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Experiences of thriving and burnout in working college students during COVID-19: the moderating effect of embeddedness

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Abstract

Following the declaration of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (2020), many colleges and universities across the United States responded by closing campuses, cancelling classes or moving classes online, and discontinuing many student support services. It remains unclear how working while in school may have presented unique challenges for college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this gap, the current study examined whether negative appraisals of COVID-19 at work and school were related to less thriving and more burnout in the respective domains, and whether the predicted effects of negative appraisals of COVID-19 on thriving and burnout were stronger among those who reported more embeddedness in their job or major compared to those who were less embedded. Additionally, we investigated potential spillover effects of negative COVID-19 appraisals in one domain into the thriving and burnout in the other domain. Survey data from employed college students were used to test the hypotheses. We found support for the matching- and cross-domain hypotheses; negative appraisals of COVID-19 at work and school showed negative relationships with thriving and positive relationships with burnout in both domains. However, the moderating effects of major embeddedness were not significant, and the moderating effect of job embeddedness on thriving at work was positive rather than negative, as hypothesized. This suggests that the association between negative appraisals of COVID-19 and thriving at work was strengthened by job embeddedness.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the OSF project files, https://osf.io/t397w/?view_only=3ca0da18a59e40bab347bf329f23a57a.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

    Kate N. Warnock, Konstantin P. Cigularov & Ian M. Katz

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Warnock, K.N., Cigularov, K.P. & Katz, I.M. Experiences of thriving and burnout in working college students during COVID-19: the moderating effect of embeddedness. Curr Psychol 43, 9199–9215 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05068-0

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