Work-Family Conflict and Job Burnout among Public School Female Teachers in Malaysia during COVID-19

Abstract

Juggling with multiple roles at home and work can lead to burnout, and working at home may increase the possibility of juggling between work and family. This study investigates the relationship between work-family conflict and job burnout among Malaysian female teachers in public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic in which teachers were working at home by adopting home-based teaching and learning mode. This study used a cross-sectional online survey design. A total of 376 female public-school teachers in Malaysia were recruited by using a purposive sampling technique. The eligible participants to answer the questionnaires are (a) Malaysian, (b) teaching in primary or secondary school, (c) public school teachers, and (d) female. The study used the Malay version of the Work-Family Conflict Questionnaire to measure work-family conflict and Oldenburg Burnout Inventory to measure job burnout. It is hypothesised that there will be a significant positive relationship between work-family conflicts and job burnout. The results from multiple regression analyses show the overall work-family conflict predicts job burnout. The study also found the significance of strain-based conflicts in predicting job burnout in which work-interfere-family predict job burnout at a greater value than family-interfere-work.  The results indicating that while working at home, female teachers experience strain from handling work demands which interfere with their role at home, hence contribute to job burnout. The findings, recommendations, and implications of this study are discussed.