Psychology
in
the
Schools
Volume
ZS,
January
I988
A NATIONAL SURVEY OF BURNOUT AMONG SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGISTS’
THOMAS
J.
HUBERTY E. SCOTT HUEBNER
Indiana University Western Illinois University
The purpose of this study was
to
investigate the correlates of burnout in a national
sample of school psychologists.
A
stress questionnaire, demographic information sheet,
and Maslach Burnout Inventory were mailed to 600 randomly selected members of
the National Association of School Psychologists.
A
total
of
234 practitioners com-
prised the final sample. The results indicated that burnout was related to demographic
(e.g., age), environmental (e.g., role definitions), and professional activity (e.g., role
diversity) variables. Implications for the field of school psychology and future research
are discussed.
Burnout can be an important problem among a variety of helping professionals
(Maslach, 1982). Freudenberger (1975) initially described burnout as the emotional and
physical exhaustion of human service workers in alternative health care agencies. Em-
pirical work by Maslach and Jackson (1981a) further elaborated the construct to in-
clude three components. First, burnout involves emotional exhaustion, in which pro-
fessionals report feelings
of
being exhausted and overwhelmed with work demands.
Second, burnout includes depersonalization, in which impersonal attitudes develop
toward clients. Burned out professionals become indifferent in their responses to their
clients. A frequent result is “blaming the victim,” that is, blaming the clients for their
own difficulties. The third component is
a
reduced sense of personal accomplishment,
which is displayed in feelings of being incompetent to help their clients. Given this defini-
tion, it should be noted that burnout and job dissatisfaction are not synonymous,
although they do overlap. Burnout represents a broader, more inclusive construct. In
fact, “high levels of job satisfaction can coexist with high levels
of
stress and burnout”
(Farber, 1983, p.9).
Profesionals who burn out thus lack the emotional resources to provide effective
services, although some burnout victims may work harder and longer hours in a
misdirected effort to combat feeling overwhelmed. The effects
of
burnout range from
exhaustion and detachment to disorientation, physical complaints, anxiety, depression,
and substance abuse (Huebner
&
Huberty, 1984; Reiner
&
Hartshorne, 1982). In short,
the debilitating effects
of
burnout can have far-reaching effects on the quality of ser-
vices provided to clients. Burnout could thus be an especially serious problem for school
psychologists, who provide direct and indirect services to a wide array
of
clients and
who show high stress levels (Wise, 1985) and turnover rates in some settings (Hughes,
1986; Solly
&
Hohenshil, 1986; Vensel, 1981).
While there is evidence to suggest that various helping professionals can show
characteristics of burnout (Maslach
&
Jackson, 1982), there has been a paucity of research
concerning burnout (as contrasted with job satisfaction) among school psychologists.
A review of the literature yielded only one study
of
burnout among school psychologists
(Reiner
&
Hartshorne, 1982). These researchers asked 43 Kansas school psychologists
to complete Freudenberger’s (1980) Burnout Questionnaire, and found that the par-
Correspondence should be addressed to
E.
Scott Huebner, Dept. of Psychology, Western Illinois University,
Macomb, IL 61455.
‘This research was funded in Dart bv
U.S.
Deuartment of Education Grant GOO8200313 awarded to Jack
A.
Cummings and James McLeskey
of
Indiana University.
54
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