Testing the Francis Burnout Inventory among Anglican clergy in England

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect, the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) conceptualised good work-related psychological health among religious leaders in terms of negative affect being balanced by positive affect. In the FBI negative affect is assessed by the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and positive affect is assessed by the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS). A sample of 99 Anglican clergy serving in a rural diocese in the Church of England (75 men and 24 women) completed SEEM and SIMS together with the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) as an independent measure of wellbeing. The results confirm the hypothesis that high SIMS scores reduced the negative effects of high SEEM scores on the independent measure of wellbeing.     

Interattitude Structure and Attitude Dynamics

Theories of attitude change have failed to identify the architecture of interattitudinal structures and relate it to attitude change. This article examines two models (a hierarchical and a spatial–linkage model) of interattitudinal structure that explicitly posit consequences for attitude change. An experiment (N= 391) was conducted that manipulated type of hierarchy (explicit versus implicit), whether the hierarchy was primed or not, and the location in the hierarchy to which a message was directed. Whereas the hierarchical model predicts only top–down influence of attitudes on each other, a spatial–linkage model predicts that linked attitudes may influence each other regardless of hierarchical position. The results support the spatial–linkage model in that interattitudinal change is constrained less by a concept's relative position in a hierarchical structure than by the concept's association with other concepts in that structure. Furthermore, within these interattitudinal structures, concepts directly targeted by a persuasive message often exhibit less attitude change than related concepts to which the focal concept appears to be linked. Finally, an explicit hierarchy of concepts appears to facilitate interattitudinal influence much more than an implicit hierarchy of concepts does; the key to this facilitation seems to be the mental accessibility of the organizational structure.