Adaptation and validation of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey in Cali, Colombia

SUMMARY Objective: The objective of this study was to establish the psychometric properties of reliability and validity of the «Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey» (MBI-HSS). Methods: The work was conducted by a process of translation and back-translation of the original instrument, instrument adaptation, translation and adaptation of the application manual, pilot study, and implementation of the adapted version of the instrument with 314 health professionals in Cali, according to the guidelines of the International Test Commission (ITC). Results: The results showed that the scale has good internal consistency (a=0.767); however, the dimension of «depersonalization» has the lowest internal consistency (a=0.518). Regarding validity, in comparing between the factor structure of the modified scale with the original version, we identified that the size of the validated version largely coincides with that of the original version; in the dimension of emotional fatigue, item 6 is excluded because it will be part of the depersonalization scale, items 15 and 21 were also excluded given their poor discriminatory ability. Conclusion: It is necessary to overcome the stability problems of the MBI-HSS depersonalization subscale in health professionals and reformulate the response options to make them more understandable for professionals within the Colombian context.