De rol van stress en humor bij burn-out onder studenten

This thesis examines the relation between stress, sense of humour and burn-out among students at the University of Twente. Participants had to fill in an online survey, composed of three parts. The first part was testing the level of stress students experience as a consequence of their studies. Therefore the University Student Stress Scale (USS) was used. The second part was testing the risk of burn-out. For this part the Dutch translation of the Maslach Burn-Out Inventory (MBI) for workers was used, namely the Utrechtse burn-out schaal (UBOS-A). Certainly the questions have been adapted to students. The last component is built on one part of the Humor Style Questionnaire (HSQ). Only items testing the use of self-enhancing humour were used, which means items testing the use of humour as a way of coping with stress. As part of this research, background information about the students like gender, age, nationality, side jobs, as well as time invested in the study and in working, up to the assessment of activities in different clubs, commissions or boards were analysed. To investigate the current situation of the students that were participating, the students were asked for their stage of study and the achieved percentage of EC´s in the last year. The research shows that 52,4% of the participants are in the high risk group of exhaustion. Likewise 43,7% of the students are in the high risk group of distance. However 57,1% are in the very low risk group of competence. The regression analysis showed that stress academic, stress time and stress self are positive correlating with exhaustion. Stress self and the time period of their studies are correlating positive with distance aside from the hours a student is working in a week, which shows a negative correlation with distance. Furthermore the amount of years a student is studying are correlating negative with competence and the achieved percentage of EC´s are correlated positive with competence. Humour isn´t correlating with any of the burn-out dimensions, but slightly negative with stress academic en moderately negative with stress self. When keeping the presented research in mind, it should become evident that students run the highest risk of exhaustion. Stress triggered by academic work pressure, time management and problems with themselves, like fear of failure or lack of self-motivation, can be put in strong relation with exhaustion. If a student faces a lot of problems with self-stress and is already studying a couple of years the risk of a distance is decreasing. The same applies for students who are not spending a lot of time studying. Students who are already studying a couple of years are feeling less competent, in contrast to students who achieved a high percentage of EC´s, which can be reflected with greater confidence in their studies. Taking into account that there are several limitations to this field of study, these limitations will be named as a matter of course in the final part, like using a burn-out survey for workers instead for a group of students. By using only a part of the Humor Style Questionnaire (HSQ) only relations between burn-out and self enhancing humour become visible, relations with other types of humour don´t become obvious. The recommendations for further research are for instance, using a burn-out survey for students and using the whole HSQ.