Assessing Occupational Burnout with the Maslach Inventory

The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was designed to measure job burnout (Champion and Westbrook, 1984 (link)). The scale has 22 items under three aspects: emotional exhaustion (nine items), depersonalization (five items), and personal accomplishment (eight items). All items are graded on a scale of 0 to 6, with the scores for every element added together. Emotional exhaustion and depersonalization are positive scores, and the score ranges from 0 to 54 points and 0 to 30 points, respectively. Regarding depersonalization, a score of 2–5 is considered mild, 6–9 is considered moderate, and above 9 is considered severe. The higher the score in these two aspects, the more serious the burnout. Personal accomplishment is scored in reverse, with a score range of 0–48. A score of 39–45 is considered mild, 34–39 is considered moderate, and below 34 is considered severe. The lower the score, the more severe the burnout. The Cronbach’s coefficients for the subscales in this study were 0.887, 0.815, and 0.883, respectively.