Average burnout score: Copenhagen Burnout Inventory norms from Denmark and Korea

The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) is a freely available scale that measures exhaustion from 0 to 100. Researchers at Denmark’s National Institute of Occupational Health built it, and it has separate scales, among them personal burnout, which asks how often body and mind are worn out (“How often do you feel tired?”), and work-related burnout, which asks how much work wears you out. The mind.io burnout self-check scores the 13 items of these two scales the same way.

In 1,498 people chosen to represent Danish adults, the personal burnout mean was 32.7. In the PUMA study of 1,917 human service workers it was 35.9, with 33.0 for work-related burnout, and in 464 Korean homecare workers it was 38.6 and 33.9.

This guide sets out the figures from the three sources, what the 50-point mark means, how to compare your own score, and what to keep in mind when reading the numbers.

The norms published by Denmark’s National Institute of Occupational Health come from asking the six personal burnout items by telephone of 1,498 people chosen to represent Danish adults aged 20 to 59 (75% response rate). The mean was 32.7 (standard deviation 15.7); the 1,186 people in work averaged 31.7 and the 312 without work 36.6 (Borritz and Kristensen, 2004).

Item by item, to “How often do you feel tired?” 3.6% answered “always,” 20.7% “often,” 51.4% “sometimes,” 17.7% “seldom” and 6.7% “never or almost never.” Only 4.5% thought “I can’t take it anymore” always or often, and 47.1% never or almost never did. Tiredness was common, but frequently feeling unable to go on was rare.

The same document reports the PUMA study of 1,917 people (83% women) working as social workers, in hospitals, prisons, home help and institutions for people with chronic disabilities. They averaged 35.9 for personal burnout, 33.0 for work-related burnout and 30.9 for client-related burnout.

Counting 50 points or more as high burnout, 22.2% were high on personal burnout and 19.8% on work-related burnout: about one in five. By gender, women’s personal burnout mean was 36.9, higher than men’s 30.8.

Jeon and colleagues (2019) gave the Korean version of the CBI to homecare workers for older adults, drawn nationwide by two-stage stratified probability sampling, in July to October 2016, and analyzed 464 responses. They were aged 33 to 72, 56.8 on average.

They averaged 38.6 for personal burnout, 33.9 for work-related burnout and 34.9 for client-related burnout, and 30.4%, 23.3% and 26.9% scored 50 or more. The authors note that the personal burnout score was higher than among homecare workers in a Danish province (32.6) and lower than in the Danish capital (43.1). The table below sets the three sources side by side.

The mind.io burnout self-check uses the CBI’s 6 personal burnout items and 7 work-related burnout items, scores the answers 100, 75, 50, 25 and 0, and averages each scale. The English items follow the published wording and the scoring is the same, so your scores can be set fairly directly against the averages above.

For example, a personal burnout score around 33 is close to the Danish adult average, while 50 or more is on the high side, where about one in five human service workers were. mind.io’s three result ranges (below 50, 50 to 74, and 75 or more) follow a convention in CBI research; they are a reading aid, not diagnostic criteria.

The client-related scale asks about exhaustion from working with clients, patients or students; it is not part of the mind.io check.

The Danish norms were published in 2004, and the Korean data come from one occupation, homecare workers with an average age of 56.8. We have not yet found a CBI average for Korean adults overall whose source and sample can be checked. Averages can differ by country, occupation and period.

The wording differs too: the Danish norms used the Danish original, the Korean study the Korean version of the CBI, and mind.io’s English items follow the published English wording, while its other languages are its own translations. So rather than reading a few points as better or worse, use the comparison to see roughly where your score falls.

A burnout score is not a diagnosis. But if scores of 50 or more last for weeks, or your sleep, meals and daily life start to slip, do not carry it alone: talk to someone close or a professional. See also burnout versus depression and how to recover from burnout.

Q. What is the average burnout score? A. On the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, a sample chosen to represent Danish adults averaged 32.7 for personal burnout. Human service workers in the Danish PUMA study averaged 35.9, and Korean homecare workers 38.6.

Q. Does a score of 50 or more mean burnout? A. Some studies have used 50 or more as the mark of high burnout, but it is not a diagnostic criterion. In the PUMA study, 22.2% of human service workers scored 50 or more on personal burnout.

Q. How do personal and work-related burnout differ? A. Personal burnout asks how often body and mind are worn out, whatever the cause; work-related burnout asks how much of that you put down to work. Read together, they hint whether the rest you need is from work or from life in general.

References: Borritz, M., & Kristensen, T. S. (2004), Copenhagen Burnout Inventory: Normative data from a representative Danish population on Personal Burnout and Results from the PUMA study on Personal Burnout, Work Burnout, and Client Burnout, National Institute of Occupational Health, Denmark, https://nfa.dk/media/hl5nbers/cbi-first-edition.pdf; Kristensen, T. S., Borritz, M., Villadsen, E., & Christensen, K. B. (2005), The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory: A new tool for the assessment of burnout, Work & Stress 19(3), 192-207, https://doi.org/10.1080/02678370500297720; Jeon, G.-S., You, S.-J., Kim, M.-G., Kim, Y.-M., & Cho, S.-I. (2019), Psychometric properties of the Korean version of the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory in Korean homecare workers for older adults, PLoS One 14(8), e0221323, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221323.