Is vital exhaustion distinct? A meta-analytic investigation on the immediate nomological network of vital exhaustion.

A multitude of studies have supported that vital exhaustion is an important predictor of physical and psychological well-being, especially in the aftermath of adverse medical events; however, some authors have expressed that vital exhaustion may be repetitive with other popular constructs, namely burnout, fatigue, and depression. We resolve this tension by performing a meta-analysis of 74 sources on the immediate nomological network of vital exhaustion. Our results support that the relations of vital exhaustion with emotional exhaustion ($\overline{r}$ = 0.71, $\overline{\rho }$ = 0.82, k = 4, n = 1152) and depression ($\overline{r}$ = 0.70, $\overline{\rho }$ = 0.83, k = 59, n = 30,963) approached the magnitude of its convergent validity correlation ($\overline{r}$ = 0.75, $\overline{\rho }$ = 0.88, k = 4, n = 1445), suggesting that these constructs share most of their variance. Researchers should reinvestigate whether vital exhaustion relates to outcomes when accounting for these two constructs.