evaluating social problem solving and psychological capital model on academic burnout through mediating academic consciousness and academic help seeking

The aim of this research is to assess the model of academic burnout based on social problem-solving skills, psychological capital, academic conscience, and seeking academic help as well as determine the proposed theoretical model fit with the real data. This study is a descriptive-correlational research with an emphasis on possible causal relationships based on structural equation modeling. The population included senior high school students studying science in their fourth year in the first district of Ardabil during 2016-2017 school year. We used proportional stratified random sampling. The sample size was determined to be 291 participants using Morgan Table. The instruments included “Salmela-Aro and Naatanen’s Academic Burnout Questionnaire”, “D'Zurilla and Nezu’s Social Problem-solving Skills Inventory”, “Luthans’s Psychological Capital Questionnaire”, “Ilroy and Bunting’s Academic Conscience Questionnaire” and “Ryan and Pintrich’s Academic Help-Seeking Scale”. The results consistent with the hypotheses showed that adaptive social problem-solving skills had negative effect on academic burnout. Maladaptive social problem-solving skills and psychological capital had positive effect on academic burnout. In addition, the negative effect of seeking academic help as a mediator in the relationship between adaptive social problem-solving skills and academic burnout was confirmed. Furthermore, the positive effect of seeking academic help as a mediator in the relationship between maladaptive social problem-solving skills and academic burnout was confirmed. Academic conscience, as the mediator between psychological capital and academic burnout, was found to have an indirect and negative effect. And finally, the model with the experimental data from the study has a good fit.