How Reactions to Feedback Impact Burnout

Burnout is a prevalent and pervasive issue present among educators. In the context of the Job Demands-Resources Theory (JDR), burnout can be mitigated through job-resources. Traditionally, literature regarding feedback in the education setting focuses on how educators can provide feedback to students, as well as how educator‘s reactions to feedback influence their feedback acceptability and utilization. The present study is valuable since it expands upon the feedback literature by studying how reactions to student evaluation feedback influenced burnout in secondary and post-secondary educators. The study hypothesized that the relationship between job demands and burnout is moderated by feedback acceptability, such that the positive relationship is weaker when”¦
1A) “¦the confidence in the quality of the feedback is higher.
1B) “¦the source credibility is higher.
1C) “¦when organizational justice measures are lower.
Additionally, the study hypothesized that 2A) Self-esteem would be positively correlated with feedback acceptability and 2B) Self-efficacy would also be positively correlated with feedback acceptability. An online survey was distributed through the Prolific Survey software to recruit full-time, part-time or adjunct faculty who had taught for at least a year and had received student evaluations within the past semester. Multiple regression analysis was conducted through R (n=23) to find that of the job demands, only work-home conflict was a statistically significant predictor of burnout (p=.01), with no other interaction effects showing statistical significance. This may be do the limited sample size and lack of demographic representation in the current study’s sample and implies future studies may expand upon these limitations to make a more conclusive determination of the impact of different feedback acceptability components on the relationship between job demands and burnout.

Hello everyone, my name is Elene Lipartiani and my project looks at how reaction to feedback impact burnout. Burnout is the prolonged psychological exhaustion due to work-related stressors AKA job demands, of which there are many different kinds and I will run through the ones that were selected for this specific study at a slightly later time. Now certain occupations, um, are more susceptible to higher rates of burnout, specifically those involved in people work such as healthcare workers and teachers. Now, while there is some research already present about how burnout impacts research, there’s limited research on how the role of feedback impacts this dynamic and the available literature about feedback in education, tends to be student achievement centered or it looks at teacher feedback reactions to school inspection feedback. So the purpose of the study is expanding on this body of literature by looking at how high-school and college teachers react to their student evaluation feedback, and how their perception of this feedback influences their burnout, as well as how their perception of this feedback influences their self-esteem and self-efficacy influences this dynamic. And here I’ve provided a conceptual model to help illustrate that. You’ll notice in Job Demands there are three different kinds I specifically looked at which was Work Overload, where the responsibilities you’re assigned at work feel like they outweigh your ability to deal with them. Work Home conflict where your work and home responsibilities conflict with each other. For example if you had a baby at home to deal with on top of your work. And role conflict where you have multiple different roles or responsibilities you need to take on at work and they begin to feel overwhelming. All of these can lead to burnout. Now feedback acceptability is what we’re calling our reactions to feedback and the way that I measured that was Source credibility, in this case the students, are they considered credible and experts in the kind of feedback they’re providing, organizational justice measures aka the procedures involved in receiving those evaluations and the confidence in feedback quality. Meaning do teachers believe that the feedback that they are receiving is actually beneficial to them and of quality or not. The specific hypotheses of my study are listed here and the study itself was conducted through an online Qualtrics survey distributed through the prolific survey software, and of these there were 100 participants who were screened, and 23 met the eligibility criteria, which you can see listed here. These are the specific measures that I used for each of my variables and I conducted data analysis through Multiple Regression analysis through R. Now, my research actually showed that work home conflict was the only job demand who was a statistically significant predictor of burnout, which contradicts other studies that have found both work overload and role conflict are prevalent predictors of burnout and teachers, though this is possibly due to the limited sample size. Additionally if you look at the adjusted r squared value here, you’ll find that while the model I used was a relatively moderate predictor of these different interaction effects in the relationship that I was looking at, it wasn’t the best model due to the high standard error value that you can see. Furthermore, if look at the component + residual plots here, you’ll notice that some of them are nonlinear, suggesting there may be problems of heteroskedasticity, meaning this model may not be the most accurate for capturing the complex relationships of the influence of these job demands on burnout. And here I’ve also shown a table of the other different interaction effects that I had looked at , none of which unfortunately ended up being statistically significant. So to conclude, of the job demands, only work-home conflict was a statistically significant predictor of burnout in my study, none of the moderating variables had significant interactions which implies that the model might fail to capture the nonlinear relationship of feedback mechanisms on burnout rates, and other studies found different results with respect to the influence of these different constructs. However they were with a mixed methods design and they involved school inspection feedback. The limitations of my study were the limited sample size due to time constants and the eligibility requirements, the fact the study was not demographically representative since the majority of respondents were white males, as well as the presence of self-report bias when it came to the feelings about the student evaluations. In the future, I would repeat this study with a larger, more representative sample through stratified sampling or oversampling, a mixed methods approach to incorporate qualitative feedback from the teachers and explore influences of other job demands on burnout in this relationship. Thank you.