The COVID-19 burnout scale: development and initial validation

Abstract

Background

Research on the pandemic-related burnout has focused on work-related burnout especially among healthcare workers, but not in the general population.

Aim

To develop a valid and reliable instrument scale to measure pandemic-related burnout in the general population.

Methods

We took several steps to develop the scale items and achieve content and face validity; literature review, panel of experts, calculation of content validity ratio, and cognitive interviews. We assessed structural and construct validity, and reliability of the COVID-19 burnout scale (COVID-19-BS).

Results

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis identified three factors for the COVID-19-BS; emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion, and exhaustion due to measures against the COVID-19. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the three factors and the COVID-19-BS ranged from 0.860 to 0.921. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value was 0.945, and p-value for Bartlett test was <0.001. A significant positive correlation between the three factors and anxiety and depression indicated high concurrent validity. Cohen’s kappa ranged from 0.848 to 0.957, while intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.888 to 0.997.

Conclusions

Our findings indicate that the final 3-factor model with 13 items of COVID-19-BS is a brief, easy to administer, valid and reliable scale for assessing COVID-19-related burnout in the general public.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• burnout
• validation
• general population

Ethical approval

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.