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Abstract
The main purpose of the study was to compare burnout levels of school administrators according to gender variable by using social support as a covariate. The sample of the study was 306 school administrators in downtown Ankara and its seven districts. A factorial ANOVA design with covariates was followed in the study. Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) were used to gather data along with a brief personal information sheet. Results indicated a negative relationship between occupational burnout and social support levels. Therefore, increased social support level tends to correspond with a decrease in burnout level. In the light of this finding and the related literature, it was decided to control the effect of social support on burnout while we look at the differences by gender. First, the school administrators’ burnout levels are searched through One Way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) for gender. According to the findings, the differences in compound burnout scores which were made up of EE, D, and PA were explained by gender. Again, using gender as a moderator, One Way Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted to see whether social support would significantly predict the dependent variable (compound burnout level). Results indicated that social support was indeed a significant covariate, including social support in the model, the variation accounted for by the model had increased while the error variance decreased. Also, including social support to see the differences between the compound dependent variable produced more clear differences. Therefore, it can be concluded that social support can be used to explain the differences in school administrators’ occupational burnout levels. Suggestions based on the results were provided for administrators and researchers.
