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The Burnout Measure, Short Version

February 2005
International Journal of Stress Management 12(1):78-88

DOI:10.1037/1072-5245.12.1.78

Authors:

The Burnout Measure (BM; Pines & Aronson, 1988) is a widely used self-report measure of burnout. It includes 21 items, evaluated on 7-point frequency scales, assessing the level of an individual's physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. In this article, a shorter, 10-item version of the BM (BMS) is described that was developed in response to researchers' and practitioners' need for an easy-to-use instrument requiring less questionnaire space and less time for administration and scoring. Data from 2 national samples (Israeli Jewish and Arab) and 3 occupational samples attest to the validity and reliability of the BMS. Its ease of use and high face validity make the BMS attractive for researchers and practitioners interested in stress management. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

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The Burnout Measure, Short Version

Ayala Malach-Pines

Ben-Gurion University

The Burnout Measure (BM; Pines & Aronson, 1988) is a widely used

self-report measure of burnout. It includes 21 items, evaluated on 7-point

frequency scales, assessing the level of an individual’s physical, emotional,

and mental exhaustion. In this article, a shorter, 10-item version of the BM

(BMS) is described that was developed in response to researchers’ and

practitioners’ need for an easy-to-use instrument requiring less question-

naire space and less time for administration and scoring. Data from 2

national samples (Israeli Jewish and Arab) and 3 occupational samples attest

to the validity and reliability of the BMS. Its ease of use and high face validity

make the BMS attractive for researchers and practitioners interested in stress

management.

KEY WORDS: burnout measure, short version; burnout assessment

Since its introduction to the scientiﬁc community, burnout has been a

focus of interest for both researchers and practitioners. According to its

pioneer researchers, burnout is the end result of a process of attrition wherein

highly motivated individuals lose their spirit (Freudenberger, 1980; Maslach,

1982; Pines & Aronson, 1988). Although there are different deﬁnitions of

burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 1997; Maslach & Schaufeli, 1993; Maslach,

Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001), one of the most cited deﬁnitions (see Schaufeli &

Enzmann, 1998) views burnout as a state of physical, emotional, and mental

The interviews with the two Israeli (Jewish and Arab) national samples were made

possible by a grant from the School of Management at Ben-Gurion University. The study of

police ofﬁcers’ stress and burnout was supported by a grant from the Israeli Ministry of Public

Security. Special thanks to Giora Keinan, co-director of Tel-Aviv University’s Psychology

Department. Thanks too to the Chief Scientist of the Israeli Ministry of Public Security, the

Head of its Social Sciences Division, and members of the study’s Steering Committee. The

dialysis nurses’ data were collected by Mahamed Haskia of the Rabin Medical Center and

Ben-Gurion University.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ayala Malach-Pines,

Department of Business Administration, School of Management, Ben-Gurion University of the

Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel 84105. E-mail: pinesa@som.bgu.ac.il

2005, Vol. 12, No. 1, 78– 88 1072-5245/05/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1072-5245.12.1.78

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Since the 1970s, occupational burnout has become a popular topic of research and an important concern for career counsellors. The majority of studies on burnout focussed on documenting its existence within certain occupational groups. The assumption underlying these studies is that occupational burnout is a universal phenomenon that can be best explained by the stresses characterising a particular occupation or organisation. Few studies examined burnout cross-culturally. The present study attempted to demonstrate the importance of such a cross-cultural perspective using a comparison between Israeli Jews and Arabs, who live in the same country but are culturally different: Arabs traditional and collectivist, Jews modern and individualistic. Interviews with representative samples of the Jewish and Arab populations in Israel show significant differences in occupational burnout and various burnout correlates. Thus, Arabs’ burnout correlated negatively with the quality of relationships with mother and father, Jews’ with superiors and co-workers. Arabs were significantly less likely than Jews to talk about a work-related problem or approach a counsellor. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications for career counselling.

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We investigated the discriminant validity of the frequently used Burnout Measure (BM) (Pines et al ., 1981), in relation to depressive symptomatology and anxiety. Following Russell's (1980) work on the multidimensional space of affective states, BM's items were hypothesized to reside in three separate regions of that space, labeled anxiety, depression, and wornout, with wornout representing a combination of physical and emotional exhaustion. Respondents were 704 senior army officers, who completed a questionnaire that included BM items, standard measures of depression and anxiety, and measures of military-related stresses. Their responses to the BM items and to the depression and anxiety scales were subjected to multidimensional scaling analysis. Excepting an unexpected finding related to a fourth construct, loss of vigor, the results were supportive of the hypothesis and led to the construction of three unidimensional measures, respectively gauging anxiety, depression, and wornout. The correlations of the three measures with the stress measures supported their discriminant validity. We suggest that future research using the BM should focus on the set of items that were found to load on the dimension of wornout, to the exclusion of items tapping depression and anxiety.