Mediating effect of job burnout on organizational support and turnover intention among university counselors

Background Resignation or reassignment is common among university counselors, the backbone of ideological and political education.

Objective This study evaluates the relationship among organizational support, job burnout, and turnover intention and examines the mediating effect of job burnout on organizational support and turnover intention among university counselors.

Methods From September 2020 to February 2021, 310 university counselors from 9 universities in Guangdong, Hebei, Shaanxi, and Hunan provinces were selected to complete the Organizational Support Questionnaire, the Job Burnout Questionnaire, and the Turnover Intention Questionnaire. Possible scores of the Organizational Support Questionnaire and the Turnover Intention Questionnaire ranged from 7 to 35 and from 4 to 20 respectively. The Job Burnout Questionnaire included three dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment, with scores ranging from 0 to 6. The overall score of job burnout was the sum of the three dimensional scores, the score range was 0-6, and a score ≥1.5 was considered to have job burnout. Harman's single factor test was used to identify common method bias in the study data. Wilcoxon rank sum test for two independent samples and Kruskal-Wallis H test for multiple independent samples were used to analyze the differences in the scores of organizational support, job burnout, and turnover intention of the university counselors with different demographic characteristics. Spearman rank correlation analysis was used to evaluate the correlation between the variables. Stepwise regression and bias-corrected bootstrap method were used to test potential mediating effect.

Results A total of 303 valid questionnaires were collected. The positive rate of university instructors having job burnout was 78.54% (238/303). The participants' scores M (P₂₅, P₇₅) of organizational support, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal accomplishment, overall job burnout, and turnover intention were 23.00 (21.00, 28.00), 2.20 (1.60, 3.40), 1.75 (0.75, 2.75), 3.33 (2.50, 4.50), 2.33 (1.63, 2.95), and 12.00 (9.00, 14.00), respectively. There was a significant difference between men and women in emotional exhaustion dimensional score (Z=-2.22, P=0.026), among counselors with bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees in personal accomplishment dimensional score (H=7.97, P=0.019), between counselors from first-tier and second-tier universities in organizational support and depersonalization dimensional scores and overall job burnout score (Z=-2.25, -3.09, 2.17, P=0.025, 0.002, 0.030). Organizational support score was negatively correlated with overall job burnout score and turnover intention score (r_s=-0.389 4, -0.338 3, P < 0.01). Overall job burnout score was positively correlated with turnover intention score (r_s= 0.555 8, P < 0.01). Organizational support directly affected turnover intention, and the standardized direct effect value was -0.143 6. Organizational support also indirectly affected turnover intention through job burnout, and the standardized indirect effect value was -0.194 6. The standardized total effect value was -0.3383, and the mediating effect accounted for 57.53% of the total effect.

Conclusion The job burnout of university counselors in China is quite serious. Job burnout plays a partial mediating role between organizational support and turnover intention among university counselors.