engleski

Satisfying student's basic psychological needs increases engagement in studies and decreases burnout

While enrollment in tertiary education continues to increase worldwide, the dropout rates in some countries remain high, which rises the importance of cross-national comparison of factors contributing to engagement and burnout of students. Basic psychological needs theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) supposes that each student needs to satisfy three basic psychological needs to maintain their growth, integrity and health. These needs include need for autonomy, relatedness and competence, and their satisfaction contributes to greater energy and internal integratory processes, which in turn contribute towards health and psychological well- being. The goal of our study was to investigate whether the satisfaction and frustration of basic psychological needs will be related to engagement and burnout in students in three transitional countries. We collected large samples of students from Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, both at the beginning of the semester (N = 422 - 648) and during the exam period (N = 272 - 653). Our results showed that across all countries and both times of measurement satisfaction of the BPN was positively related with student engagement, while the opposite was the case for frustration of BPN. More specifically, both satisfaction and frustration of the needs for autonomy and relatedness were most strongly related to dedication component of engagement (r = |.21| – |.72|, all p < .01) while satisfaction and frustration of need for competence was most strongly related to vigor/absorption (r = |.29| - |.62|, all p < .01). Conversely, satisfaction of BPN was related to lower levels of burnout, and frustration to higher burnout levels. Specifically, satisfaction of need for autonomy correlated most strongly with reduced enthusiasm component of burnout (r = -.57 - -.66, all p < .01), and relatedness and competence with sense of professional efficacy (r = .33 - .76, all p < .01). The frustration of needs for autonomy and relatedness was most strongly related to exhaustion (r = .20 – .69, all p < .01), while the frustration of need for competence correlated mostly with sense of low professional efficacy (r = .32 - .67, p < .01). In total, we showed that in three transitional countries it seems important to provide students a way to satisfy their basic psychological needs in order to increase their well-being and engagement in studies. Interestingly, it seems that this increases well-being regardless of the stressfulness of the situation, since the results replicated in both low-stress beginning of semester and high- stress exam period.

basic psychological needs, students, work engagement, burnout, transitional countries

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