Development and initial psychometrics of the Counselor Burnout Inventory.(Report)

This article describes the development and psychometric properties of the Counselor Burnout Inventory (CBI), which is designed to meet the needs of the counseling profession by assessing burnout in counselors. Factor structure, concurrent validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability of the CBI scores are reported. Implications for practice are discussed.

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Health occupations were some of the first professions examined in the early research on burnout (Caldwell, 1984; Savicki & Cooley, 1981), and they continue to be of interest to investigators attempting to define and predict an individual's level of discouragement and motivation (Angerer, 2003; Brown & Wallace, 2004; Pines, 2000; Taylor & Barling, 2004). One profession that has received considerable attention is the counseling profession (Boy & Pine, 1980; Elman & Dowd, 1997; Kraus, 2005; O'Halloran & Linton, 2000; Osborn, 2004; Watkins, 1983; Woods, 2005), with special attention given to counselor burnout and performance.

Harris (1984) maintained that burnout is manifested in individuals emotionally and physically. Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, disenchantment, and emotional exhaustion--in addition to negative attitudes involving inflexibility, negativism, and powerlessness--are all common symptoms. Somatic states such as physical exhaustion and increased susceptibility to illness and emotional drain are also attributed to burnout (Lattanzi, 1981). Current research, however, is paying more attention to the predictors of burnout in the social environment in which counselors work rather than to counselors' symptoms, because the structure and functioning of the workplace shape how people interact with one another and how they carry out their jobs (Azar, 2000; Maslach, 2005).

Maslach (2005) contended that when people in the workplace do not recognize the human side of work and there are major mismatches between the nature of the job and the nature of people, there will be a greater risk of burnout. Organizational contributors to burnout may include bureaucratization, communication, level of decision making, role models, job expectations, and the physical/psychological environment. These contributors to burnout are manifested in the increased use of sick time, number of on-the-job accidents, increased use of personal days, the decreased use of vacation time, and diminishing work quality (Harris, 1984). A high number of such burnout contributors may indicate major dysfunction in a therapeutic organization, which says more about the workplace than it does about the employees (Maslach & Leiter, 1997).

It is not surprising that professional counselors encounter job strain in the workplace. The stress of the physical, mental, and emotional challenge of caring for others is to be expected (Osborn, 2004). The stresses encountered by counselors stem from both the nature of the work and the role expectations of the profession (Evans & Villavisanis, 1997). Previous research has demonstrated that employees in the helping professions are particularly vulnerable to the experience of burnout and to the emotional and behavioral consequences of both burnout and lowered job satisfaction (e.g., Kirk-Brown & Wallace, 2004). Many counselors have numerous noncounseling responsibilities, and these responsibilities can lead to a loss of professional perspective and personal commitment (Boy & Pine, 1980). Factors such as a lack of influence over decisions at work, high work demands and insufficient resources, lack of feedback on job performance, and role ambiguity and role conflict characterize today's mental health environment and contribute to low morale among professionals (Osborn, 2004; Thompson, 1999).

Research on counselor burnout (Emersin & Markos, 1996; Evans & Villavisanis, 1997; Malach-Pines & Yafe-Yani, 2001; McCarthy & Frieze, 1999) suggests that burnout can be defined as a counselor having significant difficulty performing the necessary functions of his or her job at an objectively competent level. Burned-out counselors, then, may exhibit behaviors that make the client feel that the quality of care he or she is receiving is substandard, even though counselors have an obligation to provide clients with the best care possible to improve the quality of clients' lives (McCarthy & Frieze, 1999). In this study, burnout is characterized as the failure to perform clinical tasks appropriately because of personal discouragement, apathy toward system stress, and emotional/physical drain.