An Investigation into the Variables Affecting School Principals Burnout through XGBoost Method

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the impact of organizational psychological capital, organizational citizenship behaviour, individual performance and various demographic variables on school principas’ burnout in public schools. The opinions of princals working in Diyarbakır province and districts between the years of 2016- 2017 were considered. This research employed a survey model, which falls under the quantitative research paradigm. Data were collected from 254 principals through the administration of the Organizational Psychological Capital Scale, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Scale, Individual Performance Scale, and School Principal Burnour Scale. The collected data were analyzed using the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) mining method. The findings revealed several key predictors of principals’ burnout, including altruism, resilience, professional seniority, individual performance, civic virtue, type of school, hope, sportsmanship, school principal’s length of service, marital status, optimism and the district of the school. Based on these results, it is recommended to alleviate principals’ burnout by reducing their responsibilities and creating conducive environments that foster their leadership roles.