Determining Cutting Points of the Maslach Burnout Inventory for Nurses to Measure Their Level of Burnout Online

Abstract

This study is to determine cutting points for the Chinese version of the MBI-HSS and to design an online assessment tool that instantly measures a nurse’s burnout level. We illustrate (1) the traditional way for determining the cutting points of a scale when the binary classification groups was still known, and (2) the norm-reference approach without groups of binary classifications was used to determine the cutting points on three subscales for the MBIO-HSS. An online MBIO-HSS assessment APP for smartphones was incorporated with the cutting points to instantly display the level of burnout for nurses. The cutoff points of the MBI-HSS were ≤ 21 and ≤ 32 for the Emotional subscale, ≤ 23 and ≤ 30 for the Reduced Personal Accomplishment subscale, ≤ 6 and ≤ 12 for the Depersonalization subscale, and ≤ 15 and ≤ 17 (i.e., low, moderate, and high level) for the overall scores. An available-for-download online MBI-HSS APP for nurses was developed and demonstrated.