Emotional intelligence: Risk factor for caregiver burnout

As Baby Boomers enter full retirement age in 2011, senior citizens will account for over 15% of the U.S. population. Consequently, the number of professional and family caregivers is expected to increase at exponential rates as well. Caregivers must possess skills necessary to deal with the intense interpersonal demands of caring for the elderly and others afflicted by chronic disease and disability. A set of important skills which have received little attention in the extant caregiver literature are the abilities to process emotional information. As discussed in Emotional Intelligence: Key Readings on the Mayer and Salovey Model (2004), emotional intelligence (EI) includes the ability to manage, perceive, understand, and use emotions to facilitate thinking. EI is measured with the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) in this study to determine if it is a risk factor for burnout. According to Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter (1996), in the Maslach Burnout Inventory Manual 3rd Edition, burnout is an experience consisting of three co-occurring components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. In this study, burnout is measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Service Survey (MBI-HSS). As such, three research questions address whether EI significantly predicts each component of burnout syndrome. A sample of 57 professional caregivers working in long term care facilities participated in this research. This study employed sequential multiple regression to analyze the data. To ensure statistical power, this technique is sensitive to sample size and effect size. Consequently, results for two research questions were cautiously interpreted because of unexpectedly low sample size and small effect size between variables. However, a reliable finding for the third research question support EI does not predict personal accomplishment when demographic characteristics are taken into consideration despite significant relationships which were found between variables. A discussion about statistical power and Type II Error in this study and problematic implications from previous findings are given to inform the field of psychology and the caregiver literature.