Burnout and engagement in university students of industrial engineering, Manabí, Ecuador

Abstract

University students, with the arrival of the Covid 19 pandemic, have had to assume different study modalities, which without having the appropriate conditions become factors that generate stress. The objective of this work was to measure burnout (syndrome of being burned out) and its engagement (commitment or way of facing burnout or stressful situations) in students of a university in Ecuador. The sample was 412 students. To measure burnout, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) questionnaire was applied, responding to a Likert scale from 0 never implied to 6 always, evaluating its three dimensions (Academic Self-efficacy, Emotional Exhaustion and Cynicism) as low, medium, and high. To assess engagement, the Academic Engagement Questionnaire (UWES-S) was used, with three dimensions (vigor, dedication, and absorption) using the same rating scale as burnout. The study begins with the characterization of the students, considering, on the one hand, the sociodemographic variables: gender, age, work, children, area in which they live and marital status and, on the other, the assessment of the study conditions. The chi square test was used to search for relationships between the sociodemographic and study variables, concluding that gender affects absorption engagement (8.238 chi square, p 0.016) and predominant engagement (9.724 chi square, p 0.008); however, age had a direct impact on academic self-efficacy (chi square 9,633, p 0.047). The analyzes of

the rest of the sociodemographic variables and study conditions did not show statistically significant differences. The study allows us to conclude that women present higher levels of absorption and predominant engagement in relation to men, and that younger students between 18 and 23 years of age are the ones with the lowest academic self-efficacy.