Burnout Syndrome in Students and Academic Adjustment Areas. An Empirical Context

Abstract

This papers examines academic burnout syndrome in students. Referring to the Maslach and Leiter’s burnout concept, it identifies such burnout components as exhaustion, cynicism, and the sense of ineffectiveness, and specifies potential burnout causes linked to the person-organisation fit. In the paper, the author refers to the selected results of the study she developed to investigate academic burnout in Polish students in comparison with students from other European countries in which similar studies were carried out using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Other objectives of the study were to verify the factorial structure of the author’s diagnostic tool, the Academic Adjustment Area Scale (ODA Skala Obszarów Dopasowania Akademickiego) and examine relationships between the six areas of academic life and a level of mental stress and academic burnout experienced by the study participants. The main research issue was to determine the extent to which students’ adjustment in the key areas of academic life may explain how they feel about their studies. A total of 866 students from various faculties of the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań (Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza in Poznań) participated in the study.