Research On The Relationship Between Master Students’ Psychological Stress, Coping Style And Student Burnout

The scale of graduate education is increasingly expanded in China, which brings many problems to the quality of universities and postgraduates. Educational resources in many schools are not enough. Master’s degree has been devalued over the years. They are confronted with manifold pressures and challenges from studying, life and employment. Besides, master student burnout does exist.Compared with undergraduates and middle school students, master students have their own features in psychological stress, coping style and student burnout. Though massive researches have been done to illustrate the relationship between psychological stress and coping style, most of those research focused on mental health. In addition, studies concerning the relationship between student burnout and psychological stress emphasize academic stress owing to the particularity of the target group that includes high school and college students. However, there is no mention of other pressures.In the past, few papers discussed the relationship among psychological stress, coping style and student burnout. Especially, no research happened on mater student. Here 401 master students studied are from different kinds of universities in Nanjing. The research problems are:(1) Whether significance differences in demographic variables exist in master students’psychological stress, coping style and student burnout?(2) What’s the relationship among psychological stress, coping style and student burnout?(3) How much do psychological stress and coping style predict student burnout?(4) Whether coping style plays the role of mediating between psychological stress and student burnout, totally or partially?Statistics methods including descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and causal path model analysis are used to explore the situation of master students’psychological stress, coping style, student burnout and the relationship of the three variables. The conclusions are as follow:(1) The overall psychological stress of master students lies in middle level or lower middle level. The pressure of publication requirements and worrying about the feature get to an intermediate level, while the pressure of learning tasks, professional development, physical fitness, economy and physical appearance, normal interactions, environment and mood is in lower middle level. There is significant difference on the demographic variables in some dimensions of psychological stress. Master students of Nanjing Normal University get higher scores than those of Nanjing University and Nanjing University of Finance and Economics in the pressure of publication requirements, environment and mood. Female master students get higher scores than male master students in the pressure of professional development, publication requirements and worrying about the feature, while male master students have more pressure in economy and physical appearance, normal interactions. Humanities students get higher scores than science and engineering students in the pressure of publication requirements. The second year master students are under the most pressure of publication requirements. And the third year students have the most pressure in worrying about the feature, environment and mood.(2) Master students are more inclined towards adopting active coping style. Active coping style in gender and marriage reaches significant difference, which can be shown in that female master students get higher scores than male master students and married students score the lowest.(3) Overall, master student burnout is not serious, which is on the lower level of intermediate. The dimensions of student burnout include emotional depression, reduced personal accomplishment and improper action. Among them, the first two get higher scores. There is significant difference of emotional depression between different genders and there is also significant difference of reduced personal accomplishment on the population statistics variables such as university, gender, grade and marriage. Female master students score more than male master students in the dimensions of emotional depression and reduced personal accomplishment. Students of Nanjing Normal University get higher scores than those of Nanjing University in the dimension of reduced personal accomplishment. The scores of the third year students in the dimension of reduced personal accomplishment are lower than the first year and the second year students. Compared with other students, the married get higher scores in the dimension of reduced personal accomplishment.(4) The master students’psycho logical stress and its eight dimensions are significantly and positively correlated with student burnout and its three dimensions, as well as the negative coping style. The active coping style is significantly and negatively correlated with reduced personal accomplishment and improper action. The negative coping style is significantly and positively related to student burnout and its three dimensions.(5) According to path analysis:master students’psychological stress can not only predict student burnout but also has indirect effect on student burnout through negative coping style. Meanwhile, student burnout can be negatively predicted by positive coping style and positively predicted by negative coping style.