Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

College of Education and International Services

Program

Educational Psychology, Ph.D.

First Advisor

Nadia Nosworthy

Second Advisor

Jimmy Kijai

Third Advisor

Michael Milmine

Abstract

Problem

Teachers are under great stress which can result in burnout and the feeling of being overloaded with work. In turn, burnout can induce compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is often referred to in the literature as repeated exposure to others’ trauma endured by first responders, nurses, and other medical professionals as well as others in the helping profession such as therapists and social workers. The empathy of helping professionals incites compassion fatigue for those whom they help. Teachers, though not originally classified as part of the helping professions, are susceptible to compassion fatigue due to their empathy and the amount of exposure to their students’ traumas. The literature is scarce on the issues of compassion fatigue in teachers, and the factors that may contribute to compassion fatigue in teachers who work in inner-city schools. Hence, this study investigated to what degree burnout and quality of life predicted compassion fatigue in teachers, particularly teachers in inner-city schools in the United States.

Method

This research endeavored to identify the degree to which burnout and quality of life predicted compassion fatigue in teachers in inner-city schools in the United States. This study used quantitative, descriptive statistics, non-experimental and predictive research design to collect the data through the dissemination of an online survey. The study required three instruments: The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES), Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL), and the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF). All three measurements were compiled into one survey using the software Class Climate and then disseminated to two Facebook groups for teachers from where the vast majority of the participants were recruited. Others were recruited through email and at a staff development meeting. The population of this study is teachers in the United States who teach grades kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12), in inner-city schools. The original sample size was 2,500 before some participants were eliminated for incomplete items or because they did not work in an inner-city school. The final sample size was 1,296. At first, the latent variables, compassion fatigue, burnout and quality of life, were chosen to investigate the degree to which they are interrelated with one another and more specifically to investigate burnout and quality of life as predictors of compassion fatigue. The research model proposed that compassion fatigue was predicted directly by quality of life and directly and indirectly predicted by burnout. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was originally performed and the researcher discovered that a path analysis was the best statistical analysis for this study. The path analysis examined the relationships of the variables to one another. Therefore, the observed variables of this study were emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal accomplishment, and quality of life as the independent variables and compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction as the dependent variables. The researcher conducted a path analysis to examine the relationships of the variables to one another.

Results

The final sample size was 1,296 teachers comprising 688 (53.1%) females and 608 (46.9%) males from 47 states in the United States. This study found that 96.8% of the sample of inner-city, K-12 schoolteachers reported compassion fatigue at a moderate level while 1.7% reported at a high level. However, 94.9% reported a moderate level of compassion satisfaction, the opposite of compassion fatigue. This study found, regarding burnout, that 57.6% of the sample reported a high level of depersonalization—one of the negative subscales of the MBI-ES. Also, 95.4% of the sample reported a low level for personal accomplishment—the positive subscale for the MBI-ES; whereas 94.9% reported moderate level of compassion satisfaction—the positive scale for the ProQOL. This study seems to suggest that burnout has a greater negative effect on inner-city schoolteachers than does compassion fatigue. Quality of life, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment together explained 40% of variance in compassion fatigue. Personal accomplishment and quality of life directly influenced compassion satisfaction while personal accomplishment and depersonalization indirectly influenced compassion satisfaction through the mediator—quality of life—and accounted for 42% of the variance in compassion satisfaction. Quality of life is the best predictor (β = .42) of compassion fatigue.

Conclusions

This study found that a significantly large sample of teachers in the United States who teach in inner-city schools reported they experienced compassion fatigue at a moderate level. This study found that quality of life and the observed variables—emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment—contributed to compassion fatigue experienced by teachers in inner-city schools. The majority of the participants, 955 (73.7%), reported a moderate level for emotional exhaustion and 747 (57.6%) reported a high level for depersonalization which are the two negative subscales of the MBI-ES. Also, a large part of the sample size, 1,237 (95.4%), reported a low level for personal accomplishment which is the positive subscale of the MBI-ES. Compassion fatigue had a 40% influence which was explained by the direct effects of depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and quality of life and the indirect effects of depersonalization and personal accomplishment through the mediator—quality of life. Forty-two percent of the variance in compassion satisfaction was explained by the independent variables, personal accomplishment and quality of life directly, as well as an indirect effect from personal accomplishment and depersonalization through the mediating variable, quality of life.

Subject Area

Burn out (Psychology); Stress (Psychology); Teachers--Job stress; Compassion; Secondary traumatic stress; Education, Urban;

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