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Creation Date
4-24-2025
Description
This research examines the effects of quiet quitting and burnout on students' ability to accomplish their academic goals. Students frequently deal with many pressures that might lead to withdrawal or exhaustion, as educational demands increase over time, which are increasingly being articulated as the ideas of quiet quitting (finite participation without absolute withdrawal) and burnout (Palad, 2023). Research has shown student distress is considered a public health issue because of the high levels of depression, anxiety and risky behaviors due to the daily workloads and hassles which lead to academic burnout (Shankland et al., 2018). The present study aims to better understand students’ opinions of these elements and their impact on academic motivation and overall attitudes about their educational experience.
Methods General Psychology students (n=81) completed the survey. Due to integrity checks, a sample of 76 was used in analyses. From this, 2.6% identified as American Indian, 2.6% Asian, 13.2% African American, 54% White, and 16.8% reported multiple ethnicities. Also, 31.6% reported being male, 67.1% female, and 1.3% transgender. Furthermore, 36.8% were first-generation college students. Moreover, 50% marked freshman status, 31.6% sophomore, 11.8% junior, and 6.6% concurrent. Over 90%were enrolled full time in school and 75.5% reported employment less than 20 hours a week.
Materials Scales: Using Qualtrics, multiple scales were used, including: An adapted version of the Quiet Quitting Scale using a scale from 1-5 (Galanis, et al., 2023).An adapted version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory using a scale from 1-7 (Maslach & Jackson, 1981).
Results: There is evidence to suggest there is not a significant relationship between hours worked at a job (collected in 10 hour blocks) and Burnout (r = .12, p = .38) and Quiet Quitting (r = -.06, p=.65). Further, the number of enrolled credits does not significantly correlate with these variables either. As expected, evidence does show significant relationships between burnout and quiet quitting, including their subscales. When exploring potential differences related to employment status, hours worked, gender, ethnicity, and first generation, no significant group differences were found related to burnout scales or quiet quitting measures. The exception to this was a significant difference found with the Quiet Quit Detachment subscale mean scores between those who indicated they were White (M=2.54, SD=0.61) and those who indicated they were not (M=2.85, SD=.69; F(1, 62) = [4.521], p=.037).
Conclusion Our findings suggest that the number of hours worked is not significant with overall student burnout and reported quiet-quit behaviors. This challenges the assumption of higher hours worked directly contributing to these issues. While the analyses indicate there is not a significant connection, some limitations should be considered. The sample is mainly freshman and sophomore status, which may not fully represent a full range of experiences. Another potential limitation would be job types, such that we assessed for current employment, whether the job was on or off campus, and hours worked, but we did not inquire regarding stress level or demands of the job. If students are working low-stress on-campus jobs, they may have different experiences, then students who work high-stress high-demand jobs. Also, distinctions might be present for various academic majors. It further appears that our sample, at large, is not reporting the experience of burnout or quiet quitting and even reporting some level of personal achievement.
Keywords
SWOSU Research Fair, Research and Scholarly Activity Fair, Scholarly Activity, Research, Student Research, Research Fair