Belongingness in Graduate School: The Effect of Belonging of the Relationship Between Advisor Trust and Burnout
Open Access
- Author:
- Wang, Kevin
- Area of Honors:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Jonathan Emdin Cook, Thesis Supervisor
Greg Edward Loviscky, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- belonging
burnout
advisor trust - Abstract:
- A sense of belonging is essential to every person, not just as a want but as a need for thriving and even survival. Belongingness means the need to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity and quality of interpersonal relationships. In academic contexts, belongingness plays a crucial part in one's academic success, especially in reducing burnout which can be damaging to an individual’s motivation. At the Ph.D. level, research suggests that trust in advisors may also play a crucial role in preventing burnout. The purpose of this study was to determine whether belongingness moderates the relationship between Ph.D. students’ advisor trust and burnout. I hypothesized that for students with a higher sense of belonging, advisor trust would matter less because their relatively high belonging would already buffer against burnout risk. I hypothesized that students with a lower sense of belonging would be more vulnerable, so advisor trust would play a larger role, with higher trust predicting lower burnout. Doctoral students at Stanford, Columbia, and Penn State universities were recruited and completed multiple surveys across their first year of graduate school to measure their belongingness, advisor trust, and burnout. Results revealed a significant moderating effect of belonging on the association between advisor trust and burnout. However, simple effects tests revealed a pattern that was different than what was hypothesized. For students with low belonging, advisor trust did not predict burnout, whereas for students with high belonging, advisor trust predicted significantly lower burnout. Results suggest that the lowest levels of burnout were associated with both high advisor trust and high belonging.