First Advisor
Liu-Qin Yang
Term of Graduation
January 2026
Date of Publication
1-1-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Language
English
Subjects
Burnout, Strain
Physical Description
1 online resource ( pages)
Abstract
Although job demands are widely recognized as core antecedents of employee strain (Crawford etal., 2010; Jones & Fletcher, 1996; Lesener et al., 2019), less is known about how they contribute to different forms of depletion, such as energy depletion (e.g., burnout and fatigue). Drawing from the job demands–resources model (JD-R), stressor–strain theory, and the challenge–hindrance framework, this second-order meta-analysis synthesizes findings from existing first-order meta-analyses to review and quantify the associations between job demands and both burnout and fatigue. Additionally, this study explores the strength of these relationships across both burnout and fatigue dimensions, as well as the potential moderating roles of contextual and methodological factors. Results demonstrated that job demands were significantly associated with both burnout (¯ˆ? = .308, 95% CI [.303, .313]) and fatigue (¯ˆ? = .296, 95% CI [.287, .305]) at comparable magnitudes. Heterogeneity analyses revealed that the demands–fatigue association was consistently positive across all contexts (80% CR excluding zero), whereas the demands–burnout relationship varied substantially, reflecting burnout’s greater sensitivity to contextual moderators. Among burnout dimensions, emotional exhaustion showed the strongest demand association (¯ˆ? = .470), followed by depersonalization (¯ˆ? = .415), composite burnout (¯ˆ? = .330), and personal accomplishment (¯ˆ? = −.295). By leveraging second-order meta-analytic techniques, this study provides a methodologically rigorous, theory-driven synthesis of workplace strain processes, offering important implications for targeted interventions, resource allocation, and future theory development on both employee burnout and fatigue.
Rights
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Recommended Citation
Hunt, Alison L., "The Strain Equation: A Second-Order Meta-Analysis of Job Demands and Depletion Outcomes" (2026). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 7146.