The relationship between study-life balance and academic burnout and engagement: The moderating role of academic motivation

Živa Kubot, Zala Motaln

 Full article (pdf)  |   Written in Slovene  |  Published: 7. September 2020 |  Reads: 528

Abstract

Past research has focused on studying burnout and engagement on employees, despite their connection with study and students’ health outcomes as well as their well-being. We aimed to broaden the understanding of factors regulating academic burnout and engagement, to find how personal life-study balance predicts students’ engagement and burnout, and whether academic motivation has a moderating role in that relationship. The study included 604 students (76 % female students), who answered questions regarding exhaustion, formulated following the example of a students’ version of the Burnout Inventory, Utrecht engagement scale-Student, Academic motivation scale and Personal life-study interference and enhancement scales. Results show that personal life-study interference predicts higher burnout, while personal life-study enhancement predicts lower burnout and higher engagement. Intrinsic motivation protects students from burnout and enhances their engagement, while extrinsic motivation leads to higher burnout and lower engagement. Burnout can also be predicted with the interaction between intrinsic motivation and enhancement, which means intrinsic motivation can reduce burnout for students with a lower enhancement. Based on our findings we suggest that future research focuses on developing interventions for better management of positive and negative effects of personal life on study and on raising professors’ awareness about the importance of promoting intrinsic academic motivation.

Keywords

academic burnout, academic engagement, personal life-study interference, personal life-study enhancement, academic motivation

Cite

Kubot, Ž. & Motaln, Z. (2020). Povezanost ravnovesja zasebno življenje-študij z izgorelostjo in zavzetostjo študentov: moderatorska vloga študijske motivacije [The relationship between study-life balance and academic burnout and engagement: The moderating role of academic motivation]. Eksperimentator, 4, 9–20.