The The Development of Burnout Scale for Teachers Teaching in Fundamental Education Level, Under the Office of the Private Education Commission (OPEC)

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to develop a burnout scale for teachers and to examine its quality. The sample consisted of 600 teachers from the fundamental education level under the Office of the Private Education Commission (OPEC), Chon Buri Primary Educational Service Area Office 3. The research methodology was divided into two phases: Phase 1involved developing the burnout scale for teachers based on Maslach & Jackson’s concept. This resulted in a 7-level rating scale that elaborates on behavioral expressions in three aspects: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment and Phase 2 involved examining the quality of the burnout scale, including its content validity, discrimination, and reliability. The research results were as follows: 1.The burnout scale for teachers consisted of three components: 1) Emotional exhaustion with 32 items, 2) Depersonalization with 46 items, 3) Reduced personal accomplishment with 22 items. 2. The content validity index of the burnout scale was 1.0 for each item and .91 for the overall scale. The discrimination for each item ranged from .47 to .78. The reliability for the entire scale was .99, with .98 for emotional exhaustion, .98 for depersonalization, and .96 for reduced personal accomplishment. These findings indicate that the developed burnout scale for teachers is appropriate and can effectively measure teachers' burnout.