Chapter 11, Problem 11.106ACB

Burnout of human services professionals. Emotional exhaustion, or burnout. is a significant problem in the field of human services. Regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between burnout and aspects of the human services professional’s job and job-related behavior (Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 22, 1986). Emotional exhaustion was measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a questionnaire. One of the independent variables considered. called concentration, was the proportion of social contacts with individuals who belong to a person’s work group. The table on the next page lists the values of the emotional exhaustion index (higher values indicate greater exhaustion) and concentration for a sample of 25 human services professionals who work in a large public hospital. A Minitab printout of the simple linear regression is provided on p. 673.

1. a. Construct a scatterplot for the data. Do the variables x and y appear to be related?
2. b. Find the correlation coefficient for the data and interpret its value. Does your conclusion mean that concentration causes emotional exhaustion? Explain.
3. c. Test the usefulness of the straight-line relationship with concentration for predicting burnout. Use α = .05.
4. d. Find the coefficient of determination for the model and interpret it.

Exhaustion Index, y	Concentration, x
100	20%
525	60
300	38
980	88
310	79
900	87
410	68
296	12
120	35
501	70
920	80
810		92
506		77
493		86%
892		83
527		79
600		75
855		81
709		75
791		77
718		77
684		77
141		17
400				85
970				96

1. e. Find a 95% confidence interval for the slope β₁. Interpret the result.
2. f. Use a 95% confidence interval to estimate the mean exhaustion level for all professionals who have 80% of their social contacts within their work groups. Interpret the interval