Perceived Stress and the Level of Burnout in Students of Helping Professions

Abstract

The study is aimed at the clarification of the role of perceived stress in the process of developing burnout which belongs with the major research challenges in helping professions (Lloyd, King & Chenoweth, 2002). Research sample consisted of students of helping professions who completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory for students (MBI-SS) and Perceived Stress Scale and Emotional Habitual Subjective Well-being Scale. It was hypothesized that higher level of perceived stress would be linked with higher level of burnout. Burnout was expected to be correlated with frequent experiencing of negative emotions and less often experiencing of positive emotions. The side objective of the research was to examine the psychometric properties of the Slovak version of the MBI SS, which was translated from the original English version by Schaufeli et al. (2002). The interpretation of other results is discussed in the paper.
Keywords: perceived stress; burnout; students of helping professions;