Analysis of Relationships among Burnout, Academic Achievement, and Self-regulation

AbstractThis study examined the relationships among burnout, academic achievement, and self-regulation with two structural models. The participants were 383 undergraduates with different majors in a university in the western part of Turkey. The results showed that academic achievement was negatively associated with three dimensions of burnout and was positively associated with self-regulation. The results also confirmed that cynicism fully mediated the effect of emotional exhaustion on academic achievement and reduced academic efficacy; aca- demic achievement partially mediated the effect of cynicism on reduced academic efficacy. In addition, analysis revealed that self-regulation partially mediated the effect of emotional exhaustion on cynicism and fully medi- ated reduced academic efficacy and academic achievement. These findings suggest that self-regulation skills had mediating role relationship between burnout and academic achievement. Implications of these findings are discussed in detail.KeywordsAcademic Achievement, Burnout, Self-Regulation, University Students.Beginning with the industrial revolution and greatly accelerating in the last quarter of the twentieth century, widespread technological innovations have very strongly impacted people's lifestyles (Tolan, 1981). As a result of technological developments and the increased circulation of knowledge on communal, economic, social and cultural life, the expectations and demands of an individual's community and individuals' expectations of their communities have both varied and increased dramatically. While modern life offers opportunities to grow, change, and develop, on the other hand, individuals are expected to adapt to their environment based on changing and varying roles. Therefore, because of both increasing expectations and demands, individuals often feel weak, tired, unsuccessful, and burned out, and so a growing number of people with burnout problems have become subjects of research.The concept of burnout was first used by Freudenberger to define healthcare professionals' experience of intense tiredness and frustration that caused them to quit the profession (Kacmaz, 2005). Later, Maslach and Jackson (1981) conceptualized burnout as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and poor personal accomplishment in a three-dimensional structure, initially considered only a work-related concept. The emotional exhaustion dimension is described as feelings of busyness, tiredness, exhaustion, and overload. The depersonalization dimension refers to negative, rigid, and/or unemotional attitudes and behaviors of a person against others in the interaction (Gunduz, 2005; Kacmaz, 2005). The third dimension, poor personal accomplishment or low personal efficacy, relates to negative personal evaluation of oneself as unsuccessful, insufficient, and powerless when dealing with problems.Burnout-Academic AchievementAlthough in recent years, burnout has been conceptualized to result from professional exertion and to be a work-related phenomenon, research reveals it to be very common among college students (Balogun, Pellegrini, Miller, & Katz, 1999; Cushman & West, 2006; Hu & Schaufeli, 2009; Jacobs & Dodd, 2003; Jia, Rowlinson, Kvan, Lingard, & Yip, 2009; Salmela-Aro, Tolvanen, Erik- Nuirmi, 2009; Santen, Holt, Kemp, & Hemphill, 2010; Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007; Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzales-Roma, & Bakker, 2002; Schorn & Buchwald, 2007; Yang, 2004). Students' burnout is defined as "feeling exhausted because of study demands (exhaustion), having a cynical and detached attitude towards one's schoolwork (cynicism), and feeling incompetent as a student (reduced efficacy also known reduced academic efficacy)" by Schaufeli, Martinez, Marques-Pinto, Salanova, and Bakker (2002, p. 465). Yang (2004) emphasized that manifestations of burnout are similar to that experienced by service professionals. As seen in the studies cited, burnout is not only a variable affecting interpersonal processes but also a variable that negatively affects students during their academic life. …