Investigation of University Students’ Engagement and Its Relationship to Burnout, Personality Traits and Academic Achievement

Abstract

In the field of education, researchers have been studying individuals’ psychological constructs such as burn-out, engagement and personality traits to better understand their commitment. To this end, we examined the relationship among school engagement and burnout, personality traits and academic achievement in a sample of university students (N = 301). The data were collected through Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Survey, Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-Students Form and The Quick Big Five Personality Test. In order to test the hypotheses of the study descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations, regression analyses were performed. Results indicated that the relationships among the dimensions of burnout and school engagement were the strongest. On the other hand, only conscientiousness had a positive medium level of correlation with school engagement among the assessed personality traits. We also found out that school engagement could be predicted by efficacy, exhaustion, cynicism, conscientiousness and emotional stability scores. The findings offered valuable insights to enhance our understanding of the relationships between school engagement and personality traits and burnout.