Abstract
Sport science has focused more and more on burnout in sports. Up to now, however, there are some studies that deal with burnout among coaches, but there are very few that deal with burnout among athletes. This article provides an overview on the topic and presents data from a cross-sectional study of 785 non-elite endurance athletes regarding possible predictors of athlete burnout. Burnout was assessed with a German version of the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ; Raedeke & Smith, 2001), and multiple regressions were performed using burnout and its sub-dimensions as outcomes. 1.3% of the sample reported high levels of athlete burnout; various situational and demographic variables (e.g. training hours per week, gender, main sports) could be identified as determinants of the phenomenon. These results support the conditional theory (e.g. Coakley, 1992), which links burnout to environmental factors and sees stress as a symptom rather than a causal factor of burnout.
Highlights
The term burnout refers to a psychological concept that is strongly characterized by the work of Freudenberger (1974) and Maslach (1976)
Athletes were randomly recruited subsequent to six endurance sports events and asked to participate in the study by filling out a questionnaire and giving informed consent concerning the usage of their data
Apart from situational variables, demographic variables were considered as being possible predictors of the burnout syndrome
Summary
The term burnout refers to a psychological concept that is strongly characterized by the work of Freudenberger (1974) and Maslach (1976). The burnout phenomenon was first investigated in the 1980s (Coackley, 1992; Dale & Weinberg, 1990). Maslach & Jackson (1984), define three core characteristics that are widely accepted and can be identified in most burnout definitions: exhaustion (physical, mental and emotional), cynicism (depersonalization) and low personal accomplishment (Dale & Weinberg, 1990; Maslach et al, 2001). The burnout syndrome is accepted as being a reaction to chronic, but not occasional stress that develops over time (Dale & Weinberg, 1990). The operationalization of the abovementioned burnout dimension can be found in the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the historically first instrument to measure burnout (Maslach & Jackson, 1996)
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