A meta-analytic validation study of the Shirom-Melamed burnout measure: Examining variable relationships from a job demands-resources perspective.

Job-related burnout has become a central construct in occupational health psychology. Given the considerable emphasis on burnout in both basic research and organizational initiatives, affirming the validity of inferences from commonly used measures is imperative to explore this phenomenon. The Shirom-Melamed burnout measure (SMBM) is well grounded with strong theoretical roots stemming from conservation of resources theory to assess exhaustion across physical, cognitive, and emotional subscales. However, despite its strong theoretical foundation and consistent use to measure burnout across various disciplines, there have been no meta-analytic validation efforts of the SMBM. The goal of the present meta-analysis is to fill this gap and provide a comprehensive evaluation of the SMBM using 564 effect sizes retrieved from 100 samples (N = 53,484). Results revealed that the three subscales of physical fatigue, cognitive weariness, and emotional exhaustion all displayed strong intercorrelations and that the SMBM was stable over time, as suggested by high test-retest estimates. Relationships with demographic controls, such as age, sex, and hours worked, were low in magnitude or nonsignificant. Following a job demands-resources perspective, we examined the nomological network of the SMBM, finding strong support for associations with job and personal predictors, motivational covariates, and job and personal outcomes. These findings, inferring the construct validity of the SMBM, hold implications for future research and practice, including support for its use in organizational research and applied settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The effects of work and nonwork boundary fit on role satisfaction and subjective well-being.

Employees manage work and nonwork boundaries, or socially constructed lines of demarcation, in different ways due to their preferences and ability to do so. When an individual's integration-segmentation boundary enactment matches their boundary preference, they possess greater boundary fit. We examined the impact of work and nonwork boundary fit on subjective well-being, mediated by work and nonwork satisfaction. Results from a three-wave study confirmed positive direct effects for work/nonwork boundary fit on role satisfaction and role satisfaction on subjective well-being. We also found significant mediation effects for role satisfaction between work/nonwork boundary fit and subjective well-being. Overall, work boundary fit had stronger direct and indirect effects than nonwork boundary fit. This research helps clarify theoretical distinctions among work-nonwork fit constructs and extends the boundary fit literature through an atomistic fit perspective. Future research could consider examining boundary fit through cross-lagged panel designs and response surface modelling, as well as extending our model to examine nuanced aspects of boundary fit (e.g., physical, temporal, cognitive) and its relationship with additional outcomes (e.g., performance, burnout) and contextual factors (e.g., part-time vs. full-time employment, frontline vs. office-based employment).

Flattening the Latent Growth Curve? Explaining Within-Person Changes in Employee Well-Being during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the greatest global crises in modern history. In addition to recession and high unemployment, agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn that stressors associated with a pandemic can cause increased strains, including difficulty concentrating, anxiety, and decreased mental health (CDC, 2020). Two general frameworks that explain these stressor-strain relationships over time include stress-reaction and adaptation models. Stress-reaction models suggest that stressors, such as heightened job demands due to the pandemic, accumulate over time and thus prolonged exposure to these stressors results in both immediate and long-term strain; conversely, adaptation models suggest that people adapt to stressors over time, such that strains produced by ongoing stressors tend to dissipate. After controlling for county-level COVID-19 cases, we found that (a) workers in general exhibited decreasing cognitive weariness and psychological symptoms over time, providing support for the adaptation model; (b) on-site workers experienced increasing physical fatigue over time, supporting the stress-reaction model among those workers; and (c) engaging in recovery behaviors was associated with improvements in cognitive weariness and psychological symptoms for all workers. We also found that our Time 1 outcomes were significantly different than pre-pandemic norms, such that our participants displayed lower initial levels of job-related burnout and higher initial levels of psychological symptoms than pre-pandemic norms. Furthermore, supplemental qualitative data support our quantitative findings for recovery behaviors. These findings have important implications for understanding workers' responses to the pandemic and they can help inform organizational practice.