Thesis

extensively researched all around the world but life satisfaction in relation to burnout seems to
be an area in need of much more research. However, the minimum previous research in this
area has shown that the connection between life satisfaction and burnout has been both
confirmed and disconfirmed. Thus the present study’s result has been shown by previous
research as well; however more research in this area is needed in order to reach a higher
consensus. When it comes to burnout and personality, the personality factor in this study
was measured by the psychological immunity factors. It was shown that the Swedish nurses
attained higher scores on the majority of the 16 subscales and higher means for the three main
factors, which supported the first part of the fourth hypothesis. The present study also showed
that higher psychological immunity resulted in lower burnout for the Swedish nurses, with
which the second part of the fourth hypothesis was supported. Previous research which has
connected burnout to psychological immunity as the personality factor has not been found and
thus the results of the present study could neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed by previous
research. Thus, more research is needed in this area. However, the present study also
highlighted other personality factors which have been positively and negatively connected to
burnout. In the area of burnout and social support it was shown that no significant
differences could be found for social support between the two nursing samples in this study.
The fact that the Hungarian nurses were not married to a higher degree than the Swedish
nurses made it impossible for the fifth hypothesis to be further investigated. Also age
differences in the two samples were discussed as reasons for Hungarian nurse4s being single
to a higher degree. However, the fact that social support turned out to be high for both the
Swedish and the Hungarian nurses were in itself interesting results. Previous research has to a
great extent shown that social support could be related to burnout and thus the finding of the
present study was somewhat unexpected. Answering the question which factors contributed
to higher burnout in this study; it was interesting to point out that the sixth hypothesis
showed that higher psychological immunity and Swedish nationality were the best protective
factors against burnout. The fact that psychological immunity has not been linked to burnout
in previous research makes it even more exciting that this result was attained. This result
makes it a strong argument for future researchers to conduct more research in this area. The
last hypothesis looked at burnout and the demographic variables and here again the results
of the present study were somewhat unexpected. The reason for this is that only two variables
showed to have a significant effect on burnout in this study and they were nationality and
marital status. Thus, the seventh hypothesis could not be supported completely since all of
the demographic variables were expected to have an influence on burnout. Previous research