Five-Factor Model of personality, burnout, and performance in child protective service work

The problem. Child Protective Service workers (CPS) have a highly stressful and demanding job that has been described as a burnout-prone profession. There have been few empirical research findings on stress in social work. Additionally, research has demonstrated that personality characteristics can aid in predicting performance at work. There are few studies that research the relationship between personality and performance in human service professions, and even fewer in CPS work. The purpose of this study was to determine how burnout is related to the worker's personality and how both of these constructs affect performance at work.;Method. The participants for this study were recruited from two county agencies in Southern California and consisted of 277 CPS workers and 79 CPS supervisors.;CPS workers completed a demographic questionnaire, a burnout survey, and a personality survey in group settings. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey was used to assess the three aspects of burnout syndrome: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment. The Personal Characteristics Inventory-2nd edition was used to measure the five factors of personality: conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, openness to experience, and stability. CPS supervisors were asked to complete a performance survey on each participating CPS worker they supervise. A performance survey developed by the researcher and modeled after a CPS agency's formal performance appraisal was used to measure performance.;Results. A significant negative correlation between emotional exhaustion and performance was found and a positive correlation between personal accomplishment and performance was found, suggesting that the more emotionally exhausted CPS workers report being, the poorer their performance, and the more personal accomplishment they feel about the job, the better their performance.;Also, there was a significant positive relationship between depersonalization and conscientiousness, which suggests that CPS workers who emotionally distance themselves from their clients are more conscientious about their job. The findings also showed that being agreeable supersedes attendance and punctuality. This study includes post hoc analysis of the relationships between the three defining burnout variables and subscales of the five factors of personality.