Vulnerability and academic burnout in the university context: Interaction events, social exchanges, and resilience behaviours

Abstract

This study focuses on how levels of burnout impact on the quality of sleep and academic performance of university students. Previous research has found limited evidence on the prevalence of burnout in university students, in addition to the relationship between exhaustion behaviours and sleep quality. The social exchange theory (SET) is important for understanding how the various actors in that context behave and with what effect on their social exchanges, here, specifically, verifying academic burnout and its perception by students and institutions themselves. Research has not sufficiently addressed the examination of burnout and forms of coping in that context. The data for this study were collected during the 2023 academic year, through an online survey, from 311 Portuguese university students from different undergraduate courses, without children and without student‐worker status, aged between 18 and 38 (M = 21.58 and DP = 3.20). The results showed a high‐negative correlation between burnout and sleep quality in university students with a direct impact on academic performance (burnout rates and poor sleep quality are associated with low academic performance scores, regardless of the course attended). This research and its results make a contribution that directs the management of university and specifically of courses towards a greater awareness of the existence of burnout and well‐complied sleep schedules by students. Given the evidence that there is a deficit in sleep quality caused by burnout in university students, resilience in this context is one of the aspects that deserve further research, in order to prevent burnout, poor sleep quality, and consequently, control of academic grades.