| Significance and objective of the studyFor the past few years, as the ministry of education and universities pay more attention to college students’ mental health education and counseling work, university counselors have corresponded to heavy work load and higher pressure brought by the social expectations, even developed job burnout. Though their physical and mental health is threatened, they did not get the attention deserved. Ongoing job burnout will decline the competency of the counselors, and difficult ensure the well-being of students. Besides, job burnout may cause a series of negative effects on both individuals and organizations, such as personal lower job satisfaction, turnover intention, damage to personal relationship;Organizations facing the loss of brain drain, and organizational reputation under threat, etc. Therefore, understanding the process of job burnout, revealing the influence factors of job burnout is of great significance to raise the awareness of counselors’own mental health care, to maintain good working condition, and promote the psychological health level.But only a small number of research were conducted on counselors’job burnout, and only stay in the general discussion, the influential factors of psychological counseling profession characteristic is not prominent.This study based on the background of the current development in Chinese society and the working environment of psychological counselor, intends to investigate the job burnout of university counselors in an integral view, through understanding the dynamic process of job burnout, discuss the influence factors and coping strategies, in order to provide theoretical basis and practice guidance the for prevention or intervention of job burnout, and help the counselors play a better role for university students’ mental health services.Subjects and MethodsThe present study adopted a qualitative study with stratified purposeful sampling method, in order to maximize the information needed for the research problems, several standards were demonstrated for the sample selection: (1)counselors varied in different years of work experience;(2) counselors varied in different departments affiliated (student affairs/related faculties/independent institutions, etc.);(3) different properties (full-time/part-time), but still responsible for students’ psychological health education and counseling;(4) have the relevant professional qualifications (psychological counselor/therapist/psychiatrist).This study actually selected 10 psychological counselors from different universities in Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Zhongshan. All respondents undertake mental health education and counseling for college students. Their counseling hours vary from 2 to 10 hours per week. According to the research purposes and preliminary analysis of the interview data, stop the sampling when the information was saturated by the 10th respondent.This study adopted in-depth interviews for data collection and the research tools included the author, half structured interview outline and recording tool. The main content of the interview outline cover several aspects as follow:relevant working experience and career motivations for being a psychological counselor; understanding of job burnout; experience of job burnout (including performance, influencing factors, consequences and coping, etc.);The vitality of the work experience; prevention or intervention of job burnout. After the interview, the data were coded and transcribed, and then generic analysis and scenario analysis were integrated for the data analysis.Results1.College counselors’understanding of job burnout each have emphasize particular aspect, mostly related to individual’s current main pressure sources, the symptoms containing emotion exhaustion, decreased motivation, alienation attitude and diminished personal accomplishment.2.The college counselors career motivations, including to help others, to understand other people, intellectual curiosity, access control and handle personal "unfinished" events, among them understanding and help others is the most common career motivation.3. Taking professional development needs as clues, college counselors’ job burnout can be roughly divided into four stages, stage to explore and adaptive, stage to seek development, stagnation stage, and stage of enthusiasm recover, the main sources for the pressure of each stage and reaction have their own characteristics.4. In the stage of exploring and adapting, lack of competence is the main pressure source of novice counselors. Besides, there is a gap between novice counselors’ performance and their occupational expectation, the greater the gap, the greater likelihood of burnout with self-doubt, reduced personal accomplishment and emotional exhaustion. In this stage the main strategies concluded improving competency, referral, supervision, and maintain awareness of counseling relationship.5. In the second stage of seeking development, work overload and limited personal development are the main pressure sources of college counselors. While dealing heavy workload and lack of work resources at the same time, counselors are prone to depletion and cynical word attitude; if there is limited opportunity for further promotion, and lack of organizational support, counselors may easily experience cynicism and reduced professional efficacy. In this stage, rest and changing work patterns were mainly used responding to heavy workload; in terms of the limitation of personal development, individual coping strategies play limited roles, the counselors can only adapt to or change the environment.6. In the stagnation stage, college counselors may be entered into the phase of low effort and low return as "stagnation" counselors may still be prone to cynicism and reduced professional efficacy. In this stage, the attitude of cynicism is the coping strategy contained in itself.7. During the enthusiasm recover stage, the excessive workload still continue with the role of management to become dominated. But the status, salary, independent space and available resources also increased accordingly, entering a state of dynamic balance work stress and job engagement. While Continue, they may encounter the risk of "plateau", which further development of space and is less likely, leading to cynicism and low self-efficacy of career. In this stage, The phase balance multiple roles is the main approach, innovation form, adjust the individual job expectations and development direction.8.The protective factors of job mainly include organizational support and counselors’ own resources. Organizational support is incorporated with pleasant working environment, specific job requirements and promotion route, high cohesion of the work team, etc.; Counselors’ own resources mainly contains professional identity, individual proactivity and the support outside of work.Conclusions1. As the change of the career development needs, the job burnout of college counselors is a dynamic development process with stage characteristics. The core symptoms of job burnout, such as depletion, dehumanization (distance), reduced personal accomplishment (low career self-efficacy) at different stages for a different proportion.2.1n the individual factors that affect college counselors job burnout, the individual "unfinished events" has The most prominent role. If the counselor lack of awareness of personal "unfinished events" and deal with it, may easily get excessive emotions involved, also cannot help the client through comprehensive assessment and accurate judgment, once the consultation fails to achieve the desired effect, will greatly increase the risk of counselors’ emotional exhaustion.This suggests that clarifying the impact from personal "unfinished events" on consulting is helpful to reduce the risk of job burnout.3. when the career orientation is unclear, college counselors often need to take on multiple roles, which leads to increased workload; weaken the consultant’s professionalism and professional identity; furthermore, unclear promotion route, which is difficult to get effective occupational status and motivational need. And finally leads to job burnout with alienation, cynicism and low self-efficacy. The basic prevention of job burnout is to emphasize the professional role as a counselor, promotion route from the aspect of policy and organizational system.4. College counselors’ coping strategies of job burnout give priority to in order to change an individual to cope with the situation, namely, of an individual force to promote the change of the external organization system, the consultant only through improve their competence, adjust their mindsets to adapt to the job requirements. In the case of objective pressure source persist, college counselor with higher initiative and professional identity can effective use of existing resources, more work from the activity itself gain self-worth, which can help reducing the possibility of job burnout.Characteristics and innovations of the study1. The expansion of research perspectives. In previous studies, researchers mostly focus on the antecedent variables of job burnout in college counselors and discussed them respectively, such as demographic factors, personality factors and organizational factors, which lack of interaction among various factors. This study based on the current developmental background of Chinese society and the working environment of psychological counselors is conducted to investigate the job burnout in college counselors in an integrity view, focusing on the interaction between society, organizations, and individuals to expand a single research perspective.2. The expansion of research content. Previous studies mostly stay in the general influence factors analysis, such as demographic factors or types of work settings, and they are difficult to reflect the professional characteristics of psychological counselors’job burnout, so they may not provide specific guidance for preventing burnout. This study explore the relationship between career motivations, professional requirements (such as emotional consumption, confidentiality, crisis intervention, etc.) and job burnout of psychological counselors, which aim to highlight the professional characteristics. And provide an empirical basis for subsequent targeted prevention or intervention.3. The innovation of research method. This research adopts qualitative research methods, combined with the generic and situation analysis for data analysis, in which the influence factors of job burnout of dynamic development at different stages, main performance, consequences and coping styles are discussed in depth analysis in the college context. Employing the qualitative research method can break the situation that quantitative investigation method was given the priority in previous studies, and supply or extend dynamic and situational information for the static information conducted by quantitative studies.The limitations of the study and predication of future studies1.On account of the author as an "outsider" to college counselors and had limited understanding and experience about job burnout, though in the process of data collection and analysis the author maintain openness as far as possible, it is still difficult to completely avoid the default and the influence of original value orientation. Therefore, subjective tendency may be interfered in extracting the information or choosing further research directions. Follow-up studies may consider the introduction of the focus group interview method, increase the collision and expression of "insiders" experience, to validate the result of the research from various angles via multi-agent interaction.2.Due to the qualitative study sample size is small, we cannot balance the possible influencing factors, while there are few domestic related research available for contrast verification,. Hence, when promoted to other college counselors, there are still some limitations.In the follow-up study, we can refine the studies on the relationship between related factors and job burnout in college counselors. And quantitative research method and be adopted to verify the results in the large samples. |
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