Burnout Stigma Inventory: Initial Development and Validation in Industry and Academia

Abstract

Although burnout is a risk factor for various negative mental and physical outcomes, its prevention is hampered by the stigma associated with burnout. The current research therefore reports on the initial development and validation of a novel measure of perceived burnout stigma. Study 1 (n = 318) describes the construction and initial evaluation of scale items derived from established mental health stigma and burnout scales. Study 2 (n = 705) then replicated the burnout stigma factor structure established in the initial study. Additionally, it evaluates relationships between occupational and school burnout stigma and indicators of mental health. Hierarchical multiple regressions showed that burnout stigma accounted for variance in depression, anxiety, and stress over and beyond that of burnout. Study 3 (n = 682) extended these findings via crosslagged and bidirectional models, demonstrating that burnout stigma predicted mental health indicators 6 weeks later. Study 4 (n = 717) supplemented earlier exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses using item response theory to further demonstrate that perceived burnout stigma is a unidimensional construct potentially applicable to both work and school settings. Overall, the current research resulted in an eight-item burnout stigma instrument (BSI-8) with excellent psychometric properties that predicts indicators of mental health.

Why making promotion after a burnout is like boiling the ocean

“…Similar to the statistical theory of discrimination, status-based discrimination suggests that stereotypes surrounding a particular group's performance potential influences the expectations of such workers. Applied to the case of workers with a history of burnout ('the status characteristic'), widely shared cultural beliefs surrounding burnout would link lesser competence to workers who suffered from burnout (May et al, 2020)-which would then proceed to unfold in a self-fulfilling way by being given fewer opportunities and being evaluated using a stricter standard (Correll and Bernard, 2006). Although the statistical and status-based theories both centre around stereotypical perceptions the crucial difference between both approaches, as explained by Correll and Bernard (2006), is that in the statistical theory, discrimination is driven by rational decisions under informational frictions, while in the latter it is instilled by cognitive biases.…”

“…The first two job characteristics-the required quantitative and qualitative job demands-were potential moderators of promotion discrimination because differences in workload between jobs could elicit varying responses from managers based on burnout patients' productivity stigma. More specifically, as burnout's main determinant, jobs with a high quantitative workload could be perceived as too demanding for ex-burnout patients because of stigmatic perceptions of reduced stress tolerance, poor health (Sterkens et al, 2021), and weakness (May et al, 2020). Similarly, we varied jobs based on their qualitative workload (i.e.…”

“…Similarly, we varied jobs based on their qualitative workload (i.e. task complexity) because of the burnout stigma of reduced intelligence (May et al, 2020), which might lead to perceptions of reduced performance on complex tasks. The vacancies also varied on the impact of errors made because reintegrated ex-burnout patients are generally perceived as having higher probabilities of taking future sick leave (Mendel et al, 2015) or being more error prone from the reduced health stability.…”

“…Based on a comprehensive study of the literature, we bundled eight productivity perceptions with relevance to former burnout patients. More specifically, we asked participants whether they thought candidates had sufficient (i) leadership capacities (Mendel et al, 2015), could take on an (ii) exemplary role for others (Boštjančič and Koračin, 2014), were sufficiently (iii) motivated (May et al, 2020), (iv) autonomous (Sterkens et al, 2021), (v) stress tolerant (Ozawa and Yaeda, 2007;Mendel et al, 2015), possessed sufficient (vi) learning capacities (Öhman et al, 2007;Boštjančič and Koračin, 2014;Grossi et al, 2015), were (vii) currently sufficiently healthy and whether they would often (viii) take sick leave in the future (Mendel et al, 2015). In line with the invisibility hypothesis (Milgrom and Oster, 1987;Cassidy, DeVaro and Kauhanen, 2016), the last statement gauged perceived candidate 'visibility', that is, whether the manager believed the candidate could easily find a similar job in another organization if denied the promotion.…”

“…Such patterns of beliefs are at odds with the stigma carried by burnout patients (e.g. 'being weaker', (May et al, 2020) and expectations of unpleasant collaborations (Boštjančič and Koračin, 2014). A final characteristic that might be associated with favourable employment opportunities for burnout patients is managers' personal experience with burnout syndrome (Sterkens et al, 2021).…”