THE IMPACT OF SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING, CALLING, AND RELIGIOUS COPING ON BURNOUT, MEDIATED BY JOB STRESSORS, AMONG THAI PROTESTANT PASTORS

Abstract

The present study attempted to investigate the direct and indirect influences of spiritual well-being, calling, and religious coping on burnout among Protestant Thai pastors, being mediated by job stressors. This investigation consisted of two parts (Study 1 and 2) which included the examination of the psychometric properties of five Thai-translated Western-based measures: The Clergy Spiritual Well-Being Scale (CSWS), the Calling and Vocation Questionnaire (CVQ), the Brief Religious Coping (Brief RCOPE), the Challenge and Hindrance Stressors Scale (CHSS), and the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI). The participants consisted of 505 Thai Protestant pastors aged between 23 to 65 years, recruited from three major Christian church organizations in Thailand. The results revealed that (1) the five Thai-translated measures were psychometrically sound (reliable and valid); (2) both spiritual well-being and calling have direct influences on burnout; (3) only religious coping has an indirect influence on burnout, being mediated by job stressors; (4) the full path model which incorporated the hypothesized direct and indirect influences is a better representation of causal relationships among the variables than the indirect model.