Abstract
Burnout in university students has far reaching negative outcomes for both the student and
educational institution. The development of burnout is related to both environmental and
individual characteristics. The focus of this study is on the relationship between burnout and
two individual characteristics, namely global Type A personality and locus of control.
Theoretically both of these characteristics are expected to be related to burnout. Limited
research has, however, investigated the relationship among these two individual
characteristics and burnout with students in the context of South Africa. In order to determine
the relationship between burnout, Type A personality and locus of control, three scales (The
Maslach Burnout Inventory – Student Survey, Student Jenkins Activity Survey, and
Levenson’s Internal, Powerful Others, and Chance Locus of Control scale) were administered
to 387 university students enrolled at a South African local university.
The relationships between the variables were analysed using Pearson’s correlation
coefficients and multiple regression. The results demonstrated that locus of control had a
stronger relationship with burnout than did global Type A personality in university students.
In particular, statistically significant negative relationships were found between global Type
A personality and two of the burnout dimensions: cynicism and professional inefficacy. In
the presence of all the independent variables, global Type A personality was found to only
predict cynicism. Furthermore, the unique contribution of global Type A personality to
cynicism was small. Internal locus of control was found to demonstrate statistically
significant negative relationships with emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional
inefficacy. Powerful Others and Chance locus of control each demonstrated positive
relationships with the three burnout dimensions. Dominance analysis indicated that internal
locus of control (Internality) and Powerful Others demonstrated the largest relative
importance for predicting burnout in university students.
As a whole the results support extant literature and show that the association among
individual characteristics, namely global Type A personality and locus of control, and
burnout in the student context, is similar to the relationship that exists in the organisational
context. The current study’s findings indicate the importance of researching burnout in the
student context. The study also demonstrated that the individual factors of global Type A...
M.Com. (Industrial Psychology)