The reliability and validity of three-item screening measures for burnout: Evidence from group-employed health care practitioners in upstate New York

We investigate the psychometric validity and reliability of three-item screening measures for emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal achievement comprising an abbreviated version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (R). Despite its utilization in multiple studies, the shortened instrument has not been sufficiently validated in diverse settings, populations, and organizational contexts. We examine its ability to assess burnout accruing from patient care practice in a rural, underserved area. Utilizing data from a cross-sectional survey of 308 rural-based medical professionals, we investigate how the three short-form subscales of the nine-item abbreviated inventory compare with their gold-standard parent subscales from the original 22-item human services scale in measuring corresponding dimensions of burnout. The findings provide significant evidence that the three-item measures are valid and reliable proxies for the long-form subscales. The short-form measures are highly correlated with the original subscales and display high convergent and discriminant validity. Each of the abbreviated subscales manifests the kind of high sensitivity with adequate specificity that one would expect to see in a good screening instrument. We conclude that the short-form measures can be utilized to rapidly screen human service professionals such as rural health care practitioners for symptoms of each of the three dimensions of burnout.