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theses

The role of the school psychologist is one that requires both emotional and physical energy in order to meet the demands of working with an array of children, teachers, administrators, parents, and other personnel. Such a demanding career can lead to high stress and burnout. The current study focuses on how emotional intelligence (EI), or the ability to understand, reason with, and manage feelings, impacts the likelihood of burnout among school psychologists. Two hypotheses were addressed: (1) school psychologists with higher levels of EI will be less likely to experience burnout, and (2) school psychologists' age and years of experience in the field will correlate positively with EI and negatively with burnout. Participants were 80 members of the New Jersey Association of School Psychologists (NJASP). They completed online questionnaires assessing EI with the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire - Short Form (TEIQue-SF), burnout with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), and demographic factors including age, years of experience, degree earned, percentage of minority students served, and time spent in different professional activities. Multiple regression analyses (MRA) were conducted to examine the relationship between EI and three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and sense of personal accomplishment (PA). The MRA controlled for age and years in the field. The findings supported the study's first hypothesis: school psychologists with higher EI experienced lower levels of burnout. The results did not support the second hypothesis: there was no statistically significant relationship between age or years in the field and burnout. Exploratory analyses examined whether burnout or EI varied based on degree earned, percentage of minority students served, and time spent in various professional activities. The only statistically significant result was that time spent in intervention activities was negatively associated with the burnout variable of DP, but the nature of the association was complex and unclear. Implications for school psychology training programs are discussed, and it is recommended that future research focus on additional factors that may moderate the relationship between EI and burnout, such as school characteristics and role definitions.

ETD_6594

Psy.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Kerri Smith

doi:10.7282/T31C2056

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.