Burnout in the Dance Industry: Reflection of preliminary research (AFEM x RUG)

For this project, we were instructed to design a survey for the Association for Electronic Music to get an insight into the topic of burnout among artists and industry professionals in the electronic music industry. The project was conducted in the seven academic weeks dedicated to the course Music Careers, Industries and Lives plus extra three weeks building up to the final exam/deadline and requested survey. To be able to compose a survey, we decided to first conduct literary research on the topic. We examined literature on burnout as an overall health issue from a medical/psychological perspective and at the same time we looked at research on mental health in the (electronic) music industry. The research from psychological perspective showed us that the development of burnout is dependent on societal, personal, and work-related factors. Since this survey is for an industry related organization, we decided to mostly focus on the work-related factors, although we also included some questions touching upon support from social circles. We also used this literature to be able to develop questions asking for symptoms or causes of burnout. We interpreted these so that they were applicable to the electronic music industry specifically. Moreover, we also examined existing work-related and burnout questionnaires that are used in psychology to see how we could phrase the different questions, and which scales we could implement.