Burnout among counselor educators (CEs) has emerged as a significant concern affecting the quality of professional preparation and retention within the field. This quantitative, cross-sectional survey study investigated internal and external factors that predict burnout among counselor educators in the United States, guided by the Job Demand-Resource (JD-R) Model. Three research questions examined: (1) internal factors (depression and demographic characteristics) predicting burnout, (2) external factors (job demands and job resources) predicting burnout, and (3) whether internal or external factors explain more variance in burnout. Data were collected from 128 full-time counselor educators recruited through snowball and convenience sampling. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine predictive relationships, followed by dominance analysis to determine unique variance contributions. Results revealed that depression emerged as the strongest predictor of burnout (B = 0.069, β = 0.59, p < .001), explaining approximately 48% of the variance. Job resources demonstrated a significant negative relationship with burnout (B = -0.01, β = -0.26, p < .001), explaining 24% of the variance independently. Contrary to hypotheses, age, years of experience, hours worked, and institution type did not significantly predict burnout. Dominance analysis confirmed that internal factors, particularly depression, explained substantially more variance than external factors. The findings contribute to burnout literature by demonstrating the critical importance of individual psychological factors alongside systemic variables in understanding counselor educator burnout.
Shing Yee Bay (Sat,) studied this question.