The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1 - 34

James C . Stoner

emotional exhaustion and depersonalization
scores. Similarly, Benedict and Mondloch reported that RAs on single-gender, first-year
halls indicated higher levels of emotional exhaustion compared to those in single-gender
upper-division halls and mixed-gender halls.

METHOD

It is difficult to interpret the aberrations in
findings due to the differences in each study's
definition of community composition. For instance, Fuehrer and McGonagle (1988) defined
the communities by overall residence hall
(upper-division residence hall versus first-year
residence hall) and not individual community.
Benedict and Mondloch (1989) classified communities into three categories: "predominantly
first-year, single-sex upperclassmen, and coed"
(p. 296). Hardy and Dodd (1998) classified RA
communities by individual floor communities
and not overall building: first-year floors and
mixed-class floors.

Four public member institutions of the
Upper Midwest Region-Association of College
and University Housing Officers allowed
access to their RAs for data collection. All
institutions ranged in size from medium to
large, with respectively sized RA staffs. An
electronic survey collected data during April
of 2016. The disseminated instrument combined the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators
Survey (MBI-ES; Maslach, Jackson, & Schwab,
1996), the job satisfaction subscale from the
Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire (MOAQ; Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins,
& Klesh, 1981), and an RA demographics and
background characteristics questionnaire.

It is also important to note that Fuehrer
and McGonagle (1988) administered the original Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), which
measured both the frequency and intensity of
emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and
personal accomplishment. Current versions
of the MBI only measure burnout dimensions
on the frequency scale because "there is now
sufficient evidence that shows fairly high correlations between these two dimensions when
subscale scores are computed" (Maslach,
Jackson, & Leiter, 1996, pp. 10-11). Developers
of the scale opted to use frequency over intensity because each point of the frequency scale
featured anchors, which "created a more standardized response scale" (Maslach, Jackson, &
Leiter, 1996, p. 11).

This study employed quantitative statistical methods on data collected from RAs at
higher education institutions in the Midwest
to expand upon the knowledge of RA burnout
and contribute to existing findings.

The MBI-ES contained 22 items spread
across the three dimensions of burnout. Each
item measured the frequency of the stated
feeling on a 7-point scale ranging from never
(0) to every day (6). The job satisfaction subscale of the MOAQ used "three items to describe an employee's subjective response to
working in his or her job and organization"
(Fields, 2002, p. 5). A 7-point scale measured
each item, ranging from strongly disagree (1) to
strongly agree (7). Table 1 details all subscales
and provides example items.

T h e J o u r n a l o f C o l l e g e a n d U n i v e r s i t y St u d e n t H o u s i n g

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

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