and job performance. It has been found that the relationships between job burnout and its outcome variables have typical occupation characteristic, but at the same time, the relationship pattern is stable across different occupations.The most strongpoint of our study is to explore the construct and measurement of job burnout, the relationships between job burnout and its antecedent variables and the relationships between job burnout and its outcome variables across three occupational samples in comparative perspective. But all outcome of our study need tested in more occupation groups and in larger samples according to longitudinal experimental design.