About the instrument

This self-check is based on the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) - a modern, open-access burnout instrument developed at KU Leuven (Belgium) by Wilmar Schaufeli, Hans De Witte and Steffie Desart. It measures four core symptoms of burnout - exhaustion, mental distance, cognitive impairment, and emotional impairment - plus ten secondary psychological and psychosomatic symptoms.

What is measured, and how

You answer 23 items on a five-point scale from "Never" to "Always". Each item belongs to exactly one of the four subscales. Your score on each subscale is the mean of the item answers (between 1.00 and 5.00). The total-core mean drives the headline tier - green, orange, or red - using the cut-offs published in the BAT 2.0 user manual.

A separate, optional block of ten secondary-symptom items asks about psychological complaints (such as sleep problems, worry, irritability) and psychosomatic complaints (such as muscle pain, gastro-intestinal symptoms, headaches). These items are scored the same way, and their mean is reported as a fifth value on the results page - but only if you chose to answer them.

How reliable is it

The BAT has been psychometrically tested in multiple populations and languages. A recent independent validation published in 2026 (Terzic-Supic et al., Healthcare, 14(3):317) reported the following internal-consistency figures (Cronbach's α) on a sample of n = 431:

• Full scale (33 items): α = 0.946 • Core burnout (23 items): α = 0.938 • Exhaustion: α = 0.865 • Mental distance: α = 0.858 • Cognitive impairment: α = 0.907 • Emotional impairment: α = 0.878 • Secondary symptoms: α = 0.863

Convergent validity against the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory was strong (r = 0.732). Values of α ≥ 0.80 are generally considered good internal consistency for clinical and research screening instruments.

What a screening tool can - and cannot - tell you

This check is a screening instrument. It can describe, with decent reliability, where your current experience sits on each of the BAT's four core dimensions - compared to the manual's normative cut-offs. That is useful for self-reflection and for a first conversation with a professional.

It is not a diagnosis. Burnout is not a stand-alone ICD-10/11 diagnosis in most jurisdictions (ICD-11 classifies it as an occupational phenomenon, code QD85). It also shares symptoms with depression, generalised anxiety disorder, post-viral fatigue syndromes, thyroid disorders, anaemia, and sleep disorders - which is why a high score should be followed by a GP visit, not a self-diagnosis.

References

• Schaufeli, W., De Witte, H., & Desart, S. (2020). Manual - Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT), Version 2.0. KU Leuven, Belgium. https://burnoutassessmenttool.be • Terzic-Supic, Z., Stratakis, K., Candido, T., et al. (2026). Validity and Reliability of the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) in Serbian. Healthcare (Basel), 14(3), 317. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12896602/ • World Health Organization (2019). ICD-11: Burn-out (QD85). https://icd.who.int/browse11