Blazing New Trails - Connexions

84 CRITICAL ISSUES IN SHARED LEADERSHIP
been widely used by researchers in education and other fields to measure professional burnout
(Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996; Zabel & Zabel 2002). According to Maslach et al. (1996),
The Emotional Exhaustion (EE) subscale assesses feelings of being emotionally
overextended and exhausted by one’s work. The Depersonalization (Dp) subscale
measures an unfeeling and impersonal response toward recipients of one’s service,
care, treatment, or instruction. The Personal Accomplishment (PA) subscale assesses
feelings of competence and successful achievement in one’s work with people. (p. 4)
The MBI-ES is self-administered and takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete with
easy to follow, straight-forward instructions. There is no indication on the cover letter,
consent form, or MBI-ES survey that this is a burnout measure. According to Maslach et al.
(1996), “The scale should be presented as a survey of job-related attitudes and not be linked to
burnout in any way” (p. 7). The participants must remain unaware that the MBI-ES measures
degree of burnout to minimize the reactive effect of personal beliefs or expectations regarding
burnout. Each respondent’s test form was scored with a scoring key and a frequency table
indicating high, moderate, and low levels of burnout. There are no cut-off scores. Burnout
was conceptualized as a continuous variable where the scores on the EE, Dp, and PA
subscales reflected points along a continuum ranging from moderate to high degrees of
experienced feelings (Maslach et al., 1996; Torelli & Gmelch, 1992; Zabel & Zabel 2002).
Higher scores on the Emotional Exhaustion subscale (>26) and Depersonalization subscale
(>13) and lower scores on the Personal Accomplishment subscale (>37) reflected a higher
degree of burnout. Lower scores on the EE (