Test-retest reliability of a psychometric instrument designed to measure physical therapy students' burnout

The purpose of this study was to assess the reproducibility of scores on an instrument designed to measure physical therapy students' burnout. Physical therapy students (28 juniors and 28 seniors) completed an adapted educator's version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory on two occasions within a week interval. At each testing session, a separate score was obtained for each student for the three (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment) subscales of the instrument. These scores, analyzed with a two-factor repeated-measures analysis of variance, indicated a significant difference in the personal accomplishment score between the junior and senior students during the two time frames. Scheffé post hoc tests showed that the junior students reported higher personal accomplishment affect at both testing sessions than the senior students. Both junior and senior students reported higher personal accomplishment at retest than at baseline testing. A test-retest reliability coefficient of .850 was obtained for the Depersonalization subscale; .907 and .715 were obtained for the Emotional Exhaustion and Personal Accomplishment subscales, respectively.