Measurement Invariance of the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) Across Seven Cross-National Representative Samples

Leon T. de Beer, Wilmar B. Schaufeli, Hans De Witte, Jari J. Hakanen, Akihito Shimazu, Jürgen Glaser, Christian Seubert, Janine Bosak, Jorge Sinval and Maksim Rudnev
Additional contact information
Leon T. de Beer: WorkWell Research Unit, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University, Potchefstroom 2531, South Africa
Wilmar B. Schaufeli: Research Unit Occupational & Organizational Psychology and Professional Learning KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Hans De Witte: Research Unit Occupational & Organizational Psychology and Professional Learning KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Jari J. Hakanen: Workability and Work Careers, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, 00032 Helsinki, Finland
Akihito Shimazu: Department of Policy Management, Keio University, Fujisawa 252-0882, Japan
Jürgen Glaser: Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Christian Seubert: Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Janine Bosak: Business School, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland
Jorge Sinval: Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL), Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), 1649-026 Lisbon, Portugal
Maksim Rudnev: National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow 101000, Russia

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 15, 1-14

Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the measurement invariance of the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) across seven cross-national representative samples. In this study, burnout was modeled as a second-order factor in line with the conceptual definition as a syndrome. The combined sample consisted of 10,138 participants from countries in Europe and Japan. The data were treated as ordered categorical in nature and a series of models were tested to find evidence for invariance. Specifically, theta parameterization was used in conjunction with the weighted least squares (mean- and variance adjusted) estimation method. The results showed supportive evidence that BAT-assessed burnout was invariant across the samples, so that cross-country comparison would be justifiable. Comparison of effect sizes of the latent means between countries showed that Japan had a significantly higher score on overall burnout and all the first-order factors compared to the European countries. The European countries all scored similarly on overall burnout with no significant difference but for some minor differences in first-order factors between some of the European countries. All in all, the analyses of the data provided evidence that the BAT is invariant across the countries for meaningful comparisons of burnout scores.

Keywords: burnout; measurement invariance; work stress; work overload; work-related well-being; structural equation modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5604/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5604/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:15:p:5604-:d:394020

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().