Abstract
During the last few years, burnout has gained more and more attention for its strong connection with job performance, absenteeism, and presenteeism. It is a psychological phenomenon that depends on occupation, also presenting differences between sexes. However, to properly compare the burnout levels of different groups, a psychometric instrument with adequate validity evidence should be selected (i.e., with measurement invariance). This paper aims to describe the psychometric properties of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) version adapted for workers from Brazil and Portugal, and to compare burnout across countries and sexes. OLBI's validity evidence based on the internal structure (dimensionality, reliability, and measurement invariance), and validity evidence based on relationships with other variables (work engagement) are described. Additionally, it aims presents a revision of different OLBI's versions—since this is the first version of the instrument developed simultaneously for both countries—it is an important instrument for understanding burnout between sexes in organizations. Data were used from 1,172 employees across two independent samples, one from Portugal and the other from Brazil, 65 percent being female. Regarding the OLBI internal structure, a reduced version (15 items) was obtained. The high correlation between disengagement and exhaustion, suggested the existence of a second-order latent factor, burnout, which presented measurement invariance for country and sex. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Portuguese OLBI version presented good goodness-of-fit indices and good internal consistency values. No statistically significant differences were found in burnout between sexes or countries. OLBI also showed psychometric properties that make it a promising and freely available instrument to measure and compare burnout levels of Portuguese and Brazilian employees.
Highlights
Work organizations and labor relations all over the world are undergoing significant changes, with an impact on workers’ lives and health, since the demands of modern working life are increasing pressure to levels never seen before (International Labour Office, 2016)
Others researchers have obtained measurement invariance between countries (Demerouti et al, 2003) and between workers and students (Reis et al, 2015). These findings suggest that burnout is not exclusive to human services professions (Demerouti and Nachreiner, 1998; Demerouti et al, 2001) since various studies have tested burnout levels using
To check if items contained within each factor are related to each other, the average variance extracted (AVE) was calculated for disengagement (AVE = 0.57), and for exhaustion (AVE = 0.50)
Summary
Work organizations and labor relations all over the world are undergoing significant changes, with an impact on workers’ lives and health, since the demands of modern working life are increasing pressure to levels never seen before (International Labour Office, 2016). It is a severe reaction to occupational stress, having in its symptomatology changes to physical and psychological health and behavioral-motivational aspects, expressed through a reduction in job satisfaction or even a change of profession (Marques-Pinto et al, 2003). It is a syndrome (psychological in nature) that may occur when workers chronically face a stressful working environment and feel low resources to face high job demands (Maslach et al, 2001; Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Maslach, 2015). The definition of Burnout has been expanded from a concept associated with human services professions to a concept related to all kinds of professions that can be affected (Lindblom et al, 2006)
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