Distinct Patterns of University Students Study Crafting and the Relationships to Exhaustion, Well-Being, and Engagement

Abstract

Job crafting has been established as a bottom-up work design instrument for promoting health and well-being in the workplace. In recent years, the concepts of job crafting have been applied to the university student context, proving to be positively related to student well-being. Building on person-centered analyses from the employment context, we assessed approach study crafting strategy combinations and the relationships to students’ exhaustion, study engagement, and general well-being. Data from 2,882 German university students were examined, collected online during the summer term in 2020. Using latent profile analysis, we found five distinct crafting groups, which showed discriminate validity with regard to emotional exhaustion, engagement, and well-being. The results underscore the positive role of study crafting for students’ health and well-being. They further indicate a less important role of increasing social resources for emotional exhaustion when combined with a moderate increase in structural resources and a moderate increase in challenging demands. Our findings imply that interventions to promote study crafting should be considered to promote student health and well-being.

Fostering study crafting to increase engagement and reduce exhaustion among higher education students: A randomized controlled trial of the STUDYCoach online intervention

“…Meta‐analytic evidence indicates that job crafting interventions can significantly increase job crafting behavior and engagement (Oprea et al, 2019). The concept of job crafting has recently been incorporated into the SD–R framework as study crafting (cf., Choi & Shin, 2018; Dormann & Guthier, 2019; Mülder et al, 2022), but no interventions to increase study crafting behavior exist, despite the possibility that such interventions could positively impact higher education students as well (Körner et al, 2021).…”

How stable is student teachers’ emotional exhaustion? Disentangling different components of stability and change using the STARTS model.

“…First, universities might include courses in their curriculum that focus on the use of strategies to cope with university demands by working on potential resources, such as actively searching for social support or time management strategies (Jacobs & Dodd, 2003; Vizoso et al, 2019; Wyatt et al, 2017). For instance, Mülder et al (2022) suggested supporting students in setting goals that are measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Second, interventions might aim at shifting students’ appraisal tendencies, since emotional exhaustion is more strongly related to the subjective appraisal of study demands than to the actual workload (Jacobs & Dodd, 2003).…”

From job crafting to home crafting and back again: A shortitudinal study on the spillover between job and home crafting

“…Accordingly, future research could extend our research model by including more than two life domains. For example, research looking at working students could investigate spillover processes between study crafting (Körner et al, 2021; Mülder et al, 2022), job crafting, and home crafting. Finally, building on the spillover–crossover model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2013), future research might investigate whether job crafting behaviours first spill over to the home domain and then cross over to workers' spouses.…”