Burnout and work engagement: Independent factors or opposite poles?

Burnout researchers have proposed that the conceptual opposites of emotional exhaustion and cynicism (the core dimensions of burnout) are vigor and dedication (the core dimensions of engagement), respectively (Maslach and Leiter, 1997 and Schaufeli et al., 2002). We tested this proposition by ascertaining whether two sets of items, exhaustion–vigor and cynicism–dedication, were scalable on two distinct underlying bipolar dimensions (i.e., energy and identification, respectively). The results obtained by means of the non-parametric Mokken scaling method in three different samples (Ns = 477, 507, and 381) supported our proposal: the core burnout and engagement dimensions can be seen as opposites of each other along two distinct bipolar dimensions dubbed energy and identification.