Validation Study of the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory with Romanian Social Workers

Background and Purpose

Social work is regarded as a stressful and demanding profession, with many social workers experiencing burnout. Burnout can lead to social workers’ mental and physical health issues, deterioration in services provided by social workers and increased turnover rates in agencies. Burnout is characterized as a condition of physical and emotional exhaustion caused by a persistent imbalance in coping mechanisms and stress, particularly when connected to work. Social workers are believed to be especially prone to burnout because of their frequently demanding, emotionally taxing, and multitasking work environments, which provide few resources and relatively poor compensation given their level of education.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is a commonly used measure to assess burnout. However, recent studies have found one subscale of the MBI--personal accomplishment has been found to work differently with the other two components. Considering the limitations, Kristensen and colleagues developed the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) to investigate burnout experienced by Danish human service workers. Although researchers have examined the psychometric properties of the CBI among other health professionals, relatively few studies have included social workers as respondents. This research aims to fill this gap.

Methods

Respondents were 324 Romanian social workers, with 90% being females, and 82% working in urban areas. Average age of the respondents was 40 years old (SD = 9.49), and their average work experience was 12 years (SD = 8.15). Most of our sample worked in the public sector (76.90%), with most in a direct-service role (94.80%).

Measures. CBI. The CBI is a 19-item scale measuring burnout, consisting of three factors: personal burnout (6 items), work-related burnout (7 items), and client-related burnout (6 items). Items are rated on a five-point scale ranging from “1 = never” to “5 = always”. Higher scores indicate more severe burnout.

Analytical plan. We used R Studio to conduct the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the factor structure of the CBI and applied three unidimensional IRT Graded Response Models to examine the item-level fit.

Results

The CFA results revealed that the CBI is a correlated three-factor scale with correlated errors of three paired items. The unidimensional IRT analyses revealed that the most reliable item on the personal burnout subscale was item 5, the least reliable item was item 6. The most reliable item on the work-related burnout subscale was item 2, the least reliable item was item 7. The most reliable item on the client-related burnout subscale was item 5, the least reliable item was item 4. The client-related burnout subscale only performed well on the theta scale in the range of 0.5 to 1.5, indicating that the subscale only predicts burnout well for social workers who have a high score on client-related burnout.

Conclusions and Implications

The correlated errors for each subscale may indicate that Romanian social workers understand the items differently than the original authors of the measure intended. This study revealed that the concept of burnout may be culturally specific. Interventions for burnout need to be cautious about the cultural context.