Investigating the Role of Workload in Sport Journalists’ Burnout

The present study was conducted to investigate burnout condition among Iranian sport journalists and to study the role of workload on job burnout. The method of this study was a descriptive survey which was carried out as a field. The study was conducted in the winter of 2018 among the population of sport journalists including writers, office staff, editors and sport photographers. Questionnaires were used to collect data: the general version of Maslach's Burnout Inventory (MBI-GS) and its two main subscales of emotional burnout and cynicism were used to measure the burnout of sport journalists. Also, Liu and Lu (2018) questionnaire was used to measure the workload of sport journalists. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to measure the reliability of the questionnaires: for burnout questionnaire (0.85) and for workload questionnaire (0.89). In addition, the validity of the instruments used in the study was confirmed by 5 sport management professors. Finally, data were analyzed using the completed questionnaires (287 questionnaires) with SPSS version 22 and Lisrel 8.50. The results of the study showed that Iranian sport journalists had moderate burnout. Also, editors felt higher levels of burnout among journalists. Finally, workload had a positive and direct effect on emotional burnout, but this effect was not significant on cynicism.