Measuring Burnout: A Validation Study of The Oldenburg Burnout Inventory for The Sri-Lankan IT Sector

Abstract

Burnout is a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job. WHO defines burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” and is included in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). Research reveals the existence of this burnout phenomenon across a range of occupations, such as healthcare professionals, teachers, athletes, pilots, IT professionals etc. A study conducted by Yerbo, a mental wellbeing platform revealed that 2 in 5 of the workers in the IT industry show a high risk of burnout. At present, there are few tools available to measure burnout. After the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) is considered the most widely used measure of burnout and is also freely available. The current study is aimed at determining the measurement validity of the OLBI in the local context based on IT professionals. To determine the content validity of the OLBI, an expert panel was employed. In order to examine the construct validity and concurrent criterion validity, a questionnaire-based study was conducted among 161 (n = 161) randomly chosen IT professionals. MBI and DASS-21 were used to explore the convergent and divergent validity of the OLBI. Four items were deemed not essential to measure burnout based on content validation. The MTMM analysis revealed adequate evidence of the existence of both convergent and divergent validity of the OLBI. The current study was able to provide evidence of content, concurrent criterion and construct related validity of the OLBI in the Sri Lankan context based on IT professionals. These findings suggest that OLBI can be used as a reasonable tool to measure burnout among IT professionals in Sri Lanka. Availability of such a tool will undoubtedly help organizations in ensuring their workforce is healthy and productive.