Abstract:

In recent years, there has been growing interest in studying burnout among university students, understood as emotional exhaustion, a negative attitude toward studies, and low personal fulfillment or feelings of ineffectiveness. This state, resulting from excessive work demands, prolonged stress, and pressure to meet high expectations during university, can affect students' engagement and their academic work. Academic engagement is a positive mental state related to studies, which is essential for academic and professional success, while also preventing burnout in the academic environment. On the other hand, it has also been observed that individual variables such as Emotional Intelligence (EI) play an important role as a buffering variable against this state of exhaustion. However, the study of the relationship between academic engagement and burnout and EI in university students remains limited. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the role that the perception of EI has on academic engagement and burnout in university students, as well as to analyze the relationship between the dimensions of these constructs and their differences based on gender and academic year. The sample consisted of 70 students from the Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Degree program at the University of Alicante (55.74% women and 44.29% men) with a mean age of M=25.36, SD=12.41 years. All participants completed the Academic Well-Being Survey (UWES-S) to measure academic engagement through the subscales of vigor (VI), dedication (DE), and absorption (AB); the Wong-Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS-S) to assess EI through the subscales Self-Emotion Assessment (SEA), Other-Emotion Assessment (OEA), Emotion Use (EU), and Emotional Regulation (ER); and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) to measure academic burnout using the subscales Exhaustion (EX), Cynicism (CY), and Efficacy (EF), as well as an ad hoc sociodemographic data questionnaire. To analyze the role of EI on engagement and academic burnout, the sample was divided into three groups based on EI level (low, moderate, or high). The results show statistically significant differences by gender and academic year. With regard to gender, scores on total EI (t=-2.20, p=.03) and dimensions such as ER (t=-2.97, p=.00) and OEA (t=-2.01, p=.04) were higher in girls than in boys. In terms of academic year, scores for total academic engagement (t=2.72, p=.03) and the DE dimension (t=5.35, p=.00) were higher in the initial courses, unlike the total EI variables (t=-2.22, p=.03) and the CY dimension (t=-4.64, p=.00), which were higher among students in higher courses. Regarding the role that EI plays in the relationship between engagement and academic burnout, the findings show that in the group with higher levels of EI, the variability of academic engagementexplained by burnout as an independent variable was greater than in the other groups. These results suggest that EI plays an important role in improving teaching-learning processes in higher education, helping students achieve optimal performance in their academic life and future career.

Keywords:

Emotional Intelligence, academic engagement, burnout, university students.