Daily exhaustion and engagement in Portuguese health science students: exploring the contributions of negative events and emotional intelligence facets

ABSTRACT

In this study, a quantitative diary design was used to examine within-person relationships among daily negative events, emotional intelligence facets, and levels of academic exhaustion and engagement. The research was conducted with a sample of 63 Portuguese health science students (48 females and Mage = 22.3 years) from medicine (n = 33) and psychology (n = 30) degrees who completed a daily survey for 2 weeks (550 diary entries). The results showed a positive association between daily negative events and exhaustion, whereas daily negative events were not associated with academic engagement. Furthermore, the use of emotions emerged as a key emotional intelligence facet associated with reduced exhaustion and enhanced engagement over and above negative events. Taken together, these data highlight the use of emotions as a salient emotional intelligence facet in the context of daily academic exhaustion and engagement. Although preliminary, these findings have the potential to inform emotional intelligence facets that could be improved through training intervention as a means to enhance positive functioning within the higher education environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Daily negative events
• emotional intelligence facets
• exhaustion
• academic engagement
• diary study
• university students

Acknowledgements

All authors have made substantial contributions to the conception and design of the work as they have conceived and designed the research, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper and revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the version to be published.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research reported in this article has been supported, in part, by research projects from the University of Málaga and Junta de Andalucía/FEDER (UMA18-FEDERJA-147) and from FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P, through the Research Center for Psychological Science of the Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon (UIDB/04527/2020; UIDP/04527/2020). Moreover, the first author has received support from the University of Málaga and the Asociación Universitaria Internacional de Postgrado (Academic Mobility Scholarship Program 2021–2022).