It Must have been Burnout: Prevalence and Related Factors among Spanish PhD Students

Sorrel, Miguel A.; Martínez-Huertas, José Ángel; Arconada, María

doi:10.1017/sjp.2020.31

Cited by 17 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This group also reported the highest perceived animal stress/pain levels, which also showed a negative correlation with professional quality of life. This result may not be related solely to their work with laboratory animals, since different studies reported high levels of burnout and a poor work–life balance among biomedical PhD students worldwide [ 26 , 27 ] and in Spain [ 28 ]. Moreover, this poorest quality of life can be a risk factor for developing common psychiatric disorders, especially clinical depression [ 29 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Professional Quality of Life in Research Involving Laboratory Animals

Goñi‐Balentziaga

Vila

Ortega-Saez

et al. 2021

Animals

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Many workers contribute to the success of animal welfare and study outcomes in biomedical research. However, the professional quality of life (ProQoL) of those who work with laboratory animals has not been explored in Spain. To this end, we adapted the ProQoL scale to the Spanish population working with laboratory animals. Participants were contacted by email and asked to complete an anonymous on-line questionnaire. The study comprised a total of 498 participants, 12.4% welfare officers/veterinarians, 19.5% caretaker/technicians, 13.9% principal investigators, 20.7% investigators, 13.6% research technicians, and 19.9% PhD students. The adapted scale revealed very good reliability and internal validity, providing information about two different subscales, compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue. Animal-facility personnel showed higher total ProQoL and compassion-satisfaction scores than researchers; PhD students showed the lowest scores. Thus, our results indicate that job category is a contributing factor in perceived professional quality of life. We observed that compassion satisfaction is negatively associated with the perceived animal stress/pain. Participants reporting poorer compassion satisfaction also reported lower social-support scores. Overall, our ProQoL scale is a useful tool for analyzing the professional quality of life in the Spanish population, and may help to design future interventions to improve workplace wellbeing in Spain and other Spanish-speaking populations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Professional Quality of Life in Research Involving Laboratory Animals

Goñi‐Balentziaga

Vila

Ortega-Saez

et al. 2021

Animals

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“…We observed a shared feeling that the advancement in scientific careers is today based on problematic aspects of the same, where some peers could potentially engage in QRPs as a means for ensuring publications and job security. Moreover, we are just starting to understand how this structure could impair mental health, particularly among young researchers (Sorrel et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring COVID-19 research credibility among Spanish scientists

et al. 2022

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Amidst a worldwide vaccination campaign, trust in science plays a significant role when addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Given current concerns regarding research standards, we were interested in how Spanish scholars perceived COVID-19 research and the extent to which questionable research practices and potentially problematic academic incentives are commonplace. We asked researchers to evaluate the expected quality of their COVID-19 projects and other peers’ research and compared these assessments with those from scholars not involved in COVID-19 research. We investigated self-admitting and estimated rates of questionable research practices and attitudes towards current research status. Responses from 131 researchers suggested that COVID-19 evaluations followed partisan lines, with scholars being more pessimistic about others’ colleagues’ research than their own. Additionally,researchers not involved in COVID-19 projects were more negative than their participating peers. These differences were particularly notable for areas such as the expected theoretical foundations or overall quality of the research, among others. Most Spanish scholars expected questionable research practices and inadequate incentives to be widespread. In these two aspects, researchers tended to agree regardless of their involvement in COVID-19 research. We provide specific recommendations for improving future meta-science studies, such as redefining QRPs as inadequate research practices (IRP). This change could help avoid key controversies regarding QRPs’ definition while highlighting their detrimental impact. Lastly, we join previous calls to improve transparency and academic career incentives as a cornerstone for generating trust in science. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-02797-6.

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“…Doctoral emotional wellbeing has been evaluated in doctoral populations through variables such as mental health, absence of anxiety, stress or depression symptoms, themselves measured with clinically-validated self-report instruments like the DASS-21, GHQ-12, PHQ-9 or GAD-7 (e.g., in Evans et al, 2018;Barry et al, 2019;Levecque et al, 2017;Marais et al, 2018). In addition, academic stress or burnout has been specially related, in the context of the doctorate, with emotional wellbeing problems (e.g., Sorrel et al, 2020) and intentions to drop out (Peltonen et al, 2017) or leave academia (Devine & Hunter, 2016). In this sense, aside from generic burnout scales from organizational psychology, Cornér and colleagues at the University of Helsinki ( 2017) have developed an 8-item burnout scale specifically for doctoral student populations.…”

Section: Related Work Dropout and Emotional Wellbeing In Doctoral Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress-Oriented Workshops for Doctoral Wellbeing: Evidence from a Two-Country Design-Based Research

Prieto¹,

Odriozola-González²,

Rodríguez‐Triana³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Aim/Purpose. Doctoral education still suffers from two severe overlapping problems: high dropout rates and low emotional wellbeing experienced by many doctoral candidates (e.g., depression or anxiety symptoms). Yet, there are few interventional approaches specifically designed to address them in the doctoral student population.Background. Among structural, psychosocial and demographic factors influencing these problems, the self-perception of progress has emerged recently as a crucial motivational factor in doctoral persistence. This paper explores an intervention approach (in the form of workshops) focusing on doctoral progress. Methodology. This paper reports on an iterative design-based research study of workshop interventions to foster such perception of progress in doctoral students’ everyday practice. We gathered mixed data over four iterations, with a total of N=82 doctoral students from multiple disciplines in Spain and Estonia.Contribution. An approach to preventive interventions that combines research-backed education about mental health and productivity, peer sharing and discussion of experiences and indicators of progress, as well as self-tracking, analysis and reflection upon everyday evidence of their own progress. The paper provides initial evidence of the effectiveness of the proposed interventions, across two institutions in two different countries. Further, our data confirms emergent research on the relationships among progress, emotional wellbeing and dropout ideation in two new contexts. Finally, the paper also distils design knowledge about doctoral interventions that focus on progress, relevant for doctoral trainers, institutions and researchers.Findings. Our quantitative and qualitative results confirm previous findings on the relationships among progress, burnout and dropout ideation. Our iterative evaluation of the workshops also revealed a large positive effect in students’ positive psychological capital after the workshops (Cohen’s d=0.83). Our quantitative and qualitative analyses also started teasing out individual factors in the variance of these benefits.Recommendations for Practitioners. Intervention design guidelines for doctoral trainers include: focusing on actionable productivity and mental health practices, the use of activities targeting perception biases and taboos, or the use of active practices and real (anonymous) data from the participants to make progress visible and encourage reflection.Recommendations for Researchers. The construct of progress, its components and its relationships with both emotional wellbeing and doctoral dropout, need to be more deeply studied, using multiple methods of data collection, especially from more frequent, ecologically valid data sources (e.g., diaries).Impact on Society. The proposed interventions (and focusing on doctoral progress more generally) hold promise to address the current emotional wellbeing and dropout challenges facing hundreds of thousands of doctoral students worldwide, ultimately helping increase the research and innovation potential of society as a whole.Future Research. More rigorous evaluative studies of the proposed approach need to be conducted, with larger samples and in other countries/contexts. Aside from the proposed one-shot training events, complementary longitudinal interventions focusing on supporting everyday progress and reflection throughout the doctoral process should be trialed.

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It Must have been Burnout: Prevalence and Related Factors among Spanish PhD Students

Cited by 17 publications

References 33 publications

Professional Quality of Life in Research Involving Laboratory Animals

Professional Quality of Life in Research Involving Laboratory Animals

Exploring COVID-19 research credibility among Spanish scientists

Progress-Oriented Workshops for Doctoral Wellbeing: Evidence from a Two-Country Design-Based Research

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