Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez, Roma, Bakker (2002), The measurement of engagement and burnout.pdf

WILMAR B. SCHAUFELI, MARISA SALANOVA,

VICENTE GONZ ALEZ-ROM A and ARNOLD B. BAKKER

THE MEASUREMENT OF ENGAGEMENT AND BURNOUT:

A TWO SAMPLE CONFIRMATORY FACTOR

ANALYTIC APPROACH

(Received 15 December, 2000; Accepted 5 August, 2001)

619). In addition, the factorial structure

of the Maslach-Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) is assessed and the rela-

tionship between engagement and burnout is examined. Simultaneous conﬁrmatory

factor analyses in both samples conﬁrmed the original three-factor structure of the

MBI-GS (exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efﬁcacy) as well as the hypothesized

three-factor structure of engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption). Contrary to

expectations, a model with two higher-order factors – ‘burnout’ and ‘engagement’ –

did not show a superior ﬁt to the data. Instead, our analyses revealed an alterna-

tive model with two latent factors including: (1) exhaustion and cynicism (‘core of

burnout’); (2) all three engagement scales plus efﬁcacy. Both latent factors are neg-

atively related and share between 22% and 38% of their variances in both samples.

Despite the fact that slightly different versions of the MBI-GS and the engagement

questionnaire had to be used in both samples the results were remarkably similar

across samples, which illustrates the robustness of our ﬁndings.

314) and employees (

N =

KEY WORDS: burnout, engagement, measurement, students.

Two trends recently emerged in burnout research which both boil down

to a broadening of the traditional concept and scope (Maslach et al.,

2001). First, the concept of burnout that was initially closely linked

to the human services such as health care, education, and social work

where employees do ‘people’ work of some kind, has been expanded

towards all other professions and occupational groups. Second, burnout

research seems to shift towards its opposite: job engagement. Instead of

looking exclusively to the negative pole, researchers recently extended

their interest to the positive pole of worker’s well-being. Seen from

this perspective, burnout is rephrased as an erosion of engagement

with the job. This development reﬂects an emerging trend towards a

‘positive psychology’ that focuses on human strengths and optimal

functioning rather than on weaknesses and malfunctioning (Seligman

and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

Journal of Happiness Studies 3: 71–92, 2002.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the factorial structure of a new instrument to

measure engagement, the hypothesized ‘opposite’ of burnout in a sample of univer-

sity students (

N =

WILMAR B. SCHAUFELI ET AL.

Burnout and its Measurement

Originally, burnout as measured with the Maslach-Burnout Inventory

(MBI – Maslach and Jackson, 1981) was deﬁned as a three-dimensional

syndrome of emotional exhaustion (i.e. the draining of emotional

resources because of demanding interpersonal contacts with others),

depersonalization (i.e. a negative, callous, and cynical attitude towards

the recipients of one’s care or services), and lack of personal accom-

plishment (i.e. the tendency to evaluate one’s work with recipients

negatively). Typically, burnout was assumed to occur in individuals

who work with people in some capacity, for instance in health care,

social services, or education. For that very reason, all three original

dimensions of the MBI refer to contacts with other people at the job.

However, nearly a quarter of a century of research and practice has

learned that burnout also exists outside the realm of the human ser-

vices. Therefore, the concept of burnout and its measurement were

broadened to include all employees and not only those who do ‘people

work’ (Maslach and Leiter, 1997). Consequently, the original version of

the MBI was adapted for use outside the human services; this new ver-

sion was called MBI-General Survey (MBI-GS: Schaufeli et al., 1996).

The three dimensions of the MBI-GS parallel those of the original MBI,

in the sense that they are more generic and do not refer to other people

one is working with. For instance, the ﬁrst dimension – exhaustion –is

measured by items that tap fatigue but do not make direct reference to

other people as the source of one’s tiredness. The items that measure

cynicism reﬂect indifference or a distant attitude towards work in gen-

eral, not necessarily with other people. Finally, professional efﬁcacy

has a broader focus compared to the parallel MBI-scale encompass-

ing both social and non-social aspects of occupational accomplish-

ments. Psychometric research with the MBI-GS using conﬁrmatory

factor analysis demonstrated that the three-factor structure is invariant

across occupations such as clerical and maintenance employees, tech-

nical staff, nurses, and managers (Leiter and Schaufeli, 1996), software

engineers and university staff (Taris et al., 1999), and blue collar and

white collar workers (Schutte et al., 2000). In addition, in the latter

study the factor-structure of the MBI-GS proved to be cross-nationally

invariant across samples from Sweden, Finland, and The Netherlands.

The ﬁrst objective of the current study is to replicate the invariance

of the three-factor structure of the MBI-GS across a sample of uni-

versity students and employees, respectively. Previous studies used a

slightly adapted original version of the MBI to measure burnout among

ENGAGEMENT AND BURNOUT

university students in which, for instance, ‘instructors’ was substi-

tuted for ‘recipients’ (Ballogu et al., 1995; Gold et al., 1989; Gold and

Michael, 1985; Powers and Gose, 1986). However, a suchlike reword-

ing is not unproblematic because the meaning of an item might change

dramatically. For instance, the item ‘I treat some instructors as if they

were impersonal objects’ does not refer to a cynical or indifferent atti-

tude towards the main activity of a student (i.e. studying and taking

classes) but to a negative attitude towards another person that is, at

least partly based on personal preferences rather than on study-related

experiences. As a matter of fact, this holds for the entire adapted deper-

sonalization scale. Since the MBI-GS is a more generic instrument

that measures burnout without referring to other people, the inher-

ent problems of rewording are avoided. The substitution in the current

investigation of ‘studies’ for ‘work/job’ is unproblematic because the

former refers to the daily activities that are performed by the students

that constitute their very role. Burnout in the student sample therefore

means feeling exhausted because of study demands, having a cynical

and detached attitude towards one’s study, and feeling incompetent as

a student.

Engagement and its Measurement

To date, relatively little attention has been paid to concepts that might be

considered antipodes of burnout. An exception is ‘psychological pres-

ence’ or ‘to be fully there’, a concept that emerged from role theory and

is deﬁned as an experiential state that accompanies ‘personally engag-

ing behaviors’ that involve the channeling of personal energies into

physical, cognitive, and emotional labors (Kahn, 1992). Although Kahn

(1992) presents a comprehensive theoretical model of psychological

presence, he does not propose an operationalization of the construct.

More recently, Maslach and Leiter (1997) assumed that ‘engagement’

is characterized by energy, involvement, and efﬁcacy which are con-

sidered the direct opposites of the three burnout dimensions exhaus-

tion, cynicism, and lack of professional efﬁcacy, respectively. Engaged

employees have a sense of energetic and effective connection with

their work activities and they see themselves as able to deal com-

pletely with the demands of their job. By implication, engagement in

the view of Maslach and Leiter (1997) is assessed by the opposite pat-

tern of scores on the three MBI dimensions. That is, according to these

authors, low scores on exhaustion and cynicism, and high scores on efﬁ-

cacy are indicative for engagement. By using the MBI for measuring

WILMAR B. SCHAUFELI ET AL.

engagement, however, it is impossible to study its relationship with

burnout empirically since both concepts are considered to be opposite

poles of a continuum that is covered by one single instrument, the MBI.

We take a different perspective by considering burnout and engage-

ment to be opposite concepts that should be measured indepen-

dently with different instruments. Based on a theoretical analysis

(Schaufeli and Bakker, 2001), two underlying dimensions have been

identiﬁed of work-related well-being: (1) activation, ranging from

exhaustion to vigor, and (2) identiﬁcation, ranging from cynicism to

dedication. Burnout is characterized by a combination of exhaustion

(low activation) and cynicism (low identiﬁcation), whereas engagement

is characterized by vigor (high activation) and dedication (high identi-

ﬁcation). Furthermore, burnout includes reduced professional efﬁcacy,

and engagement includes absorption. In contrast to both the other ele-

ments of burnout and engagement that are direct opposites (exhaustion

vs. vigor and cynicism vs. dedication), reduced efﬁcacy and absorption

are not each others direct opposites, rather they are conceptually dis-

tinct aspects that are not the end points of some underlying continuum.

It is noteworthy in this respect that reduced efﬁcacy was added as a

constituting element of burnout on second thoughts after it appeared

as a third factor from a factor-analysis of a preliminary version of the

MBI (Maslach, 1993). In a similar vein, absorption was found to be a

relevant aspect of engagement after some 30 in-depth interviews were

carried out (Schaufeli et al., 2001). Hence, engagement is deﬁned as a

positive, fulﬁlling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by

vigor, dedication, and absorption. Rather than a momentary and speciﬁc

state, engagement refers to a more persistent and pervasive affective-

cognitive state that is not focused on any particular object, event, indi-

vidual, or behavior. Vigor is characterized by high levels of energy and

mental resilience while working, the willingness to invest effort in one’s

work, and persistence even in the face of difﬁculties. Dedication is char-

acterized by a sense of signiﬁcance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and

challenge. Instead of involvement we prefer to use the term dedication.

Although, involvement – like dedication (see above) – is usually deﬁned

in terms of psychological identiﬁcation with one’s work or one’s job

(Kanungo, 1982; Lawler and Hall, 1970), whereby the latter goes one

step beyond, both quantitatively as well as qualitatively. In a qualitative

sense, dedication refers to a particularly strong involvement that goes

one step further than the usual level of identiﬁcation. In a qualitative

sense, dedication has a wider scope by not only referring to a particular

ENGAGEMENT AND BURNOUT

cognitive or belief state but including the affective dimension as well.

The ﬁnal dimension of engagement, absorption , is characterized by

being fully concentrated and deeply engrossed in one’s work, whereby

time passes quickly and one has difﬁculties with detaching oneself

from work. Being fully absorbed in one’s work comes close to what

has been called ‘ﬂow’, a state of optimal experience that is character-

ized by focused attention, clear mind, mind and body unison, effortless

concentration, complete control, loss of self-consciousness, distortion

of time, and intrinsic enjoyment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). However,

typically, ﬂow is a more complex concept that includes many aspects

and refers to rather particular, short-term ‘peak’ experiences instead

of a more pervasive and persistent state of mind, as is the case with

engagement.

Thus, contrary to Maslach and Leiter (1997) we do not feel that

engagement is adequately measured by the opposite proﬁle of MBI

scores. Although we concur that, conceptually speaking, engagement

is the positive antithesis of burnout, we acknowledge that the measure-

ment of both concepts, and hence its structure, differs. As a conse-

quence, engagement is operationalized in its own right. It is the second

aim of our paper to investigate some psychometric features of our self-

constructed engagement inventory that consists of the three dimensions

mentioned above: vigor, dedication, and absorption. More speciﬁcally,

the internal consistencies of the three scales as well as their factorial

validity will be studied.

Engagement and Burnout

In addition to the psychometric qualities of the engagement and burnout

inventories, the relationship between both concepts will be researched.

Since engagement is deﬁned as the opposite experience of burnout, it is

expected that all burnout and engagement scales are negatively related

(i.e. when efﬁcacy is reversibly scored as reduced efﬁcacy). A negative

correlation is particularly expected between exhaustion and vigor, and

between cynicism and dedication since they represent opposite poles of

the activation and identiﬁcation dimensions, respectively (see above).

Moreover, since burnout and engagement are both multidimensional

constructs it is expected that a model that takes this higher-order struc-

ture into consideration ﬁts best to the data. In other words, we predict

that the ﬁt of a model that assumes two second-order factors (‘burnout’

and ‘engagement’) on which all three burnout scales and all three

engagement scales load, respectively, shows a superior ﬁt compared to

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