Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of personality characteristics and self-efficacy on music therapists' burnout. Participants were 59 music therapists who had clinical experiences after their graduation from a graduate school of music therapy in Korea. Burnout was measured by the questionnaire developed by Maslach & Jackson(1986). NEO Five Factor Inventory(Costa & McCrae, 1992), and self-efficacy Inventory(Sim, 2007) were used to measure each variables, personality characteristics and self-efficacy. The results were summarized as follows; 1) There were no significant differences in burnout among the groups according to their demographical variables. 2) There were significant differences in burnout among the groups according to career record and job satisfaction. 3) There were no significant differences in burnout according to professional variables, but there were significant differences in emotional exhaustion among the groups according to the number of music therapy sessions. 4) The result of correlation among burnout, personality characteristics and self-efficacy, there was a significant positive correlation between neuroticism and burnout, while there was a significant negative correlation between self-efficacy and burnout. 5) The result of comparison on relative influence between personality characteristics and self-efficacy on burnout, self-efficacy turned out to have a bigger influence on burnout than the personality characteristics. Especially, music therapy skill efficacy turned out to have a bigger influence on burnout than neuroticism. The implications of the study include that to improve music therapists' music therapy skill efficacy is one way to prevent their burnout and that there should be more professional education provided in the training stage of music therapy. (Korean J Str Res 2008;16:13∼20)

• Keywords: burnout, personality characteristics, self-efficacy;