Burnout and resilience during the COVID-19 outbreak: differences between male and female students

Heliyon. 2022 Aug;8(8):e10019. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10019. Epub 2022 Jul 20.

Abstract

This research aims to determine the burnout levels of male and female students on the three subscales of Exhaustion (EX), Cynicism (CY), and Professional Efficacy (PE) and their resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a non-experimental quantitative, descriptive, and cross-sectional research conducted on students of Riau University. The snowball sampling method was used to obtain data from 131 students consisting of 69 female and 62 male through the distribution of an online questionnaire and analyzed using the independent sample t-test and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. The data distribution showed that burnout on the PE, EX, CY, and resilience is in the high, moderate, and low categories, respectively. The data analysis showed that the burnout variable for the PE and EX indicators in female was higher than for men. Meanwhile, male's CY and resilience indicators were higher than female. This indicates significant differences in burnout and resilience between male and female during the pandemic. The results also showed that there is no correlation between PE and resilience as well as CY and resilience, while EX and resilience show a correlation. This finding shows the psychological condition of students in using distance learning during the pandemic. There is a need for strategies to be implemented to reduce the impact of the pandemic on students for better mental health.

Keywords: Burnout; COVID-19; Female; Male; Resilience; Students.