Study Aim [TOP]

Though there are isolated studies on service occupations such as health (Adebayo & Ezeanya, 2010), banking (Ogungbamila, 2010), and teaching (Akomolafe & Popoola, 2011; Olaitan, Oyerinde, Obiyemi, & Kayode, 2010), no adequate inter-occupational comparative research has been conducted in Nigeria on occupational burnout, especially among employees in the service occupations. This study was therefore, designed to fill the lacuna. The importance of conducting a comparative study on dimensions of occupational burnout among health workers, police personnel, and teachers is underscored by the fact that the three service occupations are strongly linked to the achievement of the MDGs on health, security, and education. Apart from that, the manifestations of the three dimensions of occupational burnout may reflect occupational specificity (Kawaharada et al., 2007), which may have important implications for intervention.

Literature Review [TOP]

The effectiveness of human service professionals such as health workers, police personnel or teachers, are often evaluated in terms of the quality of their interactions with patients, students or civilians (Euwema, Kop, & Bakker, 2004). The observed low interaction quality among employees in human service occupations may be a reflection of occupational burnout, which could be a function of work-related factors. Several studies (e.g. Escribà-Agüir et al., 2006; Imai, Nakao, Tschiya, Kuroda, & Katoh, 2004; Visser et al., 2003) found that occupational burnout was strongly connected with the psychosocial work environment such as work overload, low job control, social support, autonomy, and high time pressure; but less with personal factors (Euwema et al., 2004). Perceived occupational stress has been associated with high psychological demand and low general as well as mental health (Shen, Cheng, Tsai, Lee, & Guo, 2005). These have a serious implication on the quality of services rendered by such employees.

When the demands from the psychosocial work environment, which exert pressure on the physical and emotional capacities of employees (Azeem, 2010; Burke & Mikkelsen, 2006; Mearns & Cain, 2003; Olaitan et al., 2010), are inadequately rewarded they experience occupational burnout (Bakker, Killmer, Siegrist, & Schaufeli, 2000). According to the effort-reward imbalance model (Bakker et al., 2000), employees experience occupational burnout when they perceive imbalance between efforts expended cum stress experienced on the job and the rewards associated them.

In the job-demand-resources model, Bakker, Demerouti, and Euwema (2005) submitted that job demands can be recognized and compensated by different types of rewards; without specificity in the demands/rewards link. Euwema et al. (2004, p. 33) opined that “as long as employees experience a positive balance [in the job demand/rewards], the risk of burnout is reduced”. Rather than been rewarded, human service employees often contend with public criticism and over-demanding patients and students (Nwikina & Nwanekezi, 2010).

In this process, the imbalance between demands and rewards or resources may reinforce itself into a negative spiral of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of reduced personal accomplishment among human service employees (Bakker et al., 2000; Euwema et al., 2004). Consequently, the working relations between such employee and the patient, student, coworkers, the organization, and the public become less rewarding as such depletion of emotional and physical resources culminate in negative attitude and behaviour towards patients, students, coworkers, the organization, and the public (Kop, Euwema, & Schaufeli, 1999).

Studies (e.g. Weinberg & Creed, 2000) revealed that health workers experienced highest level of burnout in comparison with other service occupations. In Nigeria, the situation may be critical because Nigeria is a major health-staff-exporting country in Africa (Uneke et al., 2008). Though this may be a great challenge for the health system; as 13 doctors, 92 nurses/midwives, and 64 community health workers attend to 100,000 patients in government-owned health institutions in Nigeria (Chankova et al., 2007); the effect of such acute shortage of manpower on health workers may be equally enormous. For example, Stilwell, Diallo, Zurn, Dal Poz, Adams, and Buchan (2003) submitted that health workers who remain in public health systems with inadequate numbers of health workers would experience added stress and greater workloads. In Nigeria, the additional workload may be compounded by inadequate infrastructure and poor reward system, which may worsen the stressful situation (Chankova et al., 2007). Against this background, the following hypotheses were tested.

Participants and Procedure [TOP]

This study was a cross-sectional survey. Participants were 455 individuals (male = 203; female = 252) sampled from 3 service occupations (police = 139; health = 159; teaching = 157). Their ages averaged 35.94 years (SD = 7.93) with a range of 20 to 65 years. They had spent an average of 8. 35 years (SD = 5.63) in the employment of their organization and had been in the present job level for an average of 6.01 years (SD = 4.72). The participants also varied in terms of marital status. The majority of them (332 or 73%) were married, 103 (22.6%) were single, 13 (2.9%) were divorced, and 7 (1.5%) were widowed. The participants were asked to indicate their job level. Results indicated that 261 (57.4%) of them were at the senior level and 194 (42.6%) were at the junior level. In the case of academic qualification, 40 (8.8%) of the participants held O’Level certificate, 100 (22%) held NCE or OND certificate, 279 (61.3%) held HND or first degree certificate, and 36 (7.9%) held postgraduate certificate.

In sampling the participants, cognizance was taken of the three regions in Nigeria (West, East, and North). Lagos, Kano, and Onitsha were purposively selected because they were the most populous cities in the Western, Northern, and Eastern Nigeria, respectively (Legal notice on publication, 2007). This was based on the assumption that service employees in those cities may experience occupational burnout because of the huge population they serve. The major public hospitals and schools as well as police stations in the three selected cities were numbered in alphabetical order. The first hospital, school, and police station were selected for the study.

The consent of the management of each of the selected organizations was obtained. A sophisticated random selection of participants could not be achieved because it was difficult to guarantee that all departments and units in each of the selected organizations were represented. Against this background, participation was based on employees who were available and willing to participate in the study. The participants were given moderate information on the study that would enable them decide whether to participate in the study or not. They were assured that their responses could not be traced to them and that they were free to discontinue with the study whenever they felt uncomfortable with any aspect of the research. Participation in the study was voluntary.

A total of 630 questionnaires were distributed in such a way that 210 questionnaires were distributed among the 3 service organizations (health = 70; police = 70; teaching = 70) in each of the regions. Out of the 630 questionnaires, 552 were retrieved. This yielded a response rate of 87.62%. Four hundred and fifty five of the retrieved questionnaires were duly completed and found usable.

Measure [TOP]

The dimensions and overall levels of occupational burnout were measured using MBI - Maslach’s Burnout Inventory - (Maslach & Jackson, 1986). MBI was a 22-item inventory, which had 3 subscales was predicated on 6-point scale (1 = A few times a year; 6 = Everyday). The subscales were based on the 3 identified components of burnout syndrome: emotional exhaustion (9 items), depersonalization (5 items), and reduced personal accomplishment (8 items).

The emotional exhaustion subscale measured feelings of depletion and irritation that are associated with daily work pressure. Sample items include: “I feel used up at the end of the day’s work”. The depersonalization subscale measured the extent to which an employee exhibits negative attitudes and feels callous toward patients, pupils, other employees or individuals he/she is employed to attend to. Sample item include: “I have become more callous towards people since I took up this job”. The last subscale (reduced personal accomplishment) measured the extent to which an employee experiences feelings of underachievement or incompetence on the job. Sample item include: “I have accomplished many worthwhile things in this job” (reverse scored).

Maslach and Jackson (1986) obtained a one month test re-test reliability coefficient of .80 for the overall scale. Among health workers in Nigeria, Coker (1999) obtained a Cronbach’s alpha of .86 for the overall scale (as cited in Ugokwe-Ossai & Ucheagwu, 2010). In this study, analysis involved the segregated and composite scores because the focus was not only occupational burnout as a syndrome but on the manifestations of the three components of burnout among the selected occupations. With the present sample, the scale had Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .78 (emotional exhaustion subscale), .79 (depersonalization subscale), .76, and .81 (overall scale). High score on the scale was an indication that employees were feeling highly drained from their work, callous toward others, and underachieving.

Descriptive and Inter-Variable Correlations [TOP]

Some variables were codified. Gender was coded male 0; female 1. Marital status was coded single 0; married 1. (Separated, divorced, and widowed were added to the category of married employees because they constituted less than 5% of the population and because they had been married).

In the case of job level, junior level was coded 1; intermediate level was coded 2; and senior level 3. Type of service occupation was coded health 1; police 2; teaching 3.

In order to ascertain the pattern of relationships among the variables of this study, descriptive and correlational tests were conducted. The results of the descriptive and inter-variable correlations are presented in Table 1.

As shown in Table 1, employees’ type of occupation was significantly related with emotional exhaustion [r(453) = -.33, p < .01], depersonalization [r(453) = -.47, p < .01], and overall level of occupational burnout [r(453) = -.34, p < .01]. However, type of occupation had no significant relationship with employees’ level of reduced personal accomplishment [r(453) = .03, p >.05]. This implies that irrespective of occupation, employees in service organizations in Nigeria exhibited feelings of reduced personal accomplishment.

Test of Hypotheses [TOP]

Four sets of One-way ANOVA were used to test the hypotheses. It was expected that health workers would experience the highest levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, feelings of reduced personal accomplishment, and overall occupational burnout compared with police personnel and teachers. The results are presented in Table 2.

Results in Table 2 indicate that type of service occupation had significant effects on employees’ levels of emotional exhaustion [F(2,452) = 33.03, p < . 0001], depersonalization [F(2,452) = 64.50, p < . 0001], feelings of reduced personal accomplishment [F(2,452) = 23.46, p < . 0001], and overall occupational burnout [F(2,452) = 42.12, p < . 0001]. These results did not provide enough evidence in support of the four hypotheses, as the direction of the significant Fs could not be ascertained. Consequently, four sets of Scheffé’s pairwise test were used to further analyze the data. Table 3 represents the results. Graphical representations of the results are shown in Figures 1 to 4.

As indicated in Table 3 and Figure 1, health workers experienced a significantly higher level of emotional exhaustion (M = 34.11) than police personnel [M = 29.45; Scheffé (296) = 4.65, p < .001] or teachers [M = 28.33; Scheffé (314) = 5.78, p < .001]. This implies that health workers felt more emotionally drained by their work compared with either police personnel or teachers. The results in Table 3 and Figure 1 confirmed hypothesis 1.

Hypothesis 2 was confirmed by the results on Table 3 and Figure 2. Compared with police personnel [M = 17.09; Scheffé (296) = 2.82, p < .01] and teachers [M = 13.94; Scheffé (314) = 5.96, p < .001], health workers (M = 19.91) reported significantly the highest level of depersonalization. This means that health workers were more psychologically distant from people (patients and coworkers) and the job than police personnel or teachers.

In the case of hypothesis 3, the results in Table 3 and Figure 3 provided a partial support. Health workers reported a significantly higher level of reduced personal accomplishment (M = 30.94) than police personnel [M = 26.78; Scheffé (296) = 4.15, p < .001]. However, there was no significant difference in the feelings of reduced personal accomplishment reported by health workers and teachers [M = 31.38; Scheffé (314) = -.44, p > .05]. This implies that health workers felt more underachieving than police personnel; but such feelings were not different from those experienced by teachers.

Finally, as shown in Table 3 and Figure 4, health workers reported a significantly higher level of overall occupational burnout (M = 84.95) than either police personnel [M = 73.32; Scheffé (296) = 11.63, p < .001] or teachers [M = 17.09; Scheffé (314) = 11.30, p < .001]. This implies that police personnel and teachers did not feel as psychologically and physically sapped by their job as health workers.