Ye Yuqiao, Huang Xiuyu, Liu Yang
Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China.
School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2021 Mar 18;14:335-344. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S300797. eCollection 2021.
An increasing number of studies have been carried out to investigate the relationship between social support and study motivation among university students, but underlying mechanisms behind this pathway have not been fully verified. In the present study, we aimed to test the effect of social support on academic burnout (decrease in study motivation); examine the mediating effect of life satisfaction on the association between social support and academic burnout; and explore whether this mediating effect varied across (moderated mediation) students of different socioeconomic status (SES).
Data for 503 students were collected in a Chinese university through a composited survey regarding social support, life satisfaction, SES, and academic burnout. Data analysis and the investigation of combined effects in the model were carried out via conditional process modeling.
Results indicated that social support was negatively associated with academic burnout. In addition, life satisfaction had a partial mediation effect on the relationship between social support and academic burnout, and SES moderated this mediation effect. Specifically, the mediation effect was found to be more significant among students in the high SES group than those in the lower one.
This study is novel in that it establishes empirically how academic burnout is associated with a typical society analytical variable (ie, social support) among students in tertiary education. It also investigates an alternative scenario to explain the underlying mechanism of social support on academic burnout against the most popular explaining model. Implications of the study for effective elimination of the decrease in study motivation across students with different SES are discussed.
越来越多的研究致力于探究大学生社会支持与学习动机之间的关系，但这一路径背后的潜在机制尚未得到充分验证。在本研究中，我们旨在检验社会支持对学业倦怠（学习动机下降）的影响；考察生活满意度在社会支持与学业倦怠之间关系中的中介作用；并探讨这种中介作用在不同社会经济地位（SES）的学生中是否存在差异（调节中介效应）。
通过一项关于社会支持、生活满意度、SES和学业倦怠的综合调查，收集了中国某大学503名学生的数据。数据分析以及模型中联合效应的考察通过条件过程建模进行。
结果表明，社会支持与学业倦怠呈负相关。此外，生活满意度在社会支持与学业倦怠的关系中具有部分中介作用，且SES调节了这种中介作用。具体而言，高SES组学生中的中介效应比低SES组学生更为显著。
本研究的新颖之处在于，它通过实证建立了高等教育学生中学业倦怠与一个典型的社会分析变量（即社会支持）之间的关联。它还针对最流行的解释模型，研究了另一种解释社会支持对学业倦怠潜在机制的情景。讨论了该研究对于有效消除不同SES学生学习动机下降的意义。
