Mindfulness and burnout among Chinese college students: mediation through sleep quality and perceived stress

ABSTRACT

College students often face challenges and obstacles which leads them vulnerable to burnout. Though numerous studies have supported an association between mindfulness and burnout, yet little is known about the potential mediating role of mindfulness exerts its effect in this link. This study aimed to explore the relationship between mindfulness and burnout among Chinese college students and investigated the sleep quality and perceived stress as two potential mediators of that relationship. A total of 536 college students (mean age = 21.93, 66.2% female) were investigated and completed the Five Facet of Mindfulness Questionnaire, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Perceived Stress Scale and Academic Burnout Scale of College Students. Path analyses were employed to examine the mediating effect. Results indicated that mindfulness had significant negative correlation with burnout (r=−.584, p < 0.001). Sleep quality and perceived stress were significant mediators of the observed relationship between mindfulness and burnout. These findings shed light upon the mediating role of sleep quality and perceived stress, and suggest that college students’ mindfulness may facilitate their sleep quality and decrease perceived stress, which, in turn, may help prevent and reduce burnout.

KEYWORDS:

• Mindfulness
• burnout
• sleep quality
• perceived stress

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The dataset for the current study have not been submitted to a repository but are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant Number GF21C090006).