Reviewing Professional Burnout Levels of Football Referees

This study aimed at reviewing professional burnout levels of football referees. The population of this descriptive study was consisted of active football referees who worked in Bal？kesir Province. No sampling was made and a total of 100 referees (92 male referees, 8 female referees) who accepted to take part in the study between the 1st of January and the 15th of April, 2016 were included in the study. In the study; Maslach Burnout Inventory developed by Maslach et al (1996) and adapted into Turkish language by Ceylan and Tiryaki (2001) and Information Request Form designed by the researcher were used. The inventory is consisted of 15 items and 3 subdimensions. The subscales are exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy. Cronbach Alpha coefficient was found as .82. Data were processed with SPSS 22 statistical package program. Since data did not follow a normal distribution according to normality test (Shapiro Wilk Test), data were analyzed with non-parametric analyses (Mann Whitney-U and Kruskal Wallis tests). Significance test was set at p<0.05. Average age of the participants was 27.03±4.7 years, 92% of the participants were male, 20% of them had a professional experience of 6-10 years, 16% of them were national referees, 79% of them were provincial referees, 5% of them were regional referees and 75% of them graduated from master degrees. Total average score of the inventory was 42.86±15.03. When referees’ inventory scores were investigated, it was identified that highest score (29.60±7.24) was obtained in professional efficacy while the lowest score was obtained in cynicism (4.10±6.31). When referees’ inventory scores were investigated in terms of sex, it was found that highest score of female referees (52.44) was obtained in exhaustion while the highest score of male referees was obtained in cynicism (51.61). In the study referees’ burnout level was found to be at a moderate level. Referees’ professional efficacy was high while their cynicism was low. It was found that there was statistically significant correlation among age, sex, professional service time, category and educational status and inventory scores