The relationship between research assistants' burnout levels and perceptions of organizational cynicism

In order for education and training to be effective and efficient, it is very important for universities to increase their quality, continue their development and have ethical behaviors. In this study, it was aimed to determine the relationship between burnout levels and organizational cynicism perceptions of research assistants, who are one of the important stakeholders of universities. The research was carried out with relational scanning model, one of the quantitative research methods. The universe of the research consists of 5503 research assistants who work at official universities in the 2019-2020 academic year in the Aegean Region. Sampling study was not done in the study, it was tried to use the whole population of the study; Feedback was received from 427 research assistants. Maslach Burnout Scale and Organizational Cynicism Scale, which are used as data collection tools, were analyzed with SPSS 24.0 program. According to the research results; The highest average score of the burnout levels of research assistants was found in the personal achievement dimension. Following this dimension of emotional exhaustion; the lowest mean score is in the dimension of depersonalization. The highest mean score of organizational cynicism perceptions was found in the cognitive dimension. The lowest average score is on the affective dimension. There is no significant difference between the concepts of burnout and organizational cynicism according to the gender variable. It has been observed that men and women have close perception levels. A significant difference was found between the marital status of the research assistants and the personal success dimension. The burnout levels and organizational cynicism perceptions of the married research assistants are higher than the single ones. According to the age variable, it was determined that the research assistants in the age group 40 and over had a higher average score than other research assistants. A significant difference was observed between the professional seniority variable and the emotional exhaustion and personal success dimensions. There is a significant difference between professional seniority and all sub-dimensions of organizational cynicism. It was observed that the educational status variable did not affect burnout and organizational cynicism. There is a significant difference between the faculty variable and the affective sub-dimension of the concept of organizational cynicism. It has been determined that research assistants working in the medical faculty have a higher level of perception than the research assistants working in the agricultural faculty. In line with these results, various suggestions were made such as clarity of job descriptions, shorter working hours, increasing the source of reward, providing orientation and in-service training, and including other academic staff in the research. KEY WORDS: Burnout, Cynicism, Organizational Cynicism, Research Assistant