A test of carver and scheier's self‐control model of stress in exploring burnout among mental health nurses

A sample of Australian psychiatric nurses completed a questionnaire which included operational measures of elements of Carver and Scheier's self‐control model of stress including the frequency dimension of the subscales of the Maslach Burnout Inventory — emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished accomplishment. Other scales completed by participants included independent subscales contained in the Positive and Negative Affectivity Scale and the private and public self‐focus and social anxiety subscales of the Self‐Consciousness Scale (Revised). Two interpretable canonical variates labelled emotional exhaustion–depersonalization and diminished accomplishment were derived from analysis of the date. Each element of the self‐control model showed an expected contribution to an emotional exhaustion–depersonalization canonical variate, whereas reported levels of only positive affectivity and private self‐focus made a notable contribution to explanation of variance on the diminished accomplishment canonical variate.