The Relationships Between Job Burnout, Job Stress, and Job Satisfaction Among Schoolteachers

Abstract

Purpose Questions have been raised concerning the separateness of the three concepts, job burnout, job stress, and job satisfaction. It is best to avoid coining new terms such as "burnout" if they are unnecessary. Further, understanding the relationships between these concepts may help prevent confusion in future studies involving these concepts. The purpose of the study was to increase the understanding of all three of the concepts by understanding their relationships to one another. Specifically, are job burnout, job stress, and job satisfaction best viewed as three separate concepts? If not, further questions arise. Is job burnout the same thing as job satisfaction? Could job stress also be placed under the job satisfaction rubric? Finally, are job burnout and job stress part of the same phenomenon? Procedures and Conclusions Surveys were sent to 1512 teachers who were randomly selected from all the members of the Maryland State Teachers Association. Of these, 741 (49%) responded. Eliminating unusable responses brought the final total to 701 teachers. Two measures of each concept were utilized, one a multiple item test and the other a single global question answered on a five point scale. The multiple item instruments were:

for job satisfaction, Smith, Kendal, and Hukin's (1969) Job Descriptive Index, Work Scale; for burnout, Maslach and Jackson's (1979a) Maslach Burnout Inventory, Emotional Exhaustion Scale; and for stress, Cichon and Koff's (1980) Teaching ~~ents Stress Inventory. For the three concepts, the global questions were similar in structure to this example: "In general, how stressful do you find being a teacher?" 1 Not Stressful 2 Just a Little stressful 3 Somewhat Stressful 4 Quite Stressful 5 Extremely Stressful These data were analyzed by way of a multitrait-multimethod matrix (Campbell and Fiske, 1959) and a factor analysis. These approaches allowed an assessment of the pattern of the relationships between these concepts. It was concluded that the preponderance of the evidence implied that job burnout, job stress, and job satisfaction are best considered separate concepts. In addition, it was found that there was a poor correlation between a global measure of stress and the Teaching Events Stress Inventory. The study tends to suggest that the TESI be reexamined before being used again in this fashion for possible changes which would allow a higher correlation between it and a global measure of job stress.