Going To Bed with Your Work: Head Teachers? Burnout and Sleep Quality

Abstract

The central theme of this article is burnout and sleep quality among head teachers. The paper aims to investigate whether there is a relationship between the burnout dimensions exhaustion, cynicism, and competence and sleep quality. Adopting a quantitative approach, the most widely acknowledge tool for measuring burnout, the Maslach burnout inventory (MBI), was incorporated in the questionnaire. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index was used to measure sleep quality. The questionnaire was then distributed to 600 head teachers in Malaysia. Responses to the MBI revealed that head teachers in Malaysia exhibited a high level of burnout. Respondents also reported a low level of sleep quality. In addition a negative relationship exists between burnout and sleep quality. Expansion of the quantitative data with respondents‟ comments indicated that head teachers perceived that their workload has reached a level that they cannot sustain and which constitutes a serious risk their quality of life. This article pinpoints the many “problems” faced by head teachers how it causes burnout and also thereafter affect their sleep quality. This study also indicated the need for simultaneous assessment of burnout and sleep quality.