The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1 - 33

Revisiting Resident Assistant Burnout

professions (Minarik, Thornton, & Perreault,
2003). Nursing and teaching have fundamental similarities to the RA position; most notably,
they are similar in the structure of their jobs,
which involves a service provider (the nurse,
the teacher, and the RA) and service recipients
(patients, students, and residents, respectively). While burnout is well understood in other
fields, there is still limited research exploring
the effect of burnout on RA departure, retention, and job satisfaction.

RESIDENT ASSISTANT BURNOUT
Research from the 1980s demonstrated that
RAs are not immune to burnout (Benedict &
Mondloch, 1989; Fuehrer & McGonagle, 1988;
Hetherington et al., 1989; Nowack et al., 1985;
Nowack & Hanson, 1983). Similar to those in
other service-oriented jobs, RAs work daily
with large numbers of people (Denzine & Anderson, 1999), and there is much strain associated with the RA role (Fuehrer & McGonagle,
1988). Early research showed a significant
relationship between lower job performance
(as assessed by the RAs' residents) and higher
levels of both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization (Nowack et al., 1985; Nowack &
Hanson, 1983). Ultimately, these early studies
showed that, combined with stress, illness, and
personality type, RA burnout significantly predicted job performance (Nowack & Hanson,
1983).
These studies also yielded conflicting
results, in particular on differences in burnout
between genders. In one study, no differences
existed in the frequency of each dimension
of burnout between male and female RAs
(Fuehrer & McGonagle, 1988). A year later,
Hetherington et al. (1989) stated that female

RAs reported higher levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization compared to
male RAs. Nearly a decade after that, another
study reverted to the earlier conclusion that
there were no differences between male and
female RAs in all burnout dimensions (Hardy
& Dodd, 1998). The reason for these discrepancies is still unclear.
Another area with mixed conclusions was
the scholarly exploration into RA burnout concerning the residential composition of the RA's
community. Fuehrer and McGonagle (1988)
found that RAs working in first-year residence
halls reported significantly lower levels of both
the intensity and frequency of personal accomplishment dimensions compared to RAs
in residence halls populated by upper-division
students. In an earlier study, they found that
the type of residence hall significantly predicted small to moderate amounts of variance
in RA personal accomplishment (Fuehrer &
McGonagle, 1988). Contrary to both of those
findings, Benedict and Mondloch (1989)
found that there was no significant difference
in the personal accomplishment dimension
of burnout between RAs in first-year halls
compared to those in upper-division halls at a
large southeastern public university. Fuehrer
and McGonagle found higher levels of overall
burnout among RAs, but they reported no
significant differences in the emotional exhaustion dimension based on building type,
contrary to Benedict and Mondloch's findings
that RAs in first-year residence halls experienced significantly higher levels of emotional
exhaustion. Hardy and Dodd (1998) also explored the effects of community type on the
specific dimensions of burnout and found that
RAs on first-year floors had significantly higher

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1

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