ABSTRACT
This research intends to analyze the relationship between vulnerability to stress, coping and burnout strategies regarding Portuguese childhood educators. It has a quantitative and cross-sectional design with a sample of 119 Portuguese childhood educators. The data collection instruments are the Stress Vulnerability Questionnaire, the Coping Job Scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. The results indicate that, in work situations, the group perceived that it was not vulnerable to stress, it used mostly coping strategies that were proactive in dealing with stress-inducing situations and it had a low prevalence of burnout; it shows statistically significant associations between stress vulnerability and burnout subscales (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal fulfillment); it does not reveal statistically significant relationships between coping strategies and burnout. From these results we inferred the need to ascertain the psychological, contextual or organizational variables which have been contributing to the reduced vulnerability to stress and low prevalence of burnout in this professional group.
Keywords:
vulnerability to stress; coping; burnout; childhood educators