Analysis on the Reliability and Validity of the Burnout Questionnaire in Mental Workers

[Objective] To evaluate the. reliability and validity of the revised Burnout Questionnaire among mental workers. [Methods] 1250 participants were sampled with stratified cluster random method from various kinds of occupations, including administrators, teachers in high schools and so on. Participants were asked to fill out Burnout Questionnaire. [Results] All 15, items of Burnout Questionnaire were subjected to factor analysis, and three latent factors were identified. According to the contents described in the items and Maslash burnout theory, they were named emotional exhaustion (EE, five items); depersonalization (DP, five items), and lack of personal accomplishment(PA, five. items). Cronbach alpha coefficient between total items of Burnout Questionnaire and each factor varied from 0.721 to 0.832 through the consistency test. Findings manifested that the reliability index of the revised scale was greater than original research except Split-half coefficient of depersonalization and retest reliability of emotional exhaustion, indicating that revised Burnout Questionnaire had a better homogeneous. The fitting effect of model was better by confirmatory factor analysis, and subitems' factor loadings were higher than 0.35(P<0.01), indicating that each item of latent variable had a fine validity. Whatever the samples were, single or total sample, the fitting index of the three-factor model was superior to the single-factor model and the double-factor model,and besides, if was also superior to the index of the original scale. The revised Burnout Questionnaire had good content validity. [Conclusion] The reliability and validity of the revised Burnout Questionnaire is acceptable and can be used for assessing burnout in mental workers.