Do Feelings of Personal Accomplishment Reduce Job Exit from Burnout in Child Welfare Workers?

Are specially trained IV-E MSW graduates in child welfare able to draw on personal characteristics to reduce job exit from burnout? Although social workers were believed to be particularly susceptible to burnout, Soderfeldt et. al. (1995) reviewed 18 studies on burnout and found that only 10 reported actual scores and only six had comparable settings. In contrast to the authors of the reviewed articles, Soderfeldt et. al concluded that burnout in social work was low and no cause for alarm. Specific to child welfare, a recent review by Zlotnik, et al. (2005) presents three ways to improve retention: 1) leveraging personal characteristics as burnout prevention, 2) being bilingual, 3) organizational factors, and 4) improved training through the Title IV-E program. In a meta-review of child welfare workforce retention, interaction effects were cited as an area needing research (Mor Barak et al., 2001). This study fills this gap by asking if the MBI subscale scores predict retention of child welfare workers while controlling for age, race, gender, relationship status and their interaction effects on the three subscales. Methods: This study uses survey data collected by mail from 1996 through September 2005 from 765 MSW graduates who received a Title IV-E stipend and who work in public child welfare. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), consists of three factors: emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and depersonalization (Maslach and Jackson 1981). Year to year response rates have averaged slightly over 51%. Non-responders had no observed significant differences except greater than expected proportion of African-Americans and Leavers. After computing MBI scores, data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, and descriptive statistics to determine whether these IV-E graduates reported burnout after two years. We used multiple regression to estimate the relative risks (or differences in odds) of job exit for different racial and ethnic groups (Valid N = 717). Results: Consistent with past research, 44% of the sample reported high emotional exhaustion, but 72% had moderate or high feelings of personal accomplishment. Those who are one standard deviation above the mean for emotional exhaustion and over 40 years old have 1.05 times the odds of being a leaver (p < 0.01). Controlling for level of burnout, age, gender, partnership status, Native Americans have 1.5 to 2.7 times the risk of leaving than whites, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Blacks (p <.05). Hispanics have 1.8 times the risk of leaving as Blacks (p = .05). Those who identify as multiracial or other race have two times the odds of leaving as Blacks (p = .05). The results need to be interpreted with caution because some groups have small cell sizes. Conclusions and Implications: Among those who participated in the study, experience has a protective effect on burnout. Those who do experience burnout have greater odds of leaving. Social work needs further research on interaction effects to inform agency management on how to prevent burnout that is sensitive to experience, race and cultural differences.