Starting Year: 2022
Title: MoSBurn: Modeling the multifactorial burnout syndrome in college students
Abstract: College students are subject to various pressures such as academic achievement, relationships with teachers and peers, isolation from family and regular friends, and financing of their studies, among other issues. There are several levels of stress that in a final level can conduct to burnout syndrome, which can seriously damage students’ psycho-social well-being and also can compromise their academic performance. In a final stage, academic failure and mental health problems can lead students to drop out of their courses, which in turn affects higher education institutions whose mission is to effectively train their students in order to prepare them for the labour market. This scenario is very problematic for countries where quality education (SDG 4) and quality health (SDG 3) need to be taken into account to increase well-being of their population and promote scientific and economic development.
Therefore, it is crucial to measure the level of burnout in college students in order to identify problematic situations in order to prevent and/or treat them.
With regard to the priority areas of the national strategy for smart specialisation, it is highlighted Health and Technologies, in particular Technologies applied to measure mental health and academic performance issues, and also to estimate models to better understand the subject under study (e.g., information and communication technologies, SmartPLS, AMOS IBM SPSS; and open-source software, such as some packages of R).
Based on the research developed, once problematic situations that compromise the mental health and therefore the academic performance of students have been identified, several societal challenges related to health and well-being are posed with a view to taking action to prevent the problems diagnosed. For example, based on the results of the study, partnerships (SDG 17) can be developed to provide care and measures to prevent the consequences of mental ill health in students and improve their social and academic performance, and consequently contribute to help higher education institutions in their mission of providing quality education to their students.
Funding Source: FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.
Typology: Institution Project
Reference:
Principal Investigator (PI): Cristina Costa
PI’s institution: Centro em Cidades Inteligentes – Ci2, Instituto Politécnico de Tomar – IPT
NOVA Math members involved: Luís Miguel Grilo