The impact of individual and organizational factors on school counselor burnout and work engagement
Creators: name: Um, Byeolbee
Publisher: name: University of Iowa
Year: 2025
Subjects: job demands-resources model
professional identity
school counselor burnout
work engagement
work environment
public abstract

description: School mental health is in high demand due to the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under these circumstances, researchers have highlighted the critical role of school counselors supporting academic, emotional, and social development of students. School counselors provide effective school counseling interventions, individual and group counseling sessions, guidance lessons and professional advocacy and appropriate resources for students, especially for diverse underrepresented student groups. Despite the importance of school counselors, however, there is a lack of research about school counselors’ work-related mental health in consideration of personal, professional, and environmental contexts. To fill this gap, this study intended to examine the influence of individual and organization factors on school counselor burnout and work engagement.
description: This study focused on investigating (1) the influence of individual factors (i.e., years of experience, perceived stress, and professional identity) and organizational factors (i.e., caseload, school climate, perceived organizational support, and opportunities for professional development) on school counselors’ burnout and its five sub-dimensions; and (2) the influence of individual factors (i.e., years of experience, perceived stress, and professional identity) and organizational factors (i.e., caseload, school climate, perceived organizational support, and opportunities for professional development) on school counselors’ work engagement and its three sub-dimensions, within the frameworks of the Job Demands-Resources model and the Social-Ecological model. Before examining these research questions, a preliminary analysis including descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations was also performed.
description: Participants of this study were recruited through (1) the ASCA Scene, (2) four ASCA state branches who agreed to distribute the emails to their members, and (3) five ASCA branches who posted the recruitment information on their website or newsletter. The Qualtrics online survey consisted of sociodemographic questions and several measurements, including the Counselor Burnout Inventory (CBI), Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), Professional Identity Scale in Counseling-Short Form (PISC-S), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and Brief– California School Climate Survey (B-CSCS). Among three-hundred seventy-one school counselors who initially agreed to participate in this study, three-hundred and forty-five participants completed and submitted the survey. Therefore, their responses were analyzed after addressing the remaining missing values using the expectation-maximization (EM) approach, in order to test the research models. The preliminary analysis and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted using SPSS 25.0.
description: As a result of examining bivariate correlation coefficients among the main variables of this study, burnout and its subscales were negatively correlated with work engagement, professional identity, and work environment factors, and positively correlated with perceived stress. On the contrary, work engagement and its subscales were negatively correlated with burnout and perceived stress, and positively correlated with professional identity and work environment factors. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that school counselor burnout was significantly associated with individual (i.e., perceived stress and professional identity) and organizational factors (i.e., caseload, school climate, perceived organization support), and their work engagement was associated with individual (i.e., perceived stress and professional identity) and organizational factors (i.e., perceived organization support and opportunities for professional development). The detailed relationships between each individual/organizational factor and each burnout/work engagement dimension were also presented.
description: Interpretations of these results and relevant implications for school counselor educators, school counselors, school professionals and policy makers, and researchers were discussed.
description: Keywords: School counselor burnout, work engagement, professional identity, work environment, job demands-resources model