Confirmatory factor analysis of the maslach burnout inventory

Burnout has received a great deal of attention in the past 20 years. Although burnout can occur in any vocational field, it is most frequently studied in the human services professions, especially health, teaching, and social work. One of the vocational areas most intensively studied in the burnout literature is public child welfare. Workers in this field are particularly vulnerable to burnout; social workers engaged in child welfare practice show more depersonalization, less worker comfort, more role ambiguity and conflict, and more value conflict than comparable workers in family services agencies or community mental health settings (Jayaratne and Chess, 1984). Inadequate pay and working conditions, lack of recognition, chronic stress, overwork, and a range of other negative job characteristics, such as having enormous responsibility and virtually no authority, have led to a continuing crisis among child welfare workers. The situation has deteriorated to the point where some authors have described burnout in child welfare services as an inevitable occurrence that can merely be postponed (Lee, 1979).