Effects of Practicing Counselor's Perceiving a Calling on Burnout: The Sequential Mediating Effects of Living a Calling and Role Stress

Objectives The purpose of this study was to verify the sequential mediating effects of living a calling and role stress in the effects of practicing counselor's perceiving a calling on burnout. Methods To achieve this, in January 2025, an online survey was conducted on practicing counselors nationwide who have counseling-related certificates, register businesses, and generate income through them, and collect data from a total of 244 people. For the collected data, SPSS 30.0 was used to check the reliability of the scale, conduct descriptive statistical analysis, and correlation analysis, and AMOS 26.0 was used to analyze individual and sequential mediating effects. Results As a result of the analysis, it was found that perceiving a calling, burnout, living a calling, and role stress of the practicing counselor all had significant correlations. Perceiving a calling had a positive correlation with living a calling, and role stress and burnout had a negative correlation, and living a calling also had a significant negative correlation with role stress and burnout. As a result of structural model analysis, it was found that perceiving a calling had a direct effect on living a calling and burnout, and at the same time, the sequential indirect path through living a calling and role stress was also significant. In the verification using phantom variables, it was confirmed that the sequential mediating effect of living a calling and role stress was significant in the relationship between perceiving a calling and burnout. Conclusions In this study, it is suggested that the higher perceiving a calling, the more facilitating living a calling of the practicing counselor, thereby lowering role stress and burnout. Based on this, the implications and limitations of the study were presented.