Study engagement and burnout profiles among Finnish higher education students
Salmela-Aro, K., & Read, S. (2017). Study engagement and burnout profiles among Finnish higher education students. Burnout Research, 7, 21-28. doi:10.1016/j.burn.2017.11.001
Published in
Burnout ResearchDate
2017Discipline
PsykologiaCopyright
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier GmbH. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.
A person-oriented approach was applied to identify profiles of study engagement and burnout (i.e., exhaustion,
cynicism, inadequacy) in higher education in a large and representative sample of 12,394 higher education
students at different phases of their studies in universities and polytechnics in Finland. Four profiles were
identified: Engaged (44%), engaged-exhausted (30%) inefficacious (19%) and burned-out (7%). The engaged students
had the most positive engagement accompanied with the least burnout symptoms compared to other
groups. The engaged-exhausted students experienced emotional exhaustion simultaneously with academic engagement.
The inefficacious group had heightened experience of inadequacy as a student. The burned-out
students showed very high cynicism and inadequacy and very low academic engagement compared to the other
groups. Of these groups, the engaged students tended to be in the earlier stages in their studies, whereas the
burned-out and inefficacious students had been studying the longest. The pattern suggests that students starting
out with high engagement and that burnout becomes more common later in the academic career. Supporting
demands-resources model, the covariates reflecting the demands were higher and those reflecting resources were
lower among the burned-out and inefficacious students compared to the engaged students.
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