The effect of vocational burnout on alexitimia levels in aviation employee

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the occupational burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, low personal achievement) of shift workers working in ground handling services in the aviation industry affects alexithymia levels (difficulty in identifying emotions, difficulty in verbalizing emotions, outward thinking). Within the scope of the research, a field study was conducted with 594 shift workers working in the operation units of the largest ground handling company operating at airports in Turkey. Total of 51 questions consisting of Maslach Burnout Scale, Toronto Alexithymia Scale and demographic factors was applied to the participants. The validity and reliability analyzes of the questionnaire and frequency and distribution analyzes related to descriptive statistics were carried out with the SPSS 21.0 statistical program. The relationship between professional burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal accomplishment sub-dimensions) and alexithymia (difficulty in describing emotions, difficulty in verbalizing emotions, and extroverted thinking sub-dimensions) regarding the variables of the study was analyzed with Independent T test, Anova, Correlation and Regression analyses. As a result; It is seen that there is a significant relationship between the occupational burnout level (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization dimensions) and alexithymia levels (difficulty in describing emotions and difficulty in verbalizing emotions) of shift workers working in the operation units of ground handling services, and that professional burnout positively affects the alexithymia levels of ground handling workers.