Maslach Burnout Inventory — General Survey
MBI-GSPermission: Licensed: permission required. Obtain permission from the copyright holder before using it in a study.
A 16-item measure of burnout in non-human-services occupations. Generalizes the original MBI from human-service work to any occupational context. Produces three subscale scores: Exhaustion, Cynicism, and Professional Efficacy (the last is reverse-indexed for burnout: higher efficacy means lower burnout).
Ready-to-cite methods sentence
Citing this in a methods section? This scale spans more than one discipline, so the style depends on where you publish. See the APA 7 or Vancouver guides, or compare all six citation styles.
Permission required
Importing MBI-GS into a Surveyor study is disabled: Folio holds the instrument’s metadata, not a license to pass on its wording. The citation, scoring and reliability details on this page are free to use and cite.
Reliability & validation
Subscales
Known limitations
Licensed instrument: requires purchase from Mind Garden, Inc. before use (https://www.mindgarden.com/). Exact item wording, current norms, and scoring cut-offs must be taken from the licensed MBI Manual (4th ed. or later), not from secondary reproductions. The placeholder at order 15 should be completed from the licensed manual before data collection. Professional Efficacy is not an inverse of burnout symptoms and is increasingly analyzed as a distinct dimension (see Maslach & Leiter, 2016).
Original citation
Schaufeli, W. B., Leiter, M. P., Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1996). Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey. In C. Maslach, S. E. Jackson, & M. P. Leiter (Eds.), Maslach Burnout Inventory manual (3rd ed., pp. 19-26). Consulting Psychologists Press.
This instrument is licensed. Folio does not distribute its item wording. Obtain permission from the copyright holder before using it in your study.
Questions researchers ask
What does the MBI-GS measure?
A 16-item measure of burnout in non-human-services occupations. Generalizes the original MBI from human-service work to any occupational context. Produces three subscale scores: Exhaustion, Cynicism, and Professional Efficacy (the last is reverse-indexed for burnout: higher efficacy means lower burnout).
How many items does the MBI-GS have?
The Maslach Burnout Inventory — General Survey (MBI-GS) has 16 items across 3 subscales: Exhaustion, Cynicism, Professional Efficacy.
Is the MBI-GS free to use?
The MBI-GS is licensed. You must obtain permission from the copyright holder before using it in a study. Folio does not distribute its item wording without that permission.
Is the MBI-GS reliable?
Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.78–0.87. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.
Who developed the MBI-GS, and how do I cite it?
Schaufeli, W. B., Leiter, M. P., Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1996). Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey. In C. Maslach, S. E. Jackson, & M. P. Leiter (Eds.), Maslach Burnout Inventory manual (3rd ed., pp. 19-26). Consulting Psychologists Press.
Related scales
Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.