Burnout and its Relations with Social Environmental Factors, Basic Needs and Motivation among Vocational Dancers

Nowadays many vocational dancers consider the dance activity as a business and way to earn money. Not many studies have been done in dance domain. Trainings, stress, not enough rest can lead to atigue, muscular weakness and injuries which cause burnout. Burnout can influence both male and female dancers of all ages and levels of competence, level of profit. The socio-psychological predictors of burnout among dance professionals are very important issue for investigation. The self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) was used as a theoretical framework. The potential antecedents of burnout were examined. For the research 150 vocational dancers, 48 males and 102 females from Russia and Cyprus have been chosen. Among them three categories: dance students, employed professionals and dance students who teach the dance. The primary aim of the study is to investigate the influence of social environment forces on vocational dancers and the relationships between the basic psychological needs, motivational aspects and burnout. Also to examine the relationships between autonomy, competence, relatedness and burnout sub-dimensions: reduced sense of accomplishment, physical and emotional exhaustion and sport devaluation and the role of self-actualization and self-esteem as a mediator.The dancers degree of burnout was evaluated using a vеrsion of the 15-item Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ) (Raedeke & Smith,2001) which was developed for the dance population. In order to test the BPNS the “Most satisfying event” questionnaire (Sheldon, Elliot & Kasser, 2001) wаs used. The concept of burnout cоnsidered as an important issue affecting the well-being in any professional activity. Keywords: self-determination theory, motivation, autonomy support, competence, relatedness, basic psychological needs, vocational dancers.