Predictor importance of organizational factors of burnout in child welfare workers

The prevalence and predictors of work-related burnout have been extensively investigated within the child welfare workforce. However, the understanding of significant predictors has largely relied on traditional regression analyses, which often fail to capture the unique contributions of each predictor. Dominance analysis (DA) is an advanced quantitative method that determines the relative importance of predictive variables in multiple regression models.

This study aimed to determine which empirically-based predictor had the most impact on work-related burnout in child welfare workers.

This study used a sample of newly hired frontline child welfare workers (n = 597) who had been on the job for 18 months.

A DA was used to analyze a regression model of eight empirically based predictors of work-related burnout in child welfare workers.

Findings among frontline child welfare workers (n = 597) indicate that time pressure contributed the most unique variance (17 %) when predicting work-related burnout and dominated all other organizational factors predicting work-related burnout.

Findings have implications for child welfare organizations and child welfare workforce policy development.