Soc Indic Res (2015) 122:701–708

DOI 10.1007/s11205-014-0716-5

The Effect of Work Stress on Job Burnout Among

Teachers: The Mediating Role of Self-efficacy

Xiaobo Yu • Pengyuan Wang • Xuesong Zhai • Hong Dai •

Qun Yang

Accepted: 23 July 2014 / Published online: 2 August 2014

Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract The psychological pressure of high strength, often cause teachers teaching
dissatisfaction, absenteeism and employee turnover. The current study examined the
impact of work stress on job burnout, mainly focused on confirmation of the mediator role
of self-efficacy. A total of 387 middle school teachers were as participants involving in this
research. Data were collected by using the Perceived Stress Scale, General Self-Efficacy
Scale and Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey. The results revealed that both work
stress and self-efficacy were significantly correlated with job burnout. Structural equation
modeling indicated that self efficacy partially mediated work stress to job burnout. The
final model also revealed significant both paths from work stress to job burnout through
self efficacy. The findings extended prior researches and provided valuable evidence on
how to promote mental health of teachers at the workplaces.

Keywords Work stress
Job burnout
Self efficacy
Structural equation modeling

X. Yu
School of Education, Anyang Normal University, Anyang, China

P. Wang
School of Economics and Management, Weinan Normal University, Weinan, China

X. Zhai
School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

X. Zhai (&)
School of Foreign Language, Anhui JianZhu University, Hefei, China
e-mail: zhxs@mail.ustc.edu.cn

H. Dai
Q. Yang (&)

School of Medical Psychology, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, China
e-mail: yangqun@fmmu.edu.cn

123
702 X. Yu et al.

1 Introduction

Job burnout refers to the state in which individuals experience physical and mental fatigue after
working under heavy pressure (Maslach et al. 2001; Peng et al. 2014). Such concept was intro-
duced in 1974 by Freudenberger, who considered job burnout as a symptom of emotional
exhaustion that was commonly observed among individuals working in helping professions
(Freudenberger 1974; Shih et al. 2013). Maslach et al. defined psychological syndrome as a result
of a long-term experience of work and interpersonal burnout (Maslach and Jackson 1981; Pines
and Maslach 1978). In general, job burnout is an extreme reaction that individuals experience
when they cannot successfully cope with work pressure. This condition refers to an exhausted
state of emotion, attitudes, and behavior that arises from a prolonged experience of stress.
Job burnout mostly occurs among people working in helping professions, such as nurses
and teachers (Chiron et al. 2010; Maslach et al. 2001). Numerous studies show that teachers
are among those professionals that face the greatest amount of pressure in their work
(Abenavoli et al. 2013; Carson et al. 2010; Kyriacou 2001; Troman and Woods 2000). Some
special factors in the school promote a high degree of psychological stress among teachers.
Such psychological pressure often results in dissatisfaction, absenteeism, and employee
turnover among teachers while making them experience various adverse reactions that are
psychological (anxiety and depression), physiological (headache, tachycardia, excessive
stress, and hypertension), or behavioral (alcoholism, smoking, lifestyle, and sleep problems)
in nature, which further lead to the development of job burnout among these professionals
(Friedman-Krauss et al. 2014; Lian et al. 2014; Roeser et al. 2013; Torsheim and Wold
2001). Therefore, pressure is among the direct causes of job burnout among teachers.
Self-efficacy refers to the speculation and judgment of whether an individual is capable
of completing an action (Cupertino et al. 2012; Kamen et al. 2013). Self-efficacy theory has
been increasingly employed by researchers in recent years to study job burnout as well as to
explore the role of self-efficacy in the formation of job burnout (Consiglio et al. 2013).
Leiter (1993) defined burnout as ‘‘a crisis of self-efficacy’’, Chwalisz et al. (1992) found that
teachers with low self-efficacy reported higher levels of job burnout as compared to teachers
with high self-efficacy. Friedman and Farber (1992) found that those teachers who con-
sidered themselves poor in maintaining discipline in the classroom and a lower management
capacity reported higher levels of job burnout as opposed to the teachers who considered
themselves as having a higher management capacity. Furthermore, another study also found
that the self-efficacy of teachers was a result of their job burnout, and that such factor
functioned as a corrective action for job burnout (Egyed and Short 2006).
Given that stress and self-efficacy both induce job burnout among teachers; we inves-
tigate the features that are demonstrated in the relationship among pressure, self-efficacy,
and job burnout of primary and secondary school teachers (Conen et al. 2012). Moreover,
given that self-efficacy can play a corrective action on job burnout, we also determine
whether working pressure affects job burnout by using teaching efficacy as an intermediary
factor. This study attempts to discuss these issues thoroughly.

2 Methods

2.1 Participants and Procedure

Participants were 387 teachers from two middle schools, which consisted of 183 men and
204 women. The ages of students ranged from 30 to 35, with a mean of 32.77 (SD = 1.32).

123
The Effect of Work Stress on Job Burnout Among Teachers 703

Participants completed the questionnaires in a classroom environment. From the 387 scales
that were distributed and collected, 2 unfinished scales were excluded. All participants
knew the research background, research purposes and the research significance, and pro-
vided their written informed consent before completing the measures. Participants received
a pen for compensation.

2.2 Instruments

2.2.1 The Perceived Stress Scale

The Perceived Stress Scale is a self-report instrument that evaluates the level of perceived
stress during the last month, and consists of 14 items with a 5-point response scale
(0 = never, 1 = almost never, 2 = once in a while, 3 = often, 4 = very often). A higher
score indicates a higher level of perceived stress (Cohen 1986). In this study, the Cronbach
alpha coefficient for Perceived stress Scale was 0.85.

2.2.2 The General Self-Efficacy Scale

The General Self-Efficacy Scale consists of ten items assessing optimistic self-beliefs to
cope with a variety of difficult demands in life with statements such as ‘‘I can usually
handle whatever comes my way’’. Respondents rate their agreement with each item on a
4-point scale (from 1 = not describe me at all to 4 = describes me to a great extent)
(Schwarzer and Jerusalem 1995; Weber et al. 2013). In the present study, the Cronbach
alpha coefficient for the GSE was 0.811.

2.2.3 Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey

The Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey, developed by Maslach et al. is a 15-item

self-report measure of job burnout that includes three dimensions, namely, emotional
exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (Schaufeli and Leiter
1996). The items are rated from 1 (never) to 7 (every day). Some items are ‘‘I have become
less enthusiastic about my work,’’ and ‘‘I have become more cynical about whether my work
contributes anything.’’ In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this scale was 0.89.

3 Results

3.1 Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Analysis

Firstly, the inter-correlations of all the latent variables were calculated to test the signifi-
cant of correlation coefficient. Means, standard deviations, and inter-correlations for all the
variables were presented in Table 1. The results showed that perceived stress was posi-
tively correlated with job burnout, and was negatively correlated with self efficacy. In
addition, self efficacy and job burnout were also negatively correlated.

3.2 Measurement Model

Then, a two-step procedure introduced by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was adapted to
analyses the mediation effect in order to confirm the structural relations of the latent

123
704 X. Yu et al.

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations of the variables of interest

Mean SD 1 2 3

1. Perceived 18.33 7.35 1

stress
2. Self efficacy 32.29 3.96 -0.62** 1
3. Job burnout 32.69 13.76 0.37** -0.34** 1
** p \ 0.01

structured model. Firstly, the measurement model of the four latent variables was tested
to assess the extent of goodness of fit represented by its indicators respectively. If
index of confirmatory measurement model meet the requirements, then the maximum
likelihood estimation would be used to test the SEM. The following four indices were
utilized to evaluate the goodness of fit of the model: (a) Chi square statistic (v2), v2/df,
(b) the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), (c) the root mean square error
of approximation (RMSEA), and (d) the comparative fit index (CFI) (Hu and Bentler
1999). In this study, a model was considered to have a good fit if all the path coef-
ficients were significant at the level of 0.05, v2/df was below 5, SRMR was below
0.08, RMSEA was below 0.08, and CFI was 0.95 or more.
CFA was adopted to assess whether the measurement model fit the sample data
adequately or not. The fully measurement model included three latent constructs
(perceived stress, self efficacy and job burnout) and nine observed variables. The test of
the measurement model came into being a satisfactory fit to the data: v2 (24,
N = 385) = 36.49, v2/df = 1.52; RMSEA = 0.037; SRMR = 0.029; and CFI = 0.99.
All the factor loadings for the indicators on the latent variables were significant
(p \ 0.001), indicating that all the latent constructs were well represented by their
indicators.

3.3 Structural Model

In the first step, the direct effect of the predictor variable (perceived stress) on the
dependent variable (job burnout) without mediators was tested. The directly standard-
ized path coefficient was significantly, b = 0.38, p \ 0.01. Then the partially mediated
model (see Fig. 1) which contained mediator (self efficacy) and a direct path from
perceived stress to job burnout was tested. The meditational model showed a very good
fit to the data, v2 (24, N = 385) = 36.49, v2/df = 1.52; RMSEA = 0.037;
SRMR = 0.029; and CFI = 0.99. The effect of job stress on job burnout through self-
efficacy was 37.65 %.

3.4 The Confidence Interval of Direct and Indirect Effects

The mediating effect of core self evaluations between perceived stress and job burnout
was tested for a significance by adopted the Bootstrap estimation procedure in AMOS (a
bootstrap sample of 1,000 was specified). Table 2 shows the indirect effects and their
associated 95 % confidence intervals. As shown in Table 2, perceived stress had sig-
nificant direct effect on job burnout. In addition, the indirect effect of perceived stress on
job burnout through self efficacy was also significant (empirical 95 % confidence interval
does not overlap with zero).

123
The Effect of Work Stress on Job Burnout Among Teachers 705

Fig. 1 Self efficacy mediates the effect of perceived stress on job burnout. *p \ 0.05

Table 2 Direct and indirect effects and 95 % confidence intervals for the final model
Model pathways Estimated effect 95 % CI

Lower bonds Up bonds

Direct effect
Perceived stress ? self efficacy -0.691 -0.778 -0.585
Perceived stress ? job burnout 0.244 0.067 0.416
Self efficacy ? job burnout -0.205 -0.386 -0.026
Indirect effect
Perceived stress ? (self efficacy) ? job burnout 0.142 0.018 0.275

4 Discussion

We find that when they are faced with a greater level of pressure in their work, teachers
tend to develop lower self-efficacy and feel tired of working.
Several studies have identified stress as among the direct causes of job burnout among
teachers. Dunham regarded job burnout as an extreme form of work-related stress, and
considered job burnout as the product of irreconcilable stress response (Kyriacou 1987). At
present, teachers are being pressured mainly by their work, role conflict, role ambiguity,
relationship with students, relationship with colleagues, work overload, long working
hours, and high work intensity, all of which cause mental and physical exhaustion, frus-
tration, depression, and passive or indifferent perspectives toward life and work (Slick
1997; Yankelevich et al. 2012). When such work-related pressure is not relieved promptly
and effectively, teachers will lose their passion for education and teaching, experience a
state of extreme fatigue, completely lose their enthusiasm, and demonstrate passive,
negative, or indifferent attitudes toward their students. Therefore, a high level of pressure
can excessively consume the emotional and physical resources of teachers and ultimately
lead them to a severe state of job burnout (Jou et al. 2013; Peng et al. 2013; Veldman et al.
2013).

123
706 X. Yu et al.

A lower self-efficacy may also increase job burnout among teachers. This result is
consistent with that of previous studies. Brissie et al. (1988) found that self-efficacy could
predict the job burnout level of teachers (Evers et al. 2002); Glickman and Tamashiro
(1982) found that teachers with low self-efficacy could experience a higher degree of job
burnout and were most likely to leave the teaching profession. Efficacy pertains to the
subjective perceptions and beliefs of teachers with regard to their capability to complete
their teaching task and to teach their students well. This concept also pertains to the general
perception and judgment of teachers toward the teaching and learning relationship, their
role in the development of their students, and other issues. A highly negative self-evalu-
ation causes teachers to develop a highly negative perception toward their work ability, to
perceive their schools as an unhappy place to work, to assume a negative coping style, and
to feel greater degrees of powerlessness and job burnout.
Self-efficacy can mediate the effect of pressure on job burnout. This finding can be
explained by the teacher occupational stress model of Kyriacou and Sut’cliff. This model
argues that the possible sources of stress may become actual stressors through personal
cognitive assessment—thereby enabling teachers to form responses to their pressures.
Moreover, the long-term effects of stress will lead to the development of chronic stress
symptoms and eventually lead to job burnout (Kyriacou and Sutcliffe 1979). As a cognitive
motivation mechanism, self-efficacy represents the faith of teachers toward their teaching
ability. This factor directly affects how teachers choose their teaching activities, how they
attribute their success or failure to teach, and how they regulate their moods. Therefore, the
pressure mostly affects job burnout through the intermediary of self-efficacy (Zhao et al.
2014). Struggling to cope with a considerable amount of pressure may affect the self-
evaluation of individuals, which will eventually make them feel tired of working.
Therefore, teachers with low self-efficacy tend to adopt evasive tactics when facing set-
backs, attribute their teaching success or failure to the influence of external environmental
factors, and neglect the factors of their inner ability and effort. Moreover, teachers feel a
greater degree of anxiety and fear because of the poor discipline of their students, fre-
quently exhibit an open dislike toward teaching, and disgust their students. These teachers
begin to show symptoms of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Thus, the
mediating role of self-efficacy in the effects of pressure on job burnout is evident.

Acknowledgments Finally, thanks are due to for funding by the Education Department in Anhui China.
(foundation NO.: 2012jyxm395 & NO.: 2013SQRW094ZD).

References

Abenavoli, R. M., Jennings, P. A., Greenberg, M. T., Harris, A. R., & Katz, D. A. (2013). The protective
effects of mindfulness against burnout among educators. Psychology of Education Review,37(2),
57–69.
Anderson, J. C., & Gerbing, D. W. (1988). Structural equation modeling in practice: A review and rec-
ommended two-step approach. Psychological Bulletin,103(3), 411–423.
Brissie, J. S., Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., & Bassler, O. C. (1988). Individual, situational contributors to
teacher burnout. The Journal of Educational Research, 82(2), 106–112.
Carson, R. L., Baumgartner, J. J., Matthews, R. A., & Tsouloupas, C. N. (2010). Emotional exhaustion,
absenteeism, and turnover intentions in childcare teachers examining the impact of physical activity
behaviors. Journal of Health Psychology,15(6), 905–914.
Chiron, B., Michinov, E., Olivier-Chiron, E., Laffon, M., & Rusch, E. (2010). Job satisfaction, life satis-
faction and burnout in French anaesthetists. Journal of Health Psychology,15(6), 948–958.

123
The Effect of Work Stress on Job Burnout Among Teachers 707

Chwalisz, K., Altmaier, E. M., & Russell, D. W. (1992). Causal attributions, self-efficacy cognitions, and
coping with stress. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology,11(4), 377–400.
Cohen, S. (1986). Contrasting the Hassles Scale and the Perceived Stress Scale: Who’s really measuring
appraised stress? American Psychologist,41, 716–718.
Conen, W. S., Henkens, K., & Schippers, J. (2012). Employers’ attitudes and actions towards the extension
of working lives in Europe. International Journal of Manpower,33(6), 648–665.
Consiglio, C., Borgogni, L., Alessandri, G., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2013). Does self-efficacy matter for burnout
and sickness absenteeism? The mediating role of demands and resources at the individual and team
levels. Work & Stress,27(1), 22–42.
Cupertino, A.-P., Berg, C., Gajewski, B., Hui, S.-K. A., Richter, K., Catley, D., et al. (2012). Change in self-
efficacy, autonomous and controlled motivation predicting smoking. Journal of Health Psychol-
ogy,17(5), 640–652.
Egyed, C. J., & Short, R. J. (2006). Teacher self-efficacy, burnout, experience and decision to refer a
disruptive student. School Psychology International,27(4), 462–474.
Evers, W. J., Brouwers, A., & Tomic, W. (2002). Burnout and self-efficacy: A study on teachers’ beliefs
when implementing an innovative educational system in the Netherlands. British Journal of Educa-
tional Psychology,72(2), 227–243.
Freudenberger, H. J. (1974). Staff burn-out. Journal of Social Issues,30(1), 159–165.
Friedman, I. A., & Farber, B. A. (1992). Professional self-concept as a predictor of teacher burnout. The
Journal of Educational Research,86(1), 28–35.
Friedman-Krauss, A. H., Raver, C. C., Morris, P. A., & Jones, S. M. (2014). The role of classroom-level
child behavior problems in predicting preschool teacher stress and classroom emotional climate. Early
Education and Development,25(4), 530–552.
Glickman, C. D., & Tamashiro, R. T. (1982). A comparison of first-year, fifth-year, and former teachers on
efficacy, ego development, and problem solving. Psychology in the Schools,19(4), 558–562.
Hu, L. T., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Con-
ventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Jour-
nal,6(1), 1–55.
Jou, R.-C., Kuo, C.-W., & Tang, M.-L. (2013). A study of job stress and turnover tendency among air traffic
controllers: The mediating effects of job satisfaction. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and
Transportation Review,57, 95–104.
Kamen, C., Flores, S., Etter, D., Lazar, R., Patrick, R., Lee, S., et al. (2013). General self-efficacy in relation
to unprotected sexual encounters among persons living with HIV. Journal of Health Psychology,18(5),
658–666.
Kyriacou, C. (1987). Teacher stress and burnout: An international review. Educational Research,29(2),
146–152.
Kyriacou, C. (2001). Teacher stress: Directions for future research. Educational Review,53(1), 27–35.
Kyriacou, C., & Sutcliffe, J. (1979). Teacher stress and satisfaction. Educational Research,21(2), 89–96.
Leiter, M. P. (1993). Burnout as a developmental process: Consideration of models. In Schaufeli, W. B.,
Maslach, C. E., & Marek, T. E. (Eds.), Professional burnout: Recent developments in theory and
research (pp. 237–249). Philadelphia, US: Taylor & Francis.
Lian, P., Sun, Y., Ji, Z., Li, H., & Peng, J. (2014). Moving away from exhaustion: How core self-evaluations
influence academic burnout. PLoS One,9(1), e87152.
Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Organizational
Behavior,2(2), 99–113.
Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology,52(1),
397–422.
Peng, J., Li, D., Zhang, Z., Tian, Y., Miao, D., Xiao, W., & Zhang, J. (2014). How can core self-evaluations
influence job burnout? The key roles of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Journal of
Health Psychology. doi:10.1177/1359105314521478.
Peng, J., Miao, D., & Xiao, W. (2013). Why are gainers more risk seeking. Judgment & Decision Mak-
ing,8(2), 150–160.
Pines, A., & Maslach, C. (1978). Characteristics of staff burnout in mental health settings. Psychiatric
Services,29(4), 233–237.
Roeser, R. W., Schonert-Reichl, K. A., Jha, A., Cullen, M., Wallace, L., Wilensky, R., et al. (2013).
Mindfulness training and reductions in teacher stress and burnout: Results from two randomized,
waitlist-control field trials. Journal of Educational Psychology,105(3), 787.
Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (1996). Maslach burnout inventory-general survey. The Maslach Burnout
Inventory-Test Manual, 1, 19–26.

123
708 X. Yu et al.

Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (1995). Generalized self-efficacy scale. Measures in Health Psychology: A
User’s Portfolio. Causal and Control Beliefs,1, 35–37.
Shih, S.-P., Jiang, J. J., Klein, G., & Wang, E. (2013). Job burnout of the information technology worker:
Work exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Information & Management,50(7),
582–589.
Slick, S. K. (1997). Assessing versus assisting: The supervisor’s roles in the complex dynamics of the
student teaching triad. Teaching and Teacher Education,13(7), 713–726.
Torsheim, T., & Wold, B. (2001). School-related stress, school support, and somatic complaints: A general
population study. Journal of Adolescent Research,16(3), 293–303.
Troman, G., & Woods, P. (2000). Careers under stress: Teacher adaptations at a time of intensive reform.
Journal of Educational Change,1(3), 253–275.
Veldman, I., van Tartwijk, J., Brekelmans, M., & Wubbels, T. (2013). Job satisfaction and teacher–student
relationships across the teaching career: Four case studies. Teaching and Teacher Education,32, 55–65.
Weber, M., Ruch, W., Littman-Ovadia, H., Lavy, S., & Gai, O. (2013). Relationships among higher-order
strengths factors, subjective well-being, and general self-efficacy—The case of Israeli adolescents.
Personality and Individual Differences,55(3), 322–327.
Yankelevich, M., Broadfoot, A., Gillespie, J. Z., Gillespie, M. A., & Guidroz, A. (2012). General job stress:
A unidimensional measure and its non-linear relations with outcome variables. Stress and
Health,28(2), 137–148.
Zhao, X., Huang, C., Li, X., Zhao, X., & Peng, J. (2014). Dispositional optimism, self-framing and medical
decision-making. International Journal of Psychology. doi:10.1002/ijop.12079.

123